MONDAY 4 MAY

08.30, Parc St Charles Hotel lobby

Second day of shooting. Compared to Saturday, today should be a picnic, although Isla isn’t looking forward to this morning, when we’re shooting at the prom school. She hopes she won’t be killed, and cheers up when she sees the ‘NO GUNS OR DRUGS ALLOWED’ sign outside school – at least she won’t be shot by a drug-crazed prommer. Amazingly, the horrors of Saturday have melted away, and it seems that every student in the school truly is ‘thrilled and honoured’ to have us filming. Everyone’s funny and welcoming, and we get some great stuff to set up the story, including some action shots of Jenine wrestling (she’s the school champion!).

We even have time for a proper lunch, before heading back off into the centre of New Orleans to shoot at the world’s largest indoor sports arena: the Louisiana Superdome. The dome can be turned into a venue for any event, and today its main floor is becoming an ice-rink for an ice dance extravaganza, organised by one of America’s biggest entertainment companies. We are filming the transformation of the dome’s main floor – or we should be – as part of our story on the building’s technology. But, as ever when you’re dealing with enormous organisations, things start to go wrong. It’s a rule of the universe: the bigger the corporation, the less chance you have of getting access to whatever it is you want to film. Your request will go up and up the chain of command, and then mysteriously disappear. You will think you have every base covered, but they will have forgotten all about you.

So, we are due to do a piece from Isla with ice-laying going on in the background at 14.15, according to our schedule (which we’ve cleared with just about everyone in the building, including the on-site representative of the entertainment company). We get to the spot at 14.18, set up and ... the ice-laying crew down tools and go for a lunchbreak. The foreman says they’ll be back in about three hours’ time, but they’re behind schedule too, so he doesn’t want us to do the shot then either.

18.30, Change location

We move next door to the Hyatt Hotel, whose roof offers the best view in town of the dome’s glorious exterior. This one, three-second shot took quite a few phone calls to set up, and meant organising special parking for the crew, but the story wouldn’t work without it. We need Isla in the shot, so we can see how tiny she looks beside the massive dome. The crew set off to the Hyatt’s roof, while I stay with Isla, and prepare to stage-manage her into the right position once the crew are in place. The walkie-talkie crackles into life – it’s Matthew, the cameraman, sounding businesslike: ‘Go left 20 paces, now forward five, no, back a bit ... actually maybe right a bit, that’s good, we’re getting there, just come forward a touch ...’ This nonsense goes on for at least ten minutes before I twig that the crew are still in the lift, and having a huge laugh at my expense.

19.15, The Hyatt’s sports bar

Finished for the day, and time for the obligatory second-day-of-the-shoot drinks. Get thrown out of the bar because Isla looks so young and she doesn’t have her passport with her. She’s 22, but has the peachy, dewy skin of a teenager ...

TUESDAY 5 MAY

08.00, Parc St Charles Hotel lobby

Day three of the shoot. Today is a physical and mental challenge: we’re shooting two complete stories (the true history of poker, and the roots of rock) so we’re all psyched up. I’m so intent on getting together the right props (the Southern Belle dress for Isla, plus some special Scoop playing cards), that I miss the blindingly obvious thing that could go wrong with today, and completely stymie our carefully worked out schedule.

We drive half-an-hour to our first location, the Boomtown Belle riverboat gambling palace, which looks authentically turn-of-the-century in the shiny morning light. We get parked, unload the van, meet our contact ... and get stopped dead by security. ‘How old are you, young ‘un?’ says a short, fat angry looking guy to the beautiful, famous, Isla Fisher. ‘Twenty-two,’ she tells him. He just laughs, and demands to see her passport – which is in her safe, back at the hotel. It’s illegal to let anyone under 21 into a place of gambling in the State of Louisiana, and they’re making no exceptions for beautiful young stars ...

9.45, The Boomtown Belle, take 2

Isla and I get back to the boat with her passport, which the short fat guy studies for at least ten minutes before letting us on board, where the director is pacing the floor. Disaster two: in our absence, a strong wind has whipped itself into a frenzy, and we can’t take the boat out on the Mississippi after all. We have to re-think our arty first shot, which involved Isla looking gorgeous in her Southern Belle dress doing a PTC on the prow of the Boomtown Belle as the boat chugs down the Mississippi. In the end we’re forced to do the whole shoot in the dimly lit, flocked-wallpaper-gloom of the boat’s inside gambling room. The story still has plenty of strong information about the origins of phrases like ‘to give someone the brush off’ and ‘to pass the buck’, but it’s not going to look too great ...

14.30, Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans

Disaster three: we arrive at the Louis Armstrong Park, where we’ve arranged to meet the Lil’ Rascals brass funk band to film the guts of our music story, only to find that the park is all locked up, and there’s no one around. I spent days setting this up – I have faxes galore between me and the Park Manager, proving that I’ve got every sort of permission that it’s possible to get, with insurance liability cover and everything, but I don’t think the director wants to see them right now.

I scale the fence, run to an official-looking building, and ask the laid-back security guard about how to get the crew into the park. He doesn’t know anything about us filming, and he couldn’t be less interested, and the Park Manager has gone on holiday, apparently – but he says we can get in the back way, and he really doesn’t care what we do when we get in, nor how long it takes us.

15.30, Louis Armstrong Park

At last, the Lil’ Rascals turn up. They were supposed to be here an hour ago, but time seems to be a flexible concept to musicians. The director stopped speaking to me at exactly 15.00.

The band are fabulous. They look fantastic, and play like a dream, and their music lifts our spirits up out of our boots. All eight of them fall instantly in love with Isla, and so resolve to work very hard indeed. Amazingly, we knock off the whole story in less than three hours, including five short music numbers, and a deeply moving interview about how the park was a weekly meeting place for slaves during New Orleans’ plantation past. It was here that jazz was born, and the memories echo around the park in the late afternoon sunshine.

19.30, Parc St Charles Hotel

I have two scripts to mark up, Isla has to learn tomorrow’s pieces to camera, and the crew and director want to run through tomorrow’s rodeo story; the most complicated so far. Everyone is hungry and sunburnt and exhausted. Early night.

WEDNESDAY 6 MAY

08.00, Parc St Charles lobby

Day four of the shoot. We set off for a long drive to the little Louisiana town of Zachary. We’re late leaving, which puts the director in a bad mood and means that we have to drive very fast. Matthew and Tim are doing 90 miles an hour when the crew van gets a blow-out. Matthew stops the van safely on the shoulder, and changes the tyre in record-breaking time. We resolve to drive more slowly, even if we lose valuable shooting time (see Chapter 9, Health and Safety). Get to the location at 10.30. It’s home to an interesting family: the kids are all rodeo champions, and their dad is the top rodeo coach in Southern Louisiana. They have a fantastic back yard with a rodeo ring, 20 head of steer, eight horses, and a bucking bronco machine. We knew after the recce that this story was going to be magic, but it really comes alive when Isla gets on a horse – she’s fearless. Everything’s going so well that the family get carried away, and start suggesting some ‘good ideas’ to the director. Here’s Matthew’s description of two of these ‘good ideas’: ‘In the first one, I get to stand on top of a rusty barrel, and become a slalom post for a stallion to gallop around. In the second one, a full-sized steer will charge straight towards me, and one of the cowboys will lasso it just seconds before it hits the camera.’ So, a dramatic TV dilemma: will Matthew agree to do the shots? Will Patrick let him do the shots? Will the steer stop just in time? Tune in to Chapter 9 for an in-depth look at this story – and find out what Patrick and Matthew decide to do ...

We work solidly until just after 6 in the searing, sweaty heat, and we don’t get home until well after 8, but everyone is full of happiness and mutual congratulations. Matthew is particularly happy, just to be alive.

THURSDAY 7 MAY

06.30, Parc St Charles lobby

Shoot, day five. Early start to drive down to the southernmost part of Louisiana for our white alligator story. Everyone is subdued and very tired. This morning we’re doing the first part of a complicated story about the only white alligators in the world (not albinos, but a brand new branch of the Mississippi Alligator species). We have to explain what these creatures are, how they came to be, where they were found, where they are kept now, how they became Louisiana’s unofficial mascot, why they can never be set free into the wild, and how scientists plan to breed some more using their understanding of how recessive genes work. Phew!

09.00, Golden Meadows Alligator Facility

Arrive at the secret breeding location where the white alligators are kept. They are gorgeous – blue-eyed blondes with a skin like white chocolate. We do some impressive wildlife filming, including some scary close-up shots of gators feeding. The guy in charge of the gators thumps some of the really big ones on the nose a few times with a pole, so they snarl at the crew and show their teeth to the camera. Matthew and Tim are impressively brave. We also get some good documentary stuff of Isla helping the scientists to sex some baby gators (if they’re girls, it’s possible that they will carry the white gene).

We work hard up until lunch, which is kindly prepared for us by the alligator handlers. Isla wonders out loud if they washed their hands first, and we all toy with the suspiciously meaty sandwiches ...

14.30, New Orleans Superdome

Back in the city again for the second part of the Superdome story. First thing to do is to get Isla changed into the same clothes she was wearing on Monday afternoon. Next thing to do is to scare Matthew some more. He has to do some shots from the roof scaffolding, 200 feet above the new ice rink.

Because of the complicated nature of the structure, Matthew has to stand on a tiny platform, holding the camera at arm’s length, absolutely rock solid, for several minutes. The camera weighs about 13 kilos.

Now the bit we’ve all been waiting for – we get to see the new ice rink finished, with the ice dancers rehearsing on it. Hah! The dancers, of course, don’t want to be filmed, even though I set this up weeks ago. We lose half an hour’s shooting time, while I negotiate. I keep calm, and explain that we’ve come half way around the world to film this, and we can’t go home without the shots. Finally, we’re allowed to shoot some skating. I discover that Matthew has filmed the rehearsals, anyway, while I was negotiating. (For the record, Matt says you can get some fine footage if you just leave the camera on a table, accidentally turned on.) Of course we would never have used the shots if we hadn’t been given permission. Honest ...

During the shooting of the closing PTC, the director and I have a continuity row. We need to do a pick-up for an over-the-shoulder shot of Isla looking at a giant notice board. The director wants to know which way she was looking when we did the master shot on Monday. But a lot has happened since Monday. I think she was looking left to right – I’m nearly sure of it – but I didn’t make a note of it, and I don’t sound too confident. So we get Monday’s tape out, and play it back in the camera to check. (I was right, she was looking left to right, but I can hardly say ‘I told you so’, as I wasn’t even convinced myself.)

In the old days of television – well, as recently as the early 1990s – it was usual to take a PA (production assistant) with you on a shoot like this. She would be in charge of continuity as well as taking the time-code notes and getting coffee and generally looking after everyone. It was brilliant: all the researcher or producer had to do was look after the contributors, keep an eye on the story and the schedule, and anticipate the next set up for the director. But it was an expensive way to go about things. Nowadays, we still use PAs for studio and drama shoots, but they’re used less and less on factual or documentary shoots. So people like me have to watch out for continuity as well as being in charge of the stories.

16.00, Still at the Superdome

Just one more thing to do: some pick-up PTCs from Isla in a sports stadium for another story which was shot elsewhere. We had hoped to knock off these bits in the Superdome, but the newly-laid ice needs a huge generator to keep it cool until showtime. It clunks into action just as we’re about to roll, and Tim the sound recordist just looks at me, sadly shaking his head. Time for a re-think. The Superdome PR woman kindly offers to take us to a nearby sports ground, where we should be able to film without permits or permission.

17.30, In a New Orleans park

Almost finished! Well, we would be if that train would just go away. Sadly, the sports ground location is right next to a railway. Have you any idea how long American freight trains are? This one goes on forever ...

FRIDAY 8 MAY

07.30, Parc St Charles lobby

Shoot, day six. Meet to travel way down south again to swampy land. Today we’re shooting on an alligator farm – the alligator farm, in fact, where the nest of white babies was found 11 years ago. This is an important part of the white alligator story, but we also want to explain how alligator farming works (well, have you ever seen an alligator ranch?), and how it was farming that saved the Mississippi Alligator from extinction due to over-hunting during the sixties and seventies. But the best bit of today’s work will be watching Isla release more than 20 almost fully grown gators into the swamp.

Here’s the scoop on gator farming: most baby gators born into the Louisiana bayou get killed before they even hatch out of their eggs: the waters are teeming with predators who just love to snack on gatorlets. So, gator farmers are allowed to collect as many gator eggs as they like during the summer months, which they hatch and raise in special gator pens. Once the babies have grown up into 4-foot-long gators who are big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves, the farmers release 17 percent of them back into the wild again.

So the good news is that we get to go way out on the bayou in a convoy of airboats and speedboats – more fun than any of us have had in years! The bad news is that, for part of the journey, we’re in a boat with 20 pissed-off alligators who don’t realise we’re doing them a favour. And the really bad news for Isla is that she gets to take the tape off their mouths, before they get flung back where they belong!

She is spunky, that girl. My unofficial tip for finding presenters would be: always use an Australian. Soon she’s picking up gators, and untying them herself, even though they’re covered in alligator muck, which she’s getting all over her good white trousers.

I get extra brownie points from the crew because I remembered to bring sunscreen and bug repellent – it’s blisteringly hot and we’re all getting eaten to death by mosquitoes.

15.00, Back at the alligator ranch

Pick up all the shots and PTCs we need to set up the release sequence. Everyone is de-mob happy now, and we have a silly golf-cart race in between the hard work. Matthew is in such a good mood that he hardly minds a bit when something really, really horrible happens to him. Patrick the director wants some shots inside the baby gator pens. Trouble is, the pens are dark, and as soon as you open the door, the babies disappear off into the corners. So Patrick asks Matthew to start rolling, then open the door and run in, so he can get a few shots before the babies merge into the shadows. Matthew starts to roll, and opens the door ... and a hundred enormous cockroaches land on his head, and scuttle all over his body.

18.00, Parc St Charles Hotel

We get back to the hotel in time to pack up the thirty tapes we’ve shot this week and take them to the Fedex office. The tapes and my marked-up scripts are being shipped back to the UK, where our editor will start a rough cut. Meanwhile, the rest of us are only half-way through our filming trip: the director and I are going to New York tomorrow to meet another presenter and another crew, for another week of filming. And Isla and this crew are off to Los Angeles at four in the morning to meet up with the other half of the production team. But we all feel deliriously happy. We got some great stuff this week.

20.00, The bar of the Parc St Charles Hotel

We meet for drinks for the last time, before heading out for a Cajun evening. I feel a bit emotional – it’s a funny feeling when you have to say goodbye after a week of intense team work. We play the traditional last-day-of-the-shoot-game, called ‘What Was Your Favourite Moment?’. The cameraman says it was the rodeo for him, particularly the bit where the charging steer nearly killed him. The sound guy says, definitely the music item – what a challenge! The director plumps for the wide shot of the Superdome, which he thought was spectacular, and cleverly revealed. For Isla, the magic moment was when she held her first alligator, and then set it free into the swamp. And for me, my favourite bit is right now, this very moment, when it’s all over, and the stories worked.