Shooting in southern Spain-part 1

Working as an independent filmmaker and shooting a film or video in Spain is not exactly like shooting in the United States.  In the United States, punctuality is considered almost sacred (unless you are a very big star, and even if you are, you STILL have to show up pretty close to shooting time).   And both cast and crew have to STAY on the set until the production day is over.

Plus there is a lot more attention paid to sticking to the script.

Following the clock is not always a priority in Spain.

In Spain, well, time concepts are different.  First of all, in southern Spain (Andalucia), asking someone to show up before 10am is not looked on with favor.  And if you plan to shoot all day, you'd better have lunch brought in or you may lose your actors and crew to "just one more beer."

We generally start our shooting day at 9am.  This sometimes means LOTS of cell phone calls at 9:10am to find out where your missing people are.  But after a while, they do start to get the picture.

Even more disturbing to a director, if an actor or crew member finds that something really important has come up, s/he just might leave before shooting is over, perhaps telling the director the night before or perhaps simply leaving.

An actor and two crew members.

  I have had to tell certain people that in my next production, I will not use X since on one occasion, X walked off the set without a word to me and in addition, X is routinely 15 minutes late for the start of the shooting day.  I don't even want to continue using X for the Domino production, but we're nearly through, other crew members are closely related to X, and X's role isn't all that important so I've been able to eliminate X's role in certain scenes.

Now, improvisation:  in Spain, or at least in Jerez (where that very improvisational art form, flamenco, has so much influence), improvisation is highly respected.  It's considered an element of good art.  Sticking with the script, well, "won't it be fresher and more natural if I just put it in my own words?"

The answer to that one as far as I'm concerned is that improvisation makes the job of the editor much more difficult.  In addition, if you improvise, you run the risk of losing essential ideas that are in the script.  And finally, I wrote the doggone script and I'm proud of it.

At work.  Our fearless director is to the right.

Plus sometimes people call for improvisation because they didn't get around to memorizing their lines.  I remember one occasion when a person who is a professional actor had spent so little time with his lines that we had to do 24 takes of one fairly small scene.  No fun.

But after all is said and done, I DO like some improvisation.  Yes, it CAN make things fresher and I am not the only one who has good ideas.  So I try to listen to suggestions, and to allow improvisation and even build in some places where flexibility will rule.

And I am in the happy position of being surrounded by lots of very, very talented people.  Makes the shooting fun, in spite of occasional frustrations.
 
OUR NEXT BLOG will be about a few more peculiarities of shooting in Spain.