Scoping out Puerto de Santa Maria (el Puerto)

Last Thursday, I spent four hours walking around Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz (more commonly known around here as "el Puerto"), scoping out one of the scenes we'll film in order to make Domino long enough for PBS.  It was a lovely day, I enjoy boats and water, and I had a great time.

Plus I came away with many ideas...enough ideas so that the following day, I wrote a rough draft of the scene to add to my movie script.

These two trees are one of the locations where I want us to shoot.

The scene will have two actors.  One will be Juan, the son of our hero, Luis.  The other will be Ana, Juan's girlfriend and fiancée.  Ana lives in el Puerto, which is why we will be filming there.  The fact that el Puerto is very lovely is another reason we´ll be filming there.

The scene will consist of a conversation the two have as they are walking along near the river.  The river opens up into the Bay of Cádiz just a short ways beyond el Puerto, and el Puerto is a port for fishing boats.

In the conversation, we´ll learn a lot about Ana´s character, and the situation the two find themselves in, especially with respect to Juan´s family and the effect their wedding is likely to have on the family´s financial situation.

As I was wandering around, I happened to wander into the local yacht club.  No one noticed that a non-member had walked in, and I didn´t realize until I was well inside that maybe this was a private club.  That has given me another idea, which I´ll think about over the weekend, and if I still like it on Monday, I´ll call the club´s manager and ask for permission to shoot there as well as in the other, public locations.

Yacht club with private sailboats in the background.

Our biggest problem now with  this scene is finding the right Ana.  We have a Juan, although there is some consideration of using someone else.  Antonio de la Malena, my right-hand man in this production, is in Italy but he´ll be back in a couple of weeks.

Small fishing boat for sale--the economy affects fishermen, too.

That leaves one other actual problem to solve:  the wind.  I´m hoping my alternate sound person (who has lots of experience and good microphones) is up to it.

We shall see.

OUR NEXT POST will be more about the new scenes.

Antonio de la Malena's upcoming CD

You might well be interested in learning that our star, Antonio de la Malena, is about to come out with a CD of flamenco cante (singing).  It's title will be Para ti mi cante, que es mi libertad (My song is for you, my song is my freedom.)  Palomino Productions is producing it jointly with a Spanish company, Jerez Puro, a flamenco performance company that tours all over the world and that also has dance academies all over the world.

Antonio de la Malena, a singer known the world over.  He has toured throughout Europe, Asia, and North America.  He has sung in Egypt.  He has been to almost every place where flamenco is loved.  This will be his first, purely flamenco CD.  He has two other CDs to his name, but they are not flamenco cante.

Antonio de la Malena.  (photo:  Martin Guerrero and Casa Patas)

We recorded this back in October, before I left for California, and planned to have it out in February.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men.

Turns out Antonio sang a bit too much.  First of all, he recorded another 5 cantes while I was in California.  Next, when he starts singing, he sings, and sings, and sings...and some of the cantes are over 10 minutes long.

Since it's important (says everyone who "knows") that a CD have 10 tracks on it, well, multiply 10 by 10 and you get a lot more minutes than any standard CD is going to hold.

el Bob (palmero), Antonio de la Malena, Manuel Parilla (guitarist), etc.

So we trimmed and trimmed, and cut and cut, and even with only 9 tracks it was STILL too long.  Plus some of what we cut was very dear to Antonio's heart, leaving him feeling like the prospective CD would not be what he wanted.

Solution?  Well, at the present time, we've just about decided to put two CDs into one package.  This has led Antonio to decide that he needs to record some more.  I have told him he MUST NOT go over the now 2-CD limit this time.

Bottom line, since he leaves town tomorrow for France and then Italy, is that we THINK we'll get this finished by the end of spring.  One way or another, I promise it's going to be good.  So hold onto your hats.

Bulerias fin de fiesta.  Right, standing=Antonio de la Malena

The final number on the set of two CDs will be the traditional "fin de fiesta" (ending party) bulerias.  For this, Antonio invited not only his older brother, the cantaor Manuel de Malena, and another six or seven people to join in.  They each take turns singing, with Antonio singing first and also ending the session.  There is no guitar accompaniment.  It's performed as if they were, indeed, all at a party together and simply enjoying themselves.

And again, you'll find it at www.AntonioMalenaCD-ENG.com, or if you're in Europe, at www.AntonioMalenaCD.com.

OUR NEXT POST will be about scoping out "el Puerto" (Puerto de Santa Maria).

Some thanks are due here-part 3-the pawn/jewelry shop

This is to express out thanks to Joyeria Juncal, where we filmed the scene in which Luis pawns a ring. 

Joyeria Juncal, located in the Madre de Dios area of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, is both a jewelry shop and a pawn shop.  That is to say, they sell fine jewelry and watches, but they also purchase gold.  The owner of the shop, Francisco Juncal, kindly allowed us to film there free of charge, and his father (the elder Francisco Juncal, who is the shop's founder) played the part of... the shop owner.

Being that he knew exactly what he was doing, he had all the correct materials for evaluating the gold in the ring, and giving a price for it.

Francisco (Paco) Juncal, father...with our hero.

 Before shooting this scene, I didn't know anything about how gold is evaluated.  I now know that to assess it for the base of 18 carats, you use a pretty bottle with some bluish-greenish colored liquid.  You also scrape the gold on something that I presume is especially hard sand paper.  At least, that's what it seemed to be.

After scraping it, you apply the liquid.  If the tiny pieces of metal that you scrapped off stay there and don't float away, you have what is a minimum of 18 carats of gold.  (Unless I got it backwards, and you WANT them to float away in order to be sure it's gold.  I think I'm not quite ready to work in a pawn shop.)

Yours truly and Antonio Moreno Jimenez, our sound tech.  Yes, WE WERE THERE.

 Francisco Juncal the elder, who played the pawn shop owner, also wore a nice, bright orange sweater which worked well with our hero, Luis', dark jacket.  Our hero, Luis, has a tendency to wear dark jackets.  That's because Antonio de la Malena, the actor, evidently has a wardrobe full of dark jackets.  Brightly colored neck scarves but dark, dark jackets.

And our hero, Luis (Antonio de la Malena).

 OUR NEXT POST will really, really be about hair (I think).