The last week has been a blur of action; full of asados, festivals, script tweaking, translating, translating and translating…
I go to the translating first, because it has filled up most of my time.This process has been wonderful though; full of learning and growing. As I mentioned before, Daniel Fermani’s novel “La Última Noche En Que Tampoco Habló” is completely in Spanish. Maria and I had talked about translating it together at some point, but as time passed, and due to schedule restraints, that task fell to Paula and I. It needed to be done because up to now I have only seen a rough outline of the novel and notes. I didn’t expect to be doing this while in development and pre-production; but Hey! We make it work, right!? As we dive into the book deeper and deeper things are beginning to come to life. Daniel writes in such a cinematic way that the images jump right off the pages at me.
Working hard En Lukecation
Translating the book has really helped improve my Spanish immensely. One of my main issues before was conjugating verbs; mainly in past tense. Since the book is written as a re-telling of a story it is mostly all in past tense. Just seeing sentences formed and used in a poetic ways has helped in broadening my knowledge and perspective of the language. I also want to stop for a moment to say how amazed I am by Paula! When I say we are translating I mean: She is translating the words and I am writing them down. And in the process of working on this translation she has actually, in addition to helping with my Spanish, improved my English as well. I can’t believe the command she has of both languages.
While diving into the novel and all it’s mystery; we have also been preparing to shoot a teaser for the film. As with every movie project, there are numerous ways to go about getting one made… Our plan of attack on this specific project is to attempt to go through the correct channels of government to get funding. In this case it would be the Argentinian Arts Council. (Yes there are governments out there that care about and fund the arts on a large scale). It was Maria’s brilliant idea that first brought this to my attention.
From there we had to come up with a strategy. My idea was to first produce a teaser for the film, a kind of trailer, that would give the judges a proof of concept and style; which we would then package together with a feature length script, budget, etc… Six months ago Maria wrote the first version of the teaser, in Spanish, which I translated and re-wrote into script format, adding my own style and cutting it down to a manageable running time. Now after meeting with the author and immersing myself in his work, we decided that certain tweaks needed to be made to the teaser script to better reflect the essence of what we are about to create. After numerous meeting between Maria and I we landed upon some nice changes to enhance and enliven the work.
*** I have learned through many other projects and this one to never be too married to one idea. Let yourself be free in your thinking and approach to any script or project. There are a multitude of paths that can be taken; some good and some not so good. Make sure the one you’re on is taking you to the right place and don’t be afraid to jump onto another path if that is where the work is taking you. I always have to make sure though that it serves to balance and enrich the theme and meat of the story. ***
So while I have been buried in script tweaking, making breaks-downs for the script and translating; Maria has been working on the legal side of things: paper work, copyrights, etc.. I think my Argentinian family started to worry about me because I have been spending so much time in front of the computer. They would leave for hours and come back and I would still be sitting here. (Hey, I got windows in front of me!). It got to where they stared to suggest that there were tables outside that I could use. Which I eventually did use; as I am sure some of you saw posted online last week… Now it’s raining though…
When the weekend finally came; I was surely ready for a break. That meant an asado was in order… More deliciously fire roasted meats!!! My oh My… Maria and Bruno, (Maria’s husband), invited me over to there house for a get together. It was nice! For one I got to see Pablo and Lorena two of the key members of the “Rogues” crew and secondly my Spanish has improved some and I was able to better converse with everyone. The other highlight from the weekend was attending the monthly festival of colors or “La Revolución de Colores”. It was jam packed with music, face painting, mate (of course), Murga!, Tela, and art from disciplines as well… (You can bet there will be some video coming of that!)
I am constantly amazed by the strong sense of community that those in San Rafael carry. The music was open to any and all who wanted to get up and play, free face painting and you could literally sit down with anyone in the plaza and drink mate with them. They would just put in your hands without even asking you if you weren’t careful. ¡Que Impresionante!
Through out all this, in the back of my mind is: Gearing Up! Preparations! ¡Acción! Maria and I have decided, for the sake of the teaser, to try and shoot during autumn while the leaves are turning. The setting of the book is in autumn so it is only fitting. So we have 3-4 weeks to get this thing in working order. Therefore, we must decide where to shoot. Mendoza, as of right now, looks like the best options. The novel takes place there plus there are many locations and actors available. San Rafael is also a viable option. I’ve seen of the work from the local actors and gotta say I am impressed. But, in order to keep an open mind Paula and I will be traveling to Mendoza, 3 hours away, to scout locations and actors. Good news: we have Daniel Fermani there to be our guide and he already has some places and people in mind… and, of course, some
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