Spring Break is often thought of as a rite of passage for many young people. College students usually come home with at least a little different perspective on life from their experiences. “I knew before I went on the trip that I would have to deal with some things when I got home,” explains cast member Alan. “I knew I’d come back a different person.”

“The house is beautiful,” enthused fellow cast member Paul. “They set us up in a mansion. I feel like a king or a prince. We’re in this phat house with a pool table and chess and a stocked bar and everything is free, including the liquor. I usually don’t drink much, but I think I might this week.”

During their first dinner together at the Baccara Hotel, the cast was introduced to Jay and Chris, the Sun Splash tour operators who led the cast activities throughout the week and helped to spark much of the fun. Being that the crew could not communicate with the cast while filming, the Sun Splash guides also worked as liaisons between the cast and producers.

Although a rough blueprint of daily activities was drawn up in advance, the producers encouraged cast members to give their input about the planned schedule. For instance, if the cast didn’t feel like going to a club one night they would change their schedule accordingly. While in production the cast had access to a phone dubbed the “Bat Phone,” which rang into the control room and let the cast members speak to the producers about any concerns or questions they had. Any time a cast member wanted to leave the house, they were required to call on the “Bat Phone” so production knew where they were at all times.

Each morning, all crew members received a memo called “About Last Night,” which provided a quick re-cap of the previous night’s highlights from the cast members (including what was said, where people went, who did what with who, etc.). This allowed the crew to catch up and keep an eye out for and document any progression in the story from the previous evening.

The production side of the hotel consisted of two editing rooms, a story editor room, sound storage and the control room. The control room, which was staffed and operated 24 hours a day, was set up with 44 monitors that let the production team see inside every room. In addition, there were three larger monitors that were connected to each hand-held camera. Sound in any room could be brought up in the control room in order to hear conversations. The control room let the producers and story editors be the eyes and ears of the camera crews as they moved though the hotel. If the producers saw or heard something exciting taking place in one of the rooms via monitor they could radio the location to one of the camera crews to move in for a closer look. “It is like watching 44 different soap operas at once,” explains producer Jamie Schutz.

The role of the story editor is crucial to the “reality” process. While narrative feature films start with a script, a reality-based film works in reverse – scenes are shot first then the story is created through editing and writing. Story editors track storylines and characters and report back to the editors, giving them directions in which to edit the film. Each of the six camera crews had one story editor in charge of tracking conversations and actions that took place among the cast while shooting. Every morning during the 9-day shoot, all the story editors would meet with supervising story editor, Eric Monsky, to analyze what had occurred among the cast members and tag developing storylines. With a 500 to 1 shooting ratio, the story editors had the complicated job of filtering through, cutting down and shaping the 500 hours of footage into a 90-minute feature film.

One challenge on an intense shoot like this is audio. In shooting 24-hours a day, the producers want to make sure they can hear all 16 cast members at all times. In doing so the cast would wear portable microphones but being so close to the beach caused a challenge. “In shooting around the clock we also had to mic them around the clock,” explains Rick De Oliveira. “When they are going out and wear a bathing suit – can we hide the mic and boom them? When they are going to sleep we have to ask – are they really going to sleep or should we keep the mic on them? We have seven audio experts available at all times that have to decipher what’s real and what’s bull because sometimes they want to take the mic off so they can talk for an hour and that doesn’t help us. We always had to stay one step ahead of them.”

Remarkably, considering the unscripted nature of the film and being surrounded by the craziness of Spring Break, the shoot experienced very few hitches (save for the occasional thunder shower) and Cancun proved to be a very accommodating backdrop. The cast members immersed themselves in their surroundings and quickly grew at ease with the constant presence of the cameras. Helping to lend an almost epic backdrop were the thousands of everyday Spring Breakers who became willing “extras” in the film. The experience was so exhilarating for the cast members that by the time filming wrapped on March 23rd, 2003, many of them weren’t ready for it to have come to an end so soon.

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