Category Major Feats of Organisation

While reading news about any war-stricken country, you must have read about International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) giving aid to the victims. However, do you know what ICRC is?

Origin

ICRC, established in 1863, is an independent and neutral organisation that helps people who are affected by conflict and armed violence and promote the laws protecting victims of war.

Its work is based on the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which are international treaties that protect people who do not take part in the fighting (civilians, medics, aid workers) and those who can no longer fight (wounded, sick, and shipwrecked troops. prisoners of war, etc.).

The ICRC was formed in response to the experiences of its founder. Jean-Henri Dunant, during Italy’s Battle of Solferino in 1859. He had witnessed wounded soldiers left to die over lack of adequate medical services.

In 1862, he published an account of the Solferino’s situation

By next year, his popularity led to the formation of International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded with the help of Geneva Society for Public Welfare.

This committee became the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1875.

The ICRC is now one of the components of a large network that includes national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Emblem

The governments attending the diplomatic conference, wherein the First Geneva Convention in 1864 was adopted, decided that a clear neutral sign was needed on the battlefield to protect medical staff and facilities.

A red cross on a white background, the exact reverse of the flag of neutral Switzerland, was opted. The emblem is recognisable at a distance because of its contrasting colours.

At present, there are three emblems that are used by the ICRC-red cross, red crescent, and red crystal. They provide protection for military medical services and relief workers in armed conflicts.

Recently, two ICRC workers were kidnapped in Mali (the country is battling insurgencies that broke out in the north of the country in 2012). Such deliberate attacks a person, equipment, or a building having a protective emblem is a war crime under international law.

The organisation

ICRC’s headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded mainly by voluntary donations from governments and from nation Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

The work of the ICRC in both World Wars was recognised the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1917 and 1944. It shared another Nobel Peace Prize with the League of Red Cross Societie in 1963, the year of the 100th anniversary of the ICRC’S founding.

All the members are Swiss mainly because of the origin f the Red Cross.

The current president of is Mirjana Spoljaric, who previously served as the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General.

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Some of the world’s biggest oil producers are cutting back. A group of OPEC+ countries, led by Saudi Arabia, recently announced a surprise output cut of one million barrels a day. But do you know what OPEC and OPEC+ are? Or what the production cut implies? Let’s find out.

Oil giants

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is an intergovernmental organisation that produces oil. It was created at the Baghdad Conference in Iraq in September 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Its establishment took place against a background of great change in the world with extensive decolonisation and the rise of many independent nations.

Headquartered in Vienna, Austria, the OPEC cartel is responsible for fixing the price of oil on the world market and managing supply. This is to avoid fluctuations in oil price that might affect the economies of oil producing and purchasing countries.

OPEC & OPEC+

OPEC is made up of 13 of the world’s major oil-exporting countries-Algeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.

OPEC+ is, as the name suggests, OPEC plus other oil producing countries such as Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, South Sudan, and Sudan. In other words, OPEC+ is a group of 23 oil-exporting countries which meets regularly to decide how much crude oil to sell on the world market. In 2016, when oil prices were low, OPEC joined these 10 oil producers to create OPEC+ to have greater control over the global crude oil market. These countries together produce about 40% of the world’s crude oil.

Implication of the cut

Recently, a group of OPEC+ countries announced a surprise output cut of one million barrels a day in a bid to boost oil prices and support market stability. Russia, also part of OPEC+, said it was extending a previously announced unilateral cut of 5,00,000 barrels a day until the end of 2023.

The cut which will come into force from May this year is in addition to the cut of two million barrels a day announced in October 2022 which resulted in a 5% rise in oil prices globally. Recent crises in the banking sector in the US and Switzerland have raised concerns about the possibility of a recession in the near future, which might lead to a decline in demand for oil.

As for the background, demand for oil dropped drastically during the COVID pandemic. Hence OPEC countries decided to cut down production to prevent a supply glut. Besides there was a price war going on between Russia and Saudi Arabia, leading to a slump in oil prices. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 pushed up oil prices raising concerns that the Western sanctions against Moscow could lead to an oil shortage. Following this, many countries stopped buying Russian oil in a bid to make its invasion unsustainable. The wealthy G-7 countries have also imposed a price cap on Russia’s oil exports to keep the country’s oil revenues low. Russia is now exporting more crude to India and China.

The idea behind cutting production seems to be to boost demand by lowering supplies. It is needless to say that this energy crisis is driving up global inflation.

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Cryonics has been making headlines with a number of big names evincing interest in signing up to be cryopreserved after their death. Sounds like something straight out of a science fiction? Well, let’s take a peek into the evolving world of cryonics or cryopreservation.

The term ‘cryonics’ is derived from Greek kryos meaning ‘cold’. Cryonics or cryopreservation is the practice of storing biological material at extremely low temperatures. It involves freezing at ultra-low temperatures (that is below -196 degrees C) in the hope that revival may be possible in the future. At present, cryonics is just a blend of science and speculation (as revival is not guaranteed).

When someone who has consented to be cryonically preserved dies, their body is cooled by a team of technicians. Then it is carried to a cryonics facility where organ preservation solutions are used. The concept of cryopreservation evolved in the 1960s. Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger, a physics professor, is widely regarded as the father of the cryonics movement. It was he who put forth the idea of cryopreservation in his book “The Prospect of Immortality” in 1962. The book captivated the imagination of people and made Ettinger hugely popular. Ettinger went on to found the Cryonics Institute, a non-profit organisation, in Detroit, Michigan, in 1976 and served as its president till 2003. In 2012, Ettinger died aged 92, and his body has been in cryonic suspension since.

Adherents believe that along with advancements in medical and technological fields cryopreservation can revive life, repair damage, and reverse disease and ageing. However, critics look at cryonics with scepticism and also raise ethical questions because the whole process is against nature.

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OPEC nations have agreed to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day. Following OPEC’S announcement of supply reduction, crude prices have been soaring across the world. But what is OPEC and what are its functions? Let’s find out.

OPEC is an organisation of countries that produce oil, with OPEC being the abbreviation of  the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Set up in 1960

An intergovernmental organisation, OPEC was created at the Baghdad Conference held in Iraq in September 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. The establishment of OPEC took place against a background of great change in the world with decolonisation and the rise of many independent countries in the developing world.

Headquartered in Vienna, Austria, from 1965 (earlier it was in Geneva), the OPEC cartel is responsible for setting the price of oil on the world market and managing the supply. In other words, it develops a common petroleum supply policy for its member states and foxes price. This is to avoid fluctuations in oil price that might affect the economies of oil producing as well as purchasing countries. According to the OPEC website, “It adopted a Declaratory Statement of Petroleum Policy in Member Countries in 1968, which emphasised the inalienable right of all countries to exercise permanent sovereignty over their natural resources in the interest of their development.”

Its head and members

OPEC refers to a group of 13 of the world’s major oil-exporting countries- Algeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Its membership is to any country that is a substantial exporter of oil Haitham Al Ghais of Kuwait is the current Secretary-General of OPEC.

If you wonder what OPEC+ is, it is OPEC plus other oil producing countries such as Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, South Sudan, and Sudan. In 2016, when oil prices were low, OPEC joined these 10 oil producers to create OPEC+ to have greater control over the global crude oil market. Here it is important to note that some of the largest oil producers in the world, including China, and the United States, are not members of OPEC.

Impact of the cut

Demand for oil dropped drastically during the COVID pandemic. Hence OPEC countries decided to cut down production to prevent a supply surplus. Besides there was a price war going on between Russia and Saudi Arabia, leading to a slump in oil prices. However, the Russia-Ukraine conflict which broke out in February pushed up oil prices around the world, raising concerns that the sanctions against Russia could lead to an oil shortage. The Saudi- and Russian-led production cut which will take effect in November 2022, will further hike petrol prices. The idea behind cutting production seems to be to boost demand by lowering supplies. This energy crisis is also driving up global inflation. The production cut threatens a global economy which is already destabilised by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Over 80% of crude oil reserves are located in OPEC countries.
• OPEC nations produce around 30% of the world’s crude oil and OPEC+ group produces 40%.
• Saudi Arabia is the largest single oil producer within OPEC producing more than 10 million barrels a day.
• Russia, which is not a member of OPEC also produces more than 10 million barrels of oil a day.

Picture Credit : Google 

Stung by freezing rain, buffered by high winds, and with snow crashing down on them every few minutes, two young mountaineers – Philippe Berclaz and Philippe Heritier – had spent four days trapped on a tiny ledge more than 10,000ft (3000m) up in the Swiss Alps.

The two Philippes, both in their early 20s and training to be professional mountain guides, had set out in August 1975 to climb the almost vertical, north-east face of Piz Badile. The mountain rises 10,850ft (3300m) like a gigantic knife blade on the borders of Switzerland and Italy. The climbers had got to within some 500ft (150m) of the summit when dark clouds rolled down and they found themselves in the middle of a blizzard.

Unable to go on the top, or back to the bottom, they abseiled 130ft (40m) down to a narrow ledge, with a sheer drop of 2200ft (670m) beneath them. They attached themselves by ropes and pitons, or iron pegs, to the granite face and spent their first two days there in agonies of cold. Repeatedly they shouted for help, but each time the wind mocked them and carried their cries away.

On the afternoon of the third day there was a break in the clouds, the storm eased, and their desperate yells and whistles were heard by two German tourists, far below in the Bergell Valley.

News of their plight was telephoned to Swiss Air-Rescue in Zurich, the volunteer organization that deals with mountain rescues in Switzerland. By then dusk was falling, and fog had blotted out Piz Badile. No rescue attempt could be considered that night.

At dawn the next morning, however, the air-rescue service went into action. They rang Beat Perren, head of Air Zermatt, a commercial helicopter service, and commissioned him to undertake the rescue. Within minutes he and his chief pilot, German-born Siegfried Stangier, were flying the 100 miles (160km) to Piz Badile in a powerful Lama helicopter, equipped with a winch.

They reached the mountain in an hour and saw the two stranded mountaineers clinging like flies to the white wall of the north-east face. Strong gusts of wind threatened to send the chopper – with its whirling rotor blades – crashing into the mountain. Siegfried Stangier was unable to get as close to the two men as he would have liked.

So a cable was later lowered 150ft (45m) to the ledge. On the end of the cable was a sack containing a walkie-talkie, warm clothing, flasks of hot tea, dried beef and vitamin sweets. The mountaineers were soon in radio contact with their rescuers, and reported that they still had the strength to lock their rope harnesses into the safety catch which was fitted to the cable.

But cloud and wind delayed the rescue bid until six that evening, when the conditions suddenly cleared. Only one man at a time could be winched to safety, and it was agreed that Philippe Berclaz would be the first off.

Cautiously, Stangier manoeuvred the chopper until the tip of the rotor was about 25ft (7.5m) from the mountain face. Berclaz unhooked himself from the wall and held Heritier – who was still anchored to the granite – tightly around the waist. Heritier grabbed the cable with numbed, frost-bitten fingers and snapped the cable’s safety catch onto his friend’s harness.

Suddenly, Berclaz was whisked into the air, dragging his friend off the ledge. Helplessly, Heritier dangled there by his rope and piton. Then, using every last ounce of determination and strength, he managed to scramble back onto the ledge. Meanwhile, Berclaz – suspended from the end of the helicopter cable – was flown to a stone shelter on the plateau above the Italian border. There, helpers guided him gently to the ground.

Later that night Heritier – in the face of freezing wind – succeeded in fastening himself to the rescue cable at the fourth attempt. Soon he, too, was swinging through the air to safety.

Land based

Since the early 1970s, helicopters have proved the most effective way to locate victims of mountaineering accidents and take them and their rescues to safety. The choppers’ manoeuvrability and speed are essential in getting badly injured people to hospital.

But they are not the perfect answer. They are expensive and cannot operate in fierce winds, heavy snow and thick cloud. The noise of their rotor can also trigger off an avalanche. They are best suited for hazardous alpine rescues – and are not suitable for prolonged and remove rescues, where refueling can be a problem.

So the traditional land-based means of rescuing people trapped on mountains, or buried by avalanches, are still employed.

On Mont Blanc, for instance, overland rescue teams are involved in more than 400 rescues in a year.

The highest peak in Western Europe, Mont Blanc towers almost 15,800ft (4800m) above the borders of France and Italy. It attracts more than a million visitors a year – many of whom want to climb to the top (in summer, some 200 people a day do so). In 1987 the mountain claimed 44 lives, and almost 300 people were injured.

Almost every mountain region has some kind of rescue service, but the more popular resorts – the Alps, the Scottish Highlands, and the Rocky Mountains in North America – have highly trained teams of professionals, with sophisticated networks to coordinate their operations.

Everywhere, mountain rescue organizations work closely with the armed forces, local police, the Red Cross and other medical services, and various rescue specialists such as the coastguard and dog handlers.

A basic mountain rescue team consists of a team leader or controller, who directs the operation from a base off the mountain; the party leader, who directs the team during the search and rescue; and as many people as necessary, depending on the scale of the accident or disaster.

Team members are almost always local expert climbers familiar with the terrain and weather conditions. They are all trained to work in snow, ice, bare rock and atrocious weather. They also receive first-aid training, even though larger teams have doctors or paramedical staff. Communication is by radio or portable telephones.

Depending on the terrain and weather, the team may climb on foot, or with snowshoes or skis; they may travel by horse or motor vehicle; they may use sledges or snowmobiles; or they may arrive by helicopter.

Rescue teams usually use specially trained dogs to locate victims who are lost, and to help dig out people buried in an avalanche. A dog, with its acute sense of smell, can search an area in the time that it would take 20 men to cover the same ground. Dogs – usually German shepherds, Labradors and border collies – are trained to locate any person lost in the area. (St Bernards, traditionally associated with alpine rescue, are considered too cumbersome to work in difficult terrain.)

In March 1985, for instance, a group of Royal Navy sailors – nine ratings, two officers and a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service – were mountain walking in Wales. They became stuck on a slippery ledge 500ft (150m) from the summit of Glyder Fawr – a 3280ft (1000m) sister peak of Snowdon. The party was reported missing when it failed to return home by 9.30 that evening.

‘A good hot-water bottle’

Two local mountain rescue teams set off for Glyder Fawr, as did Philip Benbow – a builder’ merchant and member of SARDA, the Search and Rescue Dog Association. With his black Labrador, Jet, he scrambled through the icy darkness with Jet sniffing the winds for any human smell.

Suddenly, Jet shot off up a steep slope followed by his master – who was guided by a small green light on the dog’s jacket.

‘Jet was far ahead when I knew by his bark he had found the group’, Benbow said later. ‘The coldest was the young Wren, so I put Jet in a sleeping-bag with her to thaw her out. A dog has a higher-than-human body temperature and makes a good hot-water bottle.’

Benbow contacted the mountain rescue base on his radio, and before long team members arrived with casualty bags to warm the rest of the frozen walkers. Daylight broke and an RAF helicopter arrived and winched the party – Jet and Benbow included – from the ledge and back to safety. ‘Jet didn’t look too cheerful as we dangled from the aircraft,’ commented Benbow, ‘but it’s all n the job!’

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The lights dim, the hubbub dies down and the audience settles back in their seats. Then the curtain goes up for an evening of music, lights, dancing and hit songs. But how does a stage musical ever come to be presented?

No other form of entertainment requires the delivery to a live audience of such a complex blend of creative and performing skills, nightly for sometimes years on end.

The skills needed to put on a straight play – from financing the production to rehearsing the cast – are all present in a musical, but it has many more complications uniquely its own. There is the music itself, which must be composed, arranged for an orchestra and dovetailed into the plot. There is dancing, which needs to be choreographed. There are the costumes and sets, often more lavish than in a conventional play. There is the need to find players who can sing and dance. Finally, the theatre itself must be big enough and suitable to accommodate the show – with good acoustics and room for an orchestra.

All this makes big musicals the most expensive form of theatrical production. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera cost about £2 million to mount in London’s West End, and Ziegfeld, which opened there in 1988, cost an initial, £3.2 million. On Broadway in New York, the starting price is around $7 million.

Just to break even, a big musical needs to play to full houses for a year, compared with about three months for a play.

The rewards of success with a musical can be phenomenal. Another Lloyd Webber hit, Cats, generated £250 million in three years in the mid-1980s. The show played at the same time in Britain, America and eight other countries around the globe. The record album sold millions, and souvenir items such as T-shirts added to the takings.

Failure can be equally spectacular, particularly on Broadway, where the fate of a show can be determined by the critics virtually from the opening night. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Carrie closed there after a week, losing $7 million. Even lyricist Alan J. Lerner, whose My Fair Lady is among the most successful musicals ever, suffered the ignominy of seeing his Dance a Little Closer taken off before its third night.

Man in the middle

The risk and responsibility of putting on a musical rests with the producer. He selects the show, organizes the money, and superintends everything to do with the production. There are two types of producer – the impresario and the manager.

Impresarios operate independently, with their own production organizations. They are largely free to stage what they wish, when and where they choose. The real restrictions are financial. Impresarios must be able to raise the money to pay the bills, and their ventures must show the promise of a useful profit if financiers are going to back them.

Managers, most commonly, are employees appointed by the board of trustees of a particular theatre to mount their own productions. The theatre itself may be privately or publicly owned.

Because of the money involved, large-scale musicals have usually been the province of impresarios. And forms of co-production have evolved. Both Cats and The Phantom of the Opera were presented jointly by the London-based impresario Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s group, The Really Useful Theatre Company.

Choosing the show

Original musicals involve three separate strands – the lyrics, the dialogue and the music. They are rarely all ready together when the producer is beginning his deliberations, because it usually takes at least three people to create them.

To simplify the problem, many of the best-known musicals take their plots or story lines from works that already exist in another form. Kiss Me Kate and West Side Story raided Shakespeare; My Fair Lady came from George Bernard Shaw’s stage play Pygmalion, itself built on an ancient Greek legend. Cats originated from light-hearted poems by T.S. Eliot. Oliver, Les Miserables and Man from La Mancha were adapted from novels by Dickens, Victor Hugo and Cervantes.

By borrowing a ready-made story line, authors and composers have a concept that can be easily grasped by a producer. Additionally, they may assume that the plot has already proved its attraction.

The genesis of The Phantom of the Opera illustrates how the various strands of a musical can come together. The original novel was written by a French journalist, Gaston Leroux, in 1911. It was made into a film three times. A stage version was put on at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, London, in 1984, using the music of operatic composers such as Verdi and Offenbach.

The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber became interested in the Stratford show, and considered putting a version of it on in the West End. At that point, he too planned to borrow the music; only later did he decide to write his own.

The project was still at the idea stage when Lloyd Webber approached Cameron Mackintosh to co-produce it. So the producers were involved with the show from the start.

The creative team

In any stage production, a key figure is the director. He is responsible to the producer for the casting and for all artistic and technical aspects of the production. He is responsible, too, for rehearsing the performers and the technicians in charge of sound, lighting and scenery.

Lloyd Webber chose Hal Prince, whose musical successes included Fiddler on the Roof and Evita. Even before Prince was in place, Lloyd Webber had decided on the set and costume designer – Maria Bjornson, who had previously worked for the English National Opera and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

To write the lyrics for the songs, they appointed a young unknown, Charles Hart, after hearing his work in a competition. And the dialogue, or ‘book’, was by Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe – who also wrote additional lyrics.

Casting the parts

In major productions, the star parts are normally cast a year or even longer in advance. Early casting ensures the widest choice of top names – leading actors usually stay in one role for six months to a year. But, equally important, the commitment of a star performer helps to raise the vital money.

For that reason, the producer has the final say about who plays the leading roles, through he will take the director’s advice. The other parts are left to the director to fill.

Christine, the female lead in The Phantom of the Opera, was written by Lloyd Webber specifically with his wife, the soprano Sarah Brightman, in mind. At that time, she was not a front-rank star, and others were auditioned before the role was finally given to her.

The male lead, Michael Crawford, was personally chosen by Lloyd Webber. Crawford was a household name in Britain; from the television series Some Mothers Do Ave ?Em. He had also had a huge hit in the musical Barnum which had had a long run in the West End.

Raising the money

While the director is assembling all the components of a production, the producer is putting the final touches to the finances. His budget itemizes all the main costs.

Some costs are fixed from the start – for example, the sets and costumes, which will be needed however long the show runs. For The Phantom, they cost £900,000. Others, such as theatre rental and wages to the less senior members of the company, are partly fixed – they no longer represent a cost if the show closes.

Some costs are tied to the income from the production, as fixed percentages. The star may receive a flat fee in rehearsal, plus perhaps 20 per cent of the ticket income until the show recovers its investment, and then 12.5 per cent after that.

Other key personnel, such as the designer and the musical director, are on smaller percentages – say, 2 per cent. So are the writers and the composer.

The less money a producer needs to raise from outside sources, the more profit he can keep for himself. However, few impresarios wish to take all the risk themselves. Their proportion varies from 10 per cent to 70 per cent, either directly in cash or in personal guarantees to secure a loan.

The usual sources for the rest are companies or individual investors, who put money into a show as they might buy shares on the stock exchange. Most producers have their own lists of companies and individuals – known as ‘angels’ – who are potential investors, but sometimes the opportunities are publicly advertised. Angels do not begin to see a return until the initial expenses have been met in full.

Producers of musicals have other opportunities to raise money – for example, by interesting a record company in advance in the album rights for the show, and by licensing merchandise associated with it. Andrew Lloyd Webber and the lyricist Tim Rice – collaborators in Jesus Christ, Superstar and Evita – pioneered the techniques of releasing single records, albums and pop videos before the show opened – in effect testing the response, creating public awareness, and raising money.

Once the finances have been worked out and the company begins to assemble, work on the show can begin in earnest. One early priority for the producer is to book a theatre and set a date for the opening night.

Depending on the type of show, the official first night may be a year or more ahead. Some productions are given a provincial tryout before they are brought to a major centre such as the West End or Broadway – to identify and correct any flaws before and grand opening. Others may have previews before invited audiences. In either case, these dates must be built into a timetable.

Those associated with the production divide, loosely, into two groups. The producer and his associates concentrate on the business matters, including publicity and advertising. Much of their effort is directed towards advance ticket sales. The Phantom of the Opera, for example, opened in New York with a guaranteed box office advance of $19 million – assuring it financial success. Few producers can count on anything like that.

All the other aspects of the production are under the overall control of the director. First, he will want to make sure that the script is nearing its final form. He may call on the writers to make changes, sometimes right up to opening night and even after that.

The musical score is the responsibility of the musical director, who may edit it with the help of the composer, supervise its arrangement for the orchestra and prepare it for the show.

Simultaneously, the designer will be working on the sets and costumes. The sets may begin as detailed models or drawings, and they must be approved at each stage by the producer and director.

A number of specialists may work alongside the designer – creating the lighting or working out special make-up, for example. A master carpenter and his assistants eventually collaborate with the designer in building the sets. A wardrobe mistress supervises preparation of the costumes. A property master assists in obtaining such items as furniture needed to dress the sets.

Meanwhile, the director is beginning his work with the cast. He must also make sure he has suitable understudies – reserves for the leading players – and ‘swing’ or utility players available for minor roles in an emergency.

Rehearsing the cast

From the time they are hired, the actors begin familiarizing themselves with the script. Before proper rehearsals start, the director sometimes conducts readings involving the entire company, indicating how he wishes each part to be played.

These ‘read-throughs’ can be held anywhere. But in the next phase, where the actors move according to stage directions, a rehearsal room or stage is needed. As there are usually no sets, their positions are indicated by coloured taps on the floor.

The early rehearsals are conducted both with the whole company together, and also with only certain individuals or groups who require special instructions for their parts. The musical director takes the singers and musicians through their paces. The choreographer or dance master instructs the dancers. An arranger may be brought in for flying stunts or fights.

Gradually, under the director’s eye, the separate elements come together, and a move into the theatre becomes essential. As the sets are built, the stagehands may be given practice in scene-shifting. Lighting and effects are rehearsed. Singing, dancing and other special stage routines are integrated into the rehearsals.

The final stage – perhaps a week before the first performance to an audience – is the full-scale dress rehearsal. The actors are in costume and make-up, the sets and lighting are in place. The full orchestra is assembled. Only minor changes remain before the theatre opens its doors and the audience and the critics deliver their judgment.

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Hollywood feature films originate in the chaos of creative egos and live or die by public whim. Only in production, when a film falls into the hands of technicians, are there firm rules.

The whole process breaks down into major stages: conception, pre-production, production, post-production.

The concept

The basic idea, or concept, for a film sometimes comes from a novel, but may simply be an idea, often expressed as little more than a title, sometimes in conjunction with a star’s name.

In the words of the director-writer Steven Spielberg: ‘If a person can tell me the idea in 25 words or less, it’s going to make a pretty good movie.’

Usually the concept is written up in the form of a brief presentation, which evokes the plot, characters and appeal in a few pages.

Some ideas move with astonishing ease. When, in 1976, Dino de Laurentis decided to remake the 1933 version of King Kong, he gave screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr the go-ahead in a ten-minute meeting. On the other hand, the writer William Goldman researched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (19698) for eight years on and off before he even started the screenplay.

Pre-production

The pre-production period may take years, during which deals are discussed and stars and directors approached. This is followed by months of rewriting, location finding, and budgeting, designing sets, rehearsing and scheduling transport and shooting.

The first essential is ‘the deal’. Decades ago, major film studios such as Paramount, MGM and Twentieth Century-Fox controlled ideas, production, stars and budgets. Now the studios concentrate on financing and distribution, and all the other elements must be pulled together by ‘the deal’.

As an investment, a film is a gamble. Those who control access to film finance – like agents and managers – have assumed huge influence. Agents often become independent producers, who are the forces behind some Hollywood deals. With the ‘elements’ – the idea (or sometimes a script), a star or two and a director – the producer sells the package to a major studio for development money (which would be around $100,000). By getting the deal off the ground, the producer can at least cover his expenses – the major one being the creation or purchase of the script.

As this stage, most projects are either shelved, or are rejected by the studio and go back into the marketplace. However, if the studio approves the script, it goes into production. Only then does the producer – who receives much of his fee when the cameras start to roll – start to make money.

The basic script remains the skeleton of the film. As a piece of writing, it is sparse – around 135 pages is considered a rough standard – containing little but the dialogue and simple directions to suggest character and atmosphere.

The images presented by the script can only live when fleshed out by the director – the person who chooses the camera angles, commands the actors, and gives the film its artistic shape. The script is usually heavily rewritten once the cast, director, budget and location are known. It frequently evolves further during shooing, into the final shooting script.

The stars use to be controlled by studios, which could use a contract to enforce whatever they wanted, including extensions to the contract. As David Niven wrote: ‘Some of us gave 12 or 14 sulphurous years of our short actor’s lives working off a seven-year contract.’ Now major stars, the keys to success, wield enormous power. At any one time, there are about 15 important stars that everybody wants. Since they can make huge sums for the film, they are paid accordingly. Robert Redford, who received $500 for his first film, War Hunt, in 1961, earned $100,000 a day for A Bridge Too Far (1977).

Negotiations may last for months, with offers and demands in the millions. Many stars depend on their images, and refuse to be bought unless the part is right. Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, James Caan and Warren Beatty all refused $4 million to play Superman (1978).

The Missouri Breaks (1976) teamed Marlon Brando (who was to receive $1.25 million plus 11.3 per cent gross receipts over $8,850,000) with Jack Nicholson ($1.25 million, plus 10 per cent of gross receipts over $12,500,000). The deal took almost a year to set up and the film was a box-office failure.

Directors, too, are a part of the star system. Success breeds success; but equally important in Hollywood is ‘word of mouth’. When George Lucas made American Graffiti (1973) his studio, Universal, described it as a ‘disgrace’, and almost did not release it.

Lucas had at this point received just $20,000 in three years, and was in debt. But Graffiti was a hit, and he used his new-found status to work a deal with Twentieth Century-Fox. The film was Star Wars (1977). It made him a millionaire.

Budget of feature films are a constant source of fascination to both film makers and the public. No two are the same. ‘Below the line’ costs – those directly related to the craft of movie-making, such as sets and technicians – are estimated from the script. ‘Above the line’ costs of producer, director, stars and writer are open to negotiation. Both run into millions. One of the most expensive films ever was Cleopatra (1963), which cost $44 million in 1962, and lost money at the box office. Average budgets for American films in the 1980s were around $10 million, of which $7-8 million might be ‘below the line’ and the remaining $2-3 million ‘above the line’.

After the elements in place and the deal agreed in principle, contracts are drawn up, an epic operation in itself. The negotiations are so tortuous that they themselves may become books and films.

Even relatively straightforward films may take years to evolve. The Dogs of War, the film of Frederick Forsyth’s 1974 best seller, was six years in pre-production. Developed with money from United Artists, it had two writers and two producers before John Irvin was contracted as director. A third script acted as a basis for location research. The producer, Larry de Waay, contracted to shoot in the Seychelles in cooperation with the country’s president, James Mancham. But Mancham was ousted in a coup before work started. De Waay finally settled on Belize, in Central America. This time, shooting went ahead. The film was released in 1980.

Production

A major feature demands a small army of specialist departments. The main ones are sound, camera, lighting, art, make-up, hair and wardrobe, publicity and script.

On different films, different specialists acquire particular significance. Stanley Kubrick’s design department for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) had three production designers and an art director to oversee the sets. Close Encounters of a Third Kind (1977) needed 60 arc lights strung 80ft (24m) above the ground. Franklin Schaffner’s Sphinx (1981) needed dozens of live bars.

Direction has been compared to war – hours of mind-numbing boredom occasionally interrupted by moments of pure terror. One shot of a battle scene in a war movie may cost millions. Possibly the budget will not allow for a reshoot. Perhaps the director is contractually liable to repay costs that are over budget.

 A major source of stress for the director is that many of the people under him, or her, can make or break the film. This is particularly true of the cameraman. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) was crucially dependent on Vittorio Storaro’s ability to control anything up to ten cameras at once.

Since camera work is so important and so expensive, sound has come to take second place on the set. The sacrifice must be redeemed later, and dialogue is dubbed on after shooting.

The art department may have to solve demands like Franklin Schaffner’s for Sphinx: produce an Egyptian tomb with 800-900 jewellery artefacts. Jaws (1975) required a 25ft (7.6m) automatic shark.

Location managers have an equally vital role. For Apocalypse Now, Vietnam was re-created in the Philippines; but the difficulties drove an original budget of $13 million up to $31 million. Location managers can save costs by doing deals in North Africa or Eastern Europe, where studio and location costs may be under half those in America or Britain.

After shooting, the immense amount of film must all be carefully processed. The loss of any one of the hundreds of reels can be fatal for the movie. The potential for disaster is huge – in August 1978, masked men robbed a Boston studio of 15 unedited reels from the Brinks Job (1978), and demanded a ransom of $600,000 (the money was not paid; the film was edited without the reels; and it lost $9 million).

Creating special effects and stunts

Special effects are a particularly demanding area, in whichever country a film is made. Back in 1966, in One Million Years BC, the British special-effects man Les Bowie created the world in six days for £1200, using porridge for lava. But today’s special effects demand high technology. In 1988 a sequence showing asteroids in The Empire Strikes Back included 40 shots, some of them with up to 28 separate optical effects, involving 100 pieces of film.

Stunts have always been important to film makers. Stunting is a dangerous and highly paid occupation. In Highpoint (1984), Dar Robinson was paid $100,000 to leap off the 1851ft (553m) CN Tower in Toronto, breaking his fall with a ‘decelerated cable’. For Steel (1979), A.J. Bakunas jumped off a 350ft (107m) building into a huge air pad; his fall split the bag, and he was killed. Car crashes fires, fights, explosions – all demand their own skills, and have their own dangers.

One particularly controversial area is stunting with animals. In the first version of Ben Hur (1925), 100 horses were killed. As a result of this and other similar abuses, controls were tightened.

Post-production

Editing – in which a film is cut and then assembled ready for release – can also make or break a movie. Scenes will have been shot in many different ways to provide a wide choice. Stanley Kubrick shot over 200 miles (320km) of film for The Shining (1980), of which only about 1 per cent was used. A typical shooting ratio is between 10 and 20 to 1.

One vital element remains to be added: music. The American composer Bernard Herrmann once said: ‘Music is the connecting link between Celluloid and audience,’ completing the film’s psychological effect. It can only be written when editing is almost complete.

Because of the pressure of time, the composer usually works with assistants who fill out his musical sketches by writing the dozens of orchestral parts required. John Williams’ 90 minute score for Star Wars ran to 900 pages, written by him and four orchestrators.

After editing, another huge machine – promotion – swings into action: this involves advertising, printing and distribution. For Alien (1979), for instance, Fox spent over $18 million on so-called ‘overheads’ – $15 million on advertising and $3 million on prints for distribution to over 2000 cinemas.

Only then is a film ready for its audience. Only then will the army of people involved in its creation know whether they have in its creation known whether they have made a disaster or something magical.

One reason why up-front money is so huge and the negotiations so demanding is that studios are notoriously slow to pay any share of profits to the stars, writers, producers and directors. They refuse to declare a profit, setting income against ‘overheads’. Alien, which cost Twentieth Century-Fox $10.8 million, brought in almost $50 million in its first year (1979), and still Fox did not declare a profit.

A major reason for the ‘no-profit’ mentality is that films not only cost hugely and earn hugely – they lose hugely, and do so more frequently than they earn. In the 1980s only three out of seven major features made money – a remainder that the public’s taste in subject and stars is notoriously fickle.

No one dares predict success. Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981), the story of a dying cripple, was highly successful as a play. As a film, it flopped. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982), one of the most successful films ever, was turned down by every, major studio except Paramount Columbia researched ET (1982). Concluded there would be no audience, and turned it down.

Why? Because as scriptwriter William Goldman writes emphatically in his book Adventures in the Screen trade, the ‘single most important fact of the entire movie industry’ is:

‘NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING’

Anything that is, about what the audience will want next year. Despite the millions of dollars, the tons of scripts, the heart-stopping negotiations, the scrupulous technicalities, movie people do not really know how to make a movie work; they only know how particular movies have worked, and hope against hope that the future will be like the past.

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Feeding the athletes is another major responsibility of the Organizing Committees. At Montreal in 1976, for example, a staff of 1400 served over the 16 day Olympic period a total of 1135 tons of meat, fish and vegetables. It worked out as a daily average of 8lb (3.5kg) and 5200 calories per athlete – served in a 24 hour cafeteria larger than two football fields.

And at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, a team of 135 chefs prepared some 60,000 meals each day. The fresh food was delivered daily from more than 100 suppliers, and included an order for 45,000lb (20,400kg) of meat every day. Kosher food is prepared for Jewish contestants (in Rome in 1960 this was supervised by the city’s chief rabbi) – and Muslims look after the kitchens providing food for their fellow Muslims.

But the number of cooks (300 at the 1964 Tokyo Games, for instance, recruited from Japan’s top hotels) is greatly exceeded by the number of interpreter – guides needed for each Game. Almost 1000 interpreters, well-versed in sporting terms, attended the athletes in Tokyo. And by the time of the Seoul Olympics, 5000 interpreters were on hand. Their duties included acting as translators for the National Olympic Committees, the hundreds of assorted diplomats, and more than 1000 journalists. Over 30 languages were spoken – including the IOC’s two official languages: French and English.

In addition to this in 1988 almost 30,000 South Koreans volunteered to serve without pay as guides, ushers and ticket sellers. A thousand English-speaking inhabitants met foreign visitors at Seoul’s modern airport – many of whom became guests in the volunteers’ homes during the Games.

In whichever country the Games are held, the weather frequently plays a key role. In Los Angeles in 1984, for example, smog occasionally threatened to blot out one event or another; and in Helsinki, Finland, in 1952 – when the Soviet Union took part in the Olympics for the first time – the threat of cold and snow had to be taken into account. So at each Games an international team of meteorologists issues up to 20 bulletins a day. As a result of the forecasts, some of the events have to be hastily re-scheduled – usually to avoid gales, hail or rainstorms.

Equally important are the ‘sports bulletins’, or computerized results services, which flash out the Olympic results and times. In Tokyo’s vast National Stadium, for example, the electronic scoreboard was big enough to display up to 500 letters or numbers at once. And the timing device for the track events was timed to one-thousandth of a second.

But no matter how carefully the Games are planned, there is always something that goes wrong.

Montreal was a prime example. The main Olympic Stadium – in 1976 the world’s largest prefabricated structure – proved a major problem. First of all political quarrels, and the complexity of the design, delayed the start of fitting together the stadium’s 11,770 concrete pieces. Then three months of union strikes, slowdowns and walkouts – staged to gain substantial pay rises for the construction workers – brought work almost to a halt.

Blizzards and plunging temperatures – the wind-chill factor hit a low of -63  (-53 – intensified the holdups. Some of the 3550 workers had to fight wind gusts of up to 60mph (96km/h) and accidents cost the lives of at least 12 men. Because of all this, turf was still being laid in the stadium on the morning of the opening ceremony.

Once the various Games are over, the task of dismantling the villages, or converting them to other and profitable uses, begins. In Munich, for instance, the Olympic Village was originally divided into two sections: one for men and the other for women. Today the men’s section has been sold or rented out as living accommodation – and the women’s section is used as a students’ residential hall.

Mounting the Olympics is a highly expensive business – it cost $8000 million to put on the Moscow Games in 1980 and a ‘mere’ $850 million to stage the Seoul Games eight years later. Much of the money comes from the governments concerned, as well as from local businesses, and contributions from the cities’ residents.

Television rights

However, the rewards can be equally impressive. The Seoul Games made a record profit of almost $500 million – more than twice the profit made in Los Angeles in 1984. The bulk of the Seoul profit came from the sale of television rights – the USA alone paid $325 million.

The modern Olympics were inaugurated in Athens in 1896, when their founder, the French scholar and educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin, coined the slogan. ‘Not to win, but to take part’ – which is quoted at the opening ceremony of each Games.

The words of the late Avery Brundage are also recalled: ‘The Olympic Movement is a 20th-century religion. A religion with universal appeal which incorporates all the basic values of other religions. A modern, exciting, virile, dynamic religion!’

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Only cities – and not countries – can be candidates to host the Games. This is intended to eliminate, as much as possible, governmental influence.

Before the city is chosen, a National Olympic Committee (NOC) makes sure that the city is able to provide all the staff and facilities to stage the Games. And an Organizing Committee is appointed to plan and oversee the entire operation – and to report regularly to the IOC.

The staging of the Games inevitably involves improving, modernizing, and sometimes changing the face of the city concerned.

For the Tokyo Games in 1964, the world’s longest stretch of monorail was built from the city’s Haneda Airport to the specially built National Stadium. Super-highways, subways and miles of new sewers were rapidly built – and 22 dilapidated main arteries were designated ‘Olympic Roads’, and were widened.

There was a similar situation in Seoul, where in 19 months thousands of acres of rice fields were turned into a concrete mini-metropolis containing the Olympic Park and Village. The work included a new air terminal, an access road, the Olympic Drive, and flats and temporary homes for 35,000 athletes, journalists – Press, radio and television – and officials. In addition, 200,000 visitors had to be housed in hotels or apartments. Private developers seized the opportunity to build 178 luxury high-rise apartment blocks near the two main Olympic centres. The apartments were put on sale for up to the equivalent of £90,000 each and were snapped up by their new owners – who rented them out for the Games and moved in afterwards.

Living space was at a premium during the 1960 Rome Olympics, when the Olympic Village was built on a 74 acre (30 hectare) site near a bend of the Tiber. It included a 4500-room apartment development designed to house 8000 athletes.

However, many of the 100,000 visitors to the Rome Games – who arrived at the newly built airport of Fiumincino at the rate of 6000 a day – were not as fortunate. They had to sleep in convents, monasteries and school dormitories, and camp out in the city parks and green spots. One camping place was even set up in the grounds of the Emperor Hadrian’s villa in the nearby hill town of Tivoli.

But the Olympic villages consist of more than just sleeping quarters and training facilities. There are also beauty parlours, cinemas, discotheques, boutiques, post offices, churches and cobblers’ shops – which do a brisk trade in repairing the athletes’ running shoes.

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On the morning of September 6, 1972, Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee, addressed 75,000 mourners gathered in the previous day eight Palestinian terrorists had broken into the Olympic Village, taking hostages, but all nine were killed in a gunfight in which five of the terrorists were shot dead.

For the next 34 hours the Games were suspended and their fate hung in the balance. Then, at an open-air memorial ceremony watched on television by an estimated 1000 million people throughout the world, 84-year-old Avery Brundage, a former American track star and sports administrator, stated: ‘The Games must go on – and we must continue our efforts to make them clean, pure and honest and try to extend the sportsmanship of the athletic field into other areas.’

If it had not been for Avery Brundage’s determination, the 1972 Olympic Games might have been abandoned – and the future of the Olympics jeopardized. It takes a full six years to plan and organize the Games – and preparations were already underway for the next Olympics – in Montreal, Canada, in 1976.

By then the Irish peer Lord Killanin was the president of the International Olympic Committee, and he later recorded: ‘The horror of the assassinations in the Olympic Village in Munich changed the whole concept of security, which, as a result, took a very high priority in the Montreal Games…’

The number of armed troops and policemen outnumbered the 6189 athletes and set the pattern for future Games – such as those in Seoul, South Korea, in 1988, when in the weeks leading up to the Games the 100,000-strong security and anti-terrorist forces had to deal with bands of rioting students demanding political freedoms.

In terms of competitors, the Seoul Games were the biggest so far – with more than 9400 men and women representing 160 countries, competing in 237 events covering 23 different sports. Like all the modern Olympics, the event was run by the International Olympic Committee (the IOC) based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC, the guardian of the Olympic ideals, chooses where the Games will be held and decides which sports will be included.

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The QE2’s nerve centre is the bridge, high up on Signal Deck. For security reasons, there is only one staircase leading up to the bridge – and only one entrance door, which can be opened only from the inside. The bridge bristles with the latest navigational equipment, including automatic steering. However, the wheel is still regularly used when there is a heavy traffic, or whenever the liner is leaving or entering port. In addition, there is a collision avoidance system, which can show the course, speed and direction of up to 20 ships at a time. There is also a satellite navigator, the first to be fitted to a passenger ship, which is linked to various satellites orbiting the Earth. It plots the QE2’s position at intervals of from 35 to 100 minutes. The readings are accurate to within 110yds (100m).

As the ship’s control headquarters, the bridge is in close communication with the engine room – by direct-link telephone – and other key areas. To cut errors and misunderstandings to a minimum, important orders are given to the engine room by means of a panel of labelled buttons. So when one of the buttons is pressed on the bridge, the equivalent button in the engine room’s main control section lights up – and the engineer knows exactly what is required of him. Even so, the engines can also be controlled directly from the bridge.

The crew includes six girl dancers, and everyone, from the captain downwards, receives a regular check-up. Anyone who is overweight is sent ashore until the excess weight has been shed.

The liner’s hospital is situated midships near the water line, where the movement of the 963ft (292m) long ship is hardly noticeable. The hospital is staffed by two doctors, three sisters and three medical attendants, who can deal with anything from dental work to removing an appendix in the fully equipped operating theatre.

As night begins to fall over Southampton the passengers have all boarded the liner – and everything is ready for yet another crossing. So at 8pm the Queen Elizabeth 2 steams majestically out of port and heads for the Atlantic.

Wining and dining

For the crew, there are busy hours ahead. The waiters – at least two at every nine passengers – get ready to serve dinner in the ship’s four restaurants.

The a la carte menu is crammed with delicacies such as smoked salmon, caviar, lobsters and oysters – as well as cordon bleu creations of beef, lamb and poultry. By the time they reach New York the waiters will have served up some 12,500lb (5650kg) of beef, 11,000lb (5000kg) of fresh fruit, 750lb (340kg) of lobster, 50lb (22kg) of  de foie gras – and brought in about 4800 jars of jam and marmalade and 100 bottles of sauces and pickles.

In addition, they and the barmen will have uncorked 600 bottles of assorted wines and 500 bottles of champagne – and opened 500 bottles of whisky, 300 bottles of gin and 120 bottles of brandy. In the bars themselves, the staff will have poured 6000 bottles of beer and 3000 gallons (13,650 litres) of draught beer.

Altogether, some 25,000 items of glassware will have been used and washed, as well as 32,000 items of crockery, 18,000 items of cutlery, and almost 3000 tablecloths will have been laundered and laid.

After dinner, the ship’s 60 entertainers – musicians, croupiers, dancers and singers – provide the passengers with a wide-ranging choice of amusements.

The night life does not end until dawn – shortly before the first sitting for breakfast, stewards and stewardesses offer the luxury of breakfast served in bed.

Whatever the hour, in whichever part of the ship, there is always work for the crew to perform.

From the bridge – manned around the clock – to the darkroom – where overnight the photographer develops pictures taken as functions such as the Captain’s Cocktail Party – the bustle builds up again as another day abroad the world’s most regal liner gets under way.

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The early afternoon sun streams down on the port of Southampton as gangs of dockers start to load fresh food and supplies abroad the Queen Elizabeth 2 – the flagship of the Cunard Line and the only passenger ship to regularly cross the Atlantic. The liner docked at 1pm – and she will set out on the return voyage to New York seven hours later.

There is no time to be lost, and most of the supplies – including fruit and vegetable, tinned and frozen foods, and deep-frozen meat and fish – are carried on conveyor belts up four narrow gangways.

Meanwhile, most of the wines, spirits and soft drinks, packed into metal containers, are lifted gently abroad by crane. And 6000 gallons (27,300 litres) of draught beer are pumped straight from tankers parked at the quaysides into huge stainless-steel tanks – which are linked by pipe to the  seven duty-free bars.

The food and drink will suffice for the five-day transatlantic crossing. By 7pm the supplies have been loaded; the cleaners have vacuumed the equivalent of 142 tennis courts of carpeting; the 1000 crew members are at their stations; the most of the 1800 or so passengers have arrived. They are greeted by a jazz band playing popular tunes from the latest hit shows, and are directed to their cabins by almost 80 stewards and stewardess.

Everything has been arranged for the passengers’ enjoyment and comfort – from saunas and Jacuzzis to feature films and a computer centre where they can learn ‘new skills’, such as how to operate word processors.

Each of the ten passenger decks has its own pantries (combinations of kitchens and storerooms), and these allow the stewards and stewardesses to prepare and serve anything from early morning cups of tea and coffee to elaborate late-night suppers.

Once at sea, the 14 bakers start their long working day in the three main kitchen at 5am and begin to prepare the 3000 or more rolls, croissants and Danish pastries served at breakfast. At the same time, the ship’s confectioners make the 6000 pieces of cake needed for afternoon tea and the 5000 petits fours for the evening buffet.

At 7am the first chefs arrive to prepare the ingredients for the day’s soups and stews – amounting to almost 3500 pints (2000 litres). The 75 all-male chefs – including a special kosher cook in his own kitchen – start work on the 2800 lunches and dinners as most of the passengers are finishing breakfast.

The 60 or so young cooks regularly work for up to 12 hours a day in the hot, windowless kitchens. They frequently feel homesick and tired – and occasionally some of them quit on docking at Southampton or New York. For most of them, however, it is a valuable way of gaining work experience and of seeing the world.

Hundreds of food items are kept in the storerooms, and vast meat safes stretch almost the width of the ship – 105ft (32m). Inside, the temperature of 14  (-10 ) could kill anyone trapped there for more than 12 hours. To avoid any such accident, there is an alarm bell inside each meat safe in case the doors are shut by mistake.

Farther along from the storerooms, the  giant machinery is housed in the engine room – actually several enormous high-ceilinged areas, two decks deep. The nine engines themselves are each the size of a double-decker bus. They generate 130,000hp and can slow the ship down from a top speed of 32 ½ knots (60km/h) to standstill in 3 minutes and 39 seconds – over a distance of about 1 ¼ miles (2km).

The engine room also contains a water-purification plant which takes sea water on board and purifies it for drinking. The plant processes about 480 tons of water a day – enough to fill seven swimming pools the size of those on the ship. In addition, four vacuum evaporates produce 250 tons of water each day. Checking the various water tanks – which are at the very bottom of the vessel – is the responsibility of the ship’s carpenters. Some of the tanks are there to help keep the ship properly balanced; others hold the drinking water and water used for washing the laundry.

If, for any reason, more water is used from a tank on one side of the ship than on the other, the vessel will begin to list. To correct this, extra water is quickly pumped into the depleted tank.

In a small room above the engines another team of professionals – the printers – play their role in the daily life of the liner. Late each night a printed programme of the following day’s events – ranging from children’s parties to clay-pigeon shooting – is delivered to each passenger cabin. Early each morning newsletters are delivered to the cabins containing news from around the world, which is transmitted by satellite to the ship each day.

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As 1am nears on a sultry Hong Kong morning, most of the 1000 or so guests of the Hilton hotel have retired. The hotel’s seven restaurants and two bars are closed. Shopping arcade, sauna, gymnasium, tennis courts and swimming pool are deserted. Staff in the administrative departments-buying, sales, accounts, personnel – have long since gone off duty.

In the front office, where staffs of up to 75 are busy during the day, only night clerks and a handful of receptionists remain. Lights in public rooms and corridors are dimmed. Yet great hotels never sleep. And the organized frenzy of yesterday merely yields to a brief night of preparation for tomorrow.

So it is at the Hilton, a 25-storey, glass-and-concrete tower perched beneath Victoria Peak. While most of the 1250 staff – from the general manager downwards – takes their rest, the 50-odd night workers prepare the hotel for the coming day.

This is the side of hotel life that the guests do not see.

1am-7am: kitchens and cleaners

In the kitchens, where some 3750 meals must be prepared in the next 24 hours, the baking of bread and pastry for breakfast has been under way since midnight. Altogether, almost 550 people work at preparing and serving the hotel’s food and drink.

The overnight cleaning team is washing and scouring kitchen equipment and polishing the breakfast silver. Room-service employees are preparing overnight orders, and standing by for the occasional insomniac’s call for a headache pill, a glass of Bourbon, or a full, five-course dinner for him and his friends.

In the basement, the engineering team which maintains the hotel’s life-support systems – air-conditioning, refrigeration, light and power, hot water – is well into its night shift. Altogether about 180,000 gallons (819,000 litres) of water are used on a peak day. And some 4 ½ tons of rubbish awaits daily collection.

In the housekeeper’s department the last supply baskets containing changes of bed linen and towels for the guest rooms are being filled.

Bell service – the 43-strong network of porters and bellhops – has checked its records of departures and arrivals. Morning newspapers are put out for room deliveries, and notices of the day’s events in the hotel are posted in the main lobby.

The floor staffs clean the public areas and arrange the rooms needed for early morning functions, such as working breakfasts and business meetings.

7am-9am: action stations

The hotel is wide awake – and so are many of the guests, eager for breakfast and a new day. The kitchen is in full swing. Pastry baked overnight has been set out, and room orders are fulfilled.

In the front office, the tired night clerks give way to the day staff. Check-ins and check-outs are organized, rooms assigned, mail distributed. Bookings are taken, arrival and departure times verified.

Stewards make certain that public rooms have been cleaned properly. Night attendants on the housekeeping staff hand over to their daytime counterparts, and the cleaning and replenishment of the 750 bedrooms begins.

The night engineering shift gives way to the morning shift, with a list of maintenance work to be tackled. The change is marked by adjusting the public-address system from its soft, night-time volume to the level needed to be heard above the noise of the day.

9am-noon: the administrators arrive

As the bustle of early morning departures begins to ebb, and the last leisurely breakfasts are being eaten and cleared, the hotel’s backroom administration start work.

In the buying department, staff starts to run a last-minute stock check to ensure they have all the food and drink needed for that day. This included 3250 eggs, 700lb (316kg) of meat, 145lb (68kg) of fish, 200 bottles of wine, 70 bottles of spirits, 790 bottles and cans of beer, and various other items – including almost 1200 flower arrangements for the various rooms. But for most of their time the staffs are planning at least 24 hours ahead.

Accounts clerks take their places behind calculators and computers to scrutinise and control the hotel’s finances. Personnel staff prepare for a day that may include hiring or firing, or simply looking after the job welfare of employees.

Sales executives meet to develop strategy and tactics for marketing the hotel and its facilities – not only the overnight accommodation, but its resources for exhibitions, conferences, receptions and banquets. Complementing their work and five-strong public-relations team develops its themes for keeping the hotel in the public eye.

Meanwhile, the 62 engineers make their daily full inspection of the hotel, carrying out routine maintenance and repair, as well as checking the swimming pool and the equipment in the health club – where a staff of eight looks after the sauna, steam bath and massage facilities. The chief steward puts the final touches to arrangements for the day’s special functions – for example, a local firm’s lunch.

In the shopping arcade, the 60 or so shops, drugstore and beauty parlour – with its staff of six – are open for business.

Just off the ground-floor lobby the Business Centre has also opened its doors. It can provide secretarial help, cable, facsimile, 24 hour telex, photocopying, worldwide courier services and a business reference library.

Noon-3pm: time for lunch

In the kitchens, the last breakfast remains have been cleared away. Preparations for lunch for some 1500 people are well-advanced through replenishments for the buffets will be needed at 1pm. In the restaurants, tables are laid and reservations checked. In all, about 200 cooks, waiters and dishwashers will be involved in preparing, serving and clearing-up the meal. Meanwhile, room service prepares trolleys and trays for guests who prefer to eat in their rooms, and organizes fresh supplies for fruit baskets in the bedrooms.

At the front office, new guests are being checked in. the 30 bellboys deliver incoming luggage and usher guests to their rooms, opening the doors with computerized security cards rather than the traditional keys, which can be stolen and copied.

3pm-6pm: afternoon tea

As the restaurants and bars empty, guests on the Executive Floors take afternoon tea, housekeepers replenish ice-buckets in the bedrooms, waiters and barmen prepare for evening opening time and in the kitchen, and dinner is well under way.

Once a week, around 3pm, the afternoon shift of engineers tests the fire alarm, the guests’ lifts and the public-area cleaners will have completed their tidying up.

Meanwhile, front-office clerks check the daily reports from the housekeepers’ department – after food and beverages, the second biggest in the hotel, with 217 employees. So any irregularities in the guest rooms are quickly dealt with by the floor staff. The hotel laundry, which washes, among other things, 10,000 towels and 500 shirts a day, gets ready to close.

6pm-8pm: cocktail hour

For most of the administrative staff, the working day ends around six, just as most guests begin to think about cocktails and dinner.

In the bars, the Hilton’s 17 security guards discreetly step up their floor patrols. They are on the lookout for bar girls, known as suspected criminals, pick-pockets, conmen and crooks who impersonate members of hotel staff.

8pm-midnight: dinner is served

Most of the 1500 guests and visitors dinning in the hotel are eating their meals. In the Eagle’s Nest restaurant, on the 25th floor, the orchestra is starting its four-hour stint. In the kitchen, food for the next day is already being ordered amid the bustle.

In the front office, clerks prepare registration cards for the next day. By 11pm, they will have drawn up and printed tomorrow’s arrivals list.

Midnight: the working night begins

The wind-down from the day has started. It is signaled almost surreptitiously by the engineers, who switch the background music and radios to their quieter night-time level. In the early closing restaurants, tables are being laid for tomorrow’s breakfast, as they are in the kitchens.

The hotel gradually adjusts to its small-hours mode as the guests go to bed. Room-service staff collects door-order menus for breakfast. A group of the hotel’s 90 accounts staff tots up the previous day’s takings of some HK$1.2 million (US$154,000). Another night of preparation is under way.

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The problems of arranging for new supplies are formidable, as a US military exercise, Reforger 87, showed in September 1987.

The exercise involved the largest movement overseas of US Army forces in peacetime. The 35,000 men of III Armored Corps based at Fort Hood, Texas, were to be sent to West Germany, as if they were reinforcing their Allied colleagues at the outbreak of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

The troops and all their equipment were scattered over 30 American states in active and reserve units. The troops were flown or driven to the US airfields, and then all 35,000 men were flown to airfields in Europe. They were then taken by road and rail either to depots where they were supplied with NATO equipment, or to ports where they received heavy equipment that had been brought by ship across the Atlantic.

It takes four days longer to carry equipment across the Atlantic by sea in fast merchantmen than by air, so pre-positioned NATO equipment was essential for the first troops.

The Corps then moved to its staging area near Munster and Osnabruck. From there, two days later, each of the two divisions and supporting bridges moved to a tactical assembly area nearby for refueling and re-provisioning (in war, this would also include new supplies of ammunition). From the time they were called up to the time they were in their fighting positions took no more than a week.

Today’s armies are ever more complex, and the need for speed over increasing. Computers can pass on requests instantaneously. Urgent supplies can be flown in by helicopter or STOL (short-take-off-and-landing) transports. In a future war, supertankers, nuclear-powered merchantmen, cargo-submarines and even airships could augment conventional air and sea supplies.

Strategically, though, nothing has changed. However powerful the cutting edge of infantry, armour, artillery and air power may be, once the food, ammunition and fuel runs low, the forward forces are useless. As Marshal Rokossovsky, the famed Soviet tank commander in the Second World War, said: ‘It’s not the troops’ job to think of the rear, but the rear’s job to think of the troops.’

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from January to May 1942, 5500 German troops were isolated near the town of Kholm, between Moscow and Leningrad, cut off by the Russian Army. It was the worst winter for a century. At – 22ºF  (-30ºC) , THE German soldiers, frost-bitten and lice-ridden, huddled in their foxholes in the frozen ground, praying for relief.

Suddenly they heard the distant murmur of engines, which rose to a roar as 20 Junkers Ju-52 transports, escorted by two squadrons of Messerschmitt fighters, swept overhead. The sky filled with scores of parachutes falling with crates of food, ammunition and medical supplies.

For more than three months the air-drops continued, enabling the beleaguered Germans to hold off the Red Army’s repeated assaults. On May 5, German tanks managed to batter their way through to the besieged troops from the west. The Kholm Pocket had survived, thanks to good logistic support.

Logistics – the ability to supply a fighting force with food, ammunition and equipment – has always been an essential element in the art of war. And in modern warfare, successful attack or defence depends more than ever on continuous and rapid re-supply.

A modern heavy division of about 16,000 men and 1000 armoured vehicles engaged in combat will use at least 5000 tons of ammunition and 2700 tons of fuel every day. In Vietnam, by late 1968, the Americans were supplying more than 1,300,000 men, including South Vietnamese and troops of other nations. An average of 760,000 tons of supplies arrived, mainly by sea, each month.

Without this logistic lifeblood, an army dies. Napoleon’s adage that ‘an army marches on its stomach’ is as true now as it ever was. The inability of the Red Army to ever was. The inability of the Red Army to withstand Hitler’s invasion in 1941 was partly due to its inadequate supply system. Front-line troops had to fetch their own supplies from depots in the rear. Stalin ended that system in June 1943.

The Japanese failed to take Imphal and Kohima, on the Indo-Burmese border, in 1944 partly because they did not have the supplies. When the British and Indians advanced, they found starved Japanese corpses with grass in their mouths.

Picture Credit : Google