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.