Just a bit of info to better understand the purpose of the movie itself.
We’ve got commissioned by FAIRPLAY (www.fairplay-peru.org), a Peruvian not for profit organisation based in Cusco, to shoot something which would represent what FAIRPLAY does in a unique way. When we spoke with John, the founder of FAIRPLAY, it was clear to all three of us that we didn’t want to shoot a boring documentary with interviews about what’s going on here, but we wanted to advertise the organisation with something more emotionally based and visually interesting.
FAIRPLAY consist of three parts: a spanish lessons and tutoring that employs exclusively Peruvian poor single mums, providing an incredible service in term of quality of teaching, and student care; a Salsa dance class for beginners and advanced, dedicated to tourist and the teachers are locals, generally young and coming from poor and underdeveloped areas of Cusco; and HelpingHands, a nursery school which FAIRPLAY partners with, which provides education and food to 4 and 5 years old poor children, who usually come for a very poor background and suffer severe malnutrition.
The dream of John is to be able to build a childcare for mentally disabled poor kids by 2013. But to do that he needs funding. And here’s the idea: shooting a short movie who will hopefully touch the consciences of the almost 500 volunteer and students who come to FAIRPLAY each year. If every student/volunteer, through the video, will be able to sell 30 keyring hats (the hat represents Peru, as it’s something very typical here), they will be able to raise enough money to build the childcare.
Too many words, here’s the visual:
I’m personally very happy with the outcome, and let me tell you that there’s been a lot of work behind.
Adele and I spent three weeks here in Cusco, a week of pre production (when we gathered information, then wrote the story and the script, the shots list, the list of props, location and any other detail we needed to know before starting to shoot), 5 days of shooting and recording audio, and then a full week of editing, music and sound research and color grading.
Considering that we had 0 budget and a crew of only two people to work, we believe that we achieved a pretty professional looking piece, thanx to all the people who helped along the journey when we needed information about the culture and the organisations, but we’re especially grateful to Sarah, our protagonist who has never been in front of a camera before and neither had acting experiences, but she worked so hard and with so much dedication that it made her look like a pro.
Weather conditions here during the rain season have been a problem as well, but thanks to a pretty organised schedule and backup plans, we (almost) always managed to shoot. And we did definitely learn a bunch of stuff during the shooting, also having to change the original script because what I had in mind for the beginning of the movie didn’t really come out as we wanted it.
Overall this has been an incredible experience, and I’m looking forward to start working on another project next week in Pisco, an area in the ocean which has been devastated by an earthquake a couple of years ago. Stay tuned.