Juan Carlos Oganes' film-making and work blog.

Monday, January 9, 2012

First days of 2012 - Still filming.

Coming down from the morro for a few days of rest and scheduling for the next scenes. January 9, wow. How fast days go by. This past week has been full of a lot of stress (like if there wasn't any....crap!) and many phone arguments with some people I asked to be removed from their positions for attitude reasons. Seems my inquire went ahead as I no longer hear their self-righteous words or complaints anymore. Doing this is stressful enough to even have to bear people like that, so I let them go in the only way that was needed in order for them to get the message straight: loud and straightforward.

Lima is hot these days. And I mean pretty hot. News reports say that it has gone at least as high as 32 C (90 F) aprox. We all could feel the tremendous heat up there as we are all boldly exposed to the sun when the sky is clear. Being the Morro Solar a bit tall (the part we film at is almost 271 mts high (890 ft) and the actual Morro de Arica is around 120 mts (393 ft) making our place somewhat taller than the real scenario but the eye nor the camera can tell those 140 mts in difference. Both places are high anyway, even for a jump (Ugarte), and that's why the weather is quite different from down below in the city. When the sun comes out is quite heavy on us, melting much of any plastic artifact  left exposed and causing sunburn (a huge contrast when I roll my sleeve) and at night, the temp drops a lot and together with high-speed winds and drizzle-fog, the cold sensation increments exponentially.

I quite love filming up there. It's quite away from it all and also close to it all. Driving down to the city to buy food or to pick up the actors has done quite some a damage to my car and today, a mechanic is needed (the front suspension has dropped and the wheel is touching the chassis at every turn, the clutch is making noises, the exhaust pipe is broken making it lose compresion and engine power, the rear door has the handle broken together with my right rear view mirror and there's a lot of soil in the engine). I guess we have to take a few days off to heal our wounds, so to speak.

All in all, this first week has been quite a ride and got myself really good shots and scenes.

Here I put together some small clips and pictures together taken by my directing assistant and other production assistants who has free hands to take some shots (the credit goes to them for those amazing work pictures) to show a bit of how it is all developing. Now....off to the mechanic.