Shooting in southern Spain-part 2

Shooting a film/video in Spain has its peculiarities but it's certainly not an impossible location.  And there is LOTS of local color. 

One requirement of film making is finding a good location in which to shoot.  This can be a challenge no matter where you are, especially for the independent filmmaker with a limited budget.  That's one of the reasons why the big boys, at least in the old days, would build sets.  You don't have to worry about light coming in in the wrong place or, even worse, not having enough light (and so having to rent expensive equipment, find enough electricity to power all that equipment, and so forth).

In addition, if you're working on a set, you don't have to worry about the guys down the street starting their construction project on the day you were to shoot your most important scene.  You don't have to worry about pedestrians walking through the set or, more often, a car driving by at the wrong moment.

For part of this scene, we simply stopped traffic.

Now, a lot of people would say if you're shooting a street scene, a car driving by is natural and why not include it?  Well, you may want to have a car drive by but if it isn't carefully planned, it's a nightmare when it comes to editing and you just might have to reshoot an entire scene because of the wrong car passing at the wrong time.  Trust me on this one.

In Spain, finding a good location isn't really any harder or easier than in any other places I've been.  But one peculiarity of Spain is that it's much more normal to "borrow" a location, meaning that someone will suggest a place where his/her friend works, or which his/her friend owns, and you can shoot there for free, within limitations but taking into account your own necessities.

In the case of Domino, we haven't had to pay for any location at all, not even the "bank."  I like that.

The offices upstairs are where we filmed the bank scenes.

In the United States, this kind of helping hand is normal for a documentary, but much less common in the case of a dramatic narrative.  I guess people assume if you can pay for actors and a crew, you can pay for a location.  They don't realize you've already gone broke paying for the actors and crew.

And on the subject of costs and favors, in Spain I've even had the nearby lamp shop lend me light bulbs and lamp shades.  Plus within limits, some actors and crew are willing to let you pay them later, "when you start making a profit" (ha, ha, ha).  This is also the case in the U.S., especially if the people happen to be your friends;  or the friends of your lead actor, for example. 

El Baratillo is the lamp shop that lent us light bulbs and lamp shades.

With the current economic situation in Spain, however, where over 8,000 families in Jerez have been evicted from their homes for inability to pay their mortgage;  where the unemployment rate for people 30 and under is supposed to be more than 50%, and so forth--I really don't like to ask this of people.

But I have been willing to let people work for me for less that we'd anticipated.  I've got my limits, too.

The last thing I want to mention about working in Spain is the problem of noise.  You have that problem everywhere, and it is a sticky one, but in Spain with all the stone and with the narrow streets, you get an awful lot of echo that you don't in a place like the United States.

In general, working in Spain has its peculiarities but it's certainly not an impossible location.  And there is LOTS of local color.

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.

The Gypsy/Gitano question

Since nearly half of "Domino's" principal actors (including our star), and about half of the crew, are Spanish Gypsies (Gitanos), I thought it might be of interest to talk a little about the topic.

Gitanos have been in Spain for over 500 years. They are proud of their culture.  It is thought that as a race, they originated in north western India.

In addition to being Gitano, they are Spaniards, and make up 10%-15% of Spain's population.  Most of the remaining Spaniards are Castillanos, although in recent years when the economic bubble was in full force, many thousands of immigrants entered the country to work--lots of Latin Americans (especially people from Ecuador), as well as Senegalese, huge numbers of Moroccans, and others (including some Japanese).

Domino's cast & crew are divided between Gitano and Castillano.

Although Gitanos have been part of Spain's population for such a long time, in most regions of Spain they are discriminated against and many Castillanos actively dislike them as a group.  Racism?  Yes, indeed.

The city where I hang out (Jerez de la Frontera) is one of the very, very, very few that has a reputation for actually "accepting" its Gitano population.  This, it has been surmised, is partly because they were a very important part of the labor force for the vineyards which up until about 30 years ago were a mainstay of Jerez' economy.  (Jerez is a wine-making town).  More recently, Gitanos have brought in a lot of money for the city because of their participation in flamenco, which in Jerez is big business.

Literally thousands of foreigners and locals come to see flamenco in this and other theaters.

To give only one illustration of the general racism, a friend of mine who is Gitano was recently interviewed about his origins.  He brought out his whole family (father, sisters, children and grandchildren) for a family photo to illustrate this story.  He talked a bit about the origins of Gitanos and the specific origins of his family, and then went on to say a great deal about how proud and happy they were to be part of Jerez.

The story and photo were published in the daily newspapers of three nearby cities.  On-line response in Jerez was divided.  About half said nice things about my friend, his family, and Gitanos in general.  The other half were scurrilous.

Bar Gitaneria, where we filmed a scene, is Gitano owned.

On the other hand, on-line responses from the other two cities (27 responses within the first 24 hours in the case of one city) were really nasty:  Gitanos "don't belong here," "they" should go back to wherever they came from, "they" don't follow our laws, "they" are the dregs of society, "they" don't work, "they" are good for nothing--you get the picture.  My friend, deeply offended, called the newspaper editor and asked that all the on-line comments be removed and no new ones be allowed.  He also asked the paper to print a second story that would palliate his family, which had also been offended-and they were mad at HIM.

(Being a "big man about town" in Jerez, he was given all he asked.)

So now you know--the U.S.A. is not the only country were racism abounds.  I could go on and on about this topic--how Moroccans and Jews are received, how there is racism in France, and in Rwanda, and in China, and in....

But enough already.

OUR NEXT BLOG will be about shooting in southern Spain.

Shooting for sound

In mid-July, we recorded some of the background music for "Domino," the short independent film I´m working on in Jerez de la Frontera.  We have several scenes in bars, which is an ideal place to introduce background music...and the bar scenes are for the most part followed by street scenes, an ideal place to continue the background music.

Since some of you have never been inside a recording studio, it occurred to me that you might be interested in what it's like to do a recording.

--NOTE:  "Domino´s" YouTube trailers are on LINK

What we recorded was based on the voice of our lead actor, Antonio de la Malena, who is also a well-known flamenco cantaor (singer).  We recorded two numbers, one a purely flamenco one (a tarantos, for readers who are knowledgeable in flamenco) and the other a somewhat modernized number (granainos por buleria).

Antonio de la Malena and Luis de la Tota in front of the sound studio.

The first, the tarantos, went very rapidly.  There was only the singer and the guitarist, a father-son team who have worked together for years.  (The father is, of course, Antonio de la Malena.  The son is Malena Hijo.  Both tour internationally.)  First, the two of them ran through the number in order to warm up.  The sound tech recorded it, I'm happy to say, since the first part was great.  The second half was fine but there was a change that didn't go well...but this was ok, since they were just warming up.

Next, they went through it "for real," and it came out beautifully.  End of recording.

The second number, the granaina por bulerias (ending in a minera as a macho), included not only voice and guitar, but also percussion--palmas (rhythmic hand clapping), cajón (that wooden box you used to only see used in Latin American music, but is now used world wide) and something called a tinaja (a ceramic jug turned into a musical instrument by adding sound holes and the like).

Inside the sound studio.  My camera doesn´t give good flash photos.  Oh, well.

 I´ll mentioned here that the palmeros were Luis de la Tota, Ali de la Tota, and Alex de Moneo.  The cajonista and tinajista was Alex de Moneo.  The first two (the de la Totas) are very well known.  Alex is a young fellow, more at the beginning of his career.

Well.  I´ve very little experience in recording sessions and had no idea why they usually take so long.  Now I know.  The voice and guitar were recorded together, and the singer was done.  But then the percussionists--in groups, first the palmeros, then the cajón, then the tinaja--were given ear phones and told to do their part.  The palmas turned out to be particularly tricky and had to be repeated many, many times.  It was a question of getting three people to clap out the rhythm at EXACTLY the same moment in a musical number with a pretty complex rhythm, being sung freely.

After a little over four hours, we had our six minutes of music recorded, put onto a CD, and handed over to me.  I found the experience very interesting.  Being musically inclined, I also enjoyed listening and watching and yes, getting things just right is NOT easy.

Ali de la Tota, with Luis´ girlfriend in the foreground and Antonio de la Malena in the background.

OUR NEXT BLOG will be about Spanish Gypsies (Gitanos).

Private greed and the economic crisis-part 2

As a specific example, I'll explain one specific loan package of which I am aware.  This was a loan in which the borrower paid nothing but the interest for 10 years.  Only after the 10 years were over would the borrower get to start paying down the principal...but shortly after starting to pay down the principal, there was a balloon payment.

In other words, for 10 years the bank gained everything and the borrower still owed exactly the same amount of principal.  Then, when the borrower could start paying down the principal, after a very few months s/he had to pay it all--likely a financial impossibility.

"In the old days," such a loan would have been legally impermissible, on the theory that it was "unconscionable," meaning that it wasn't fair.  But "banking reforms" made these loans legal, and thousands if not millions of people thoughtlessly signed on for them.  A large proportion of these people now find themselves losing their homes after having paid many thousands of dollars to their bank or savings and loan without having touched the principal.

At first, the banks foreclosed in these cases.  Now, because of the glut of foreclosed homes and the inability of people to pay back the loans, and with new federal incentives, the banks are putting more of these houses on the market as "short sales"--whereby the borrower loses his/her home, but the debt is wiped out once the house is sold. 

Then, there was also the practice of writing loans without examining the borrowers assets...another way to ensure that people will sign up for more than they can afford.  It also encourages speculation which encourages skyrocketing housing prices which encourages...until the bubble bursts.

And those institutions who thought they would simply take their money and run found themselves having taken a whole lot of money, but then being stuck with homes that, because of the burst bubble, were now worth much less than the principal (which hadn't been touched) and with borrowers who could no longer make their monthly payments.

I recently read that banks now own so much real estate through foreclosure that in some cases, they are finding it in their best interests to simply bulldoze the homes.

In many cases, they acquired these foreclosed homes by handing out loans almost impossible to pay, to people who couldn't afford to pay them.  And these loans were made because of the greed of the lending institutions.

Bad stuff.

We'll talk about private greed in multinational corporations in later blogs.

THE NEXT BLOG WILL BE some THANKS to some of those that have helped us.