National Dance Seminar of Colombia

Anybody heard of Mauricio Wainrot? Or Maria Rovira?

These last days I had the honor to listen to these great choreographers (and other dance experts) while filming the National Dance Seminar of Colombia.

It was a great event and very inspiring. Dance as an art has a lot in common with film. It was interesting to hear these über-experienced choreographers and creative directors talk from their life experiences, and it is also a sign that Medellin is stepping forward in the arts.

Choreography by Maria Rovira

Choreography by Mauricio Wainrot

The Hunt - Danish masterpiece

Today I went to see The Hunt (Cacería/Jagten), a Danish film by Thomas Vinterberg starring Mads Mikkelsen. I think every film I've seen with Mikkelsen has been excellent. I haven't seen all of them, but I think of films such as Flickering Lights, Open hearts, Adam's apples and After the wedding. Mikkelsen has a very wide range in his spectrum of possible acted characters, although he seems to lean more and more onto divorced, suffering, quiet fathers.

Anyway, The Hunt didn't dissappoint. It was another of those Danish masterpieces. This time showing how a little lie from one person can cause enormous damage in other people's lives. Mikkelsen's acting was superb. In my opinion, Mikkelsen is definitely one of the best actors in the world. If you like realistic drama, you'll love The Hunt.

Interviewing film crew

Today we visited the film set of Eso que llaman amor again, and video-interviewed some more of the crew. Among these the director of photography, the gaffer, the production designer and a costume assistant.

Good material for our film school.

ADR'ing

A couple months ago we shot a commercial, during the evening, in the centre of Medellin. The dialogue sound was ruined by noise from the adjacent bars. We had to convene the actors to do voice dubbing, also called ADR (additional dialogue recording). We don't have our own sound studio, so we have gone to three places: a university's radio studio, a tv studio's sound booth and today a radio station's studio.

Echo is the enemy at ADR'ing. Yo don't want any echo, and if you do, you could better add it as a digital effect. But I discovered not even the radio station had really isolated surfaces, their walls were textile, but their floor was hard tile. Not good, that produces echo. A sound studio should have a sound-isolating material in their floor like textile or a semi-soft material. But anyway, since the scene is an outdoor one, the slight echo is drowned by noise. Added noise. Only this time, it is controlled. Basically, mixing sound for a noisy outdoor scene is deconstructing everything and then building it up again.

I was pretty happy with how the voices sounded at the end, although I'd love for a professional post-production sound mixer to give his opinion on it.

Visiting a feature film set

Today we visited the film set of Eso que llaman amor, a feature film being shot here in Medellin at the moment, directed by Carlos César Arbeláez, who also directed The colors of the mountain, a famous film here in Colombia.

We did video interviews with several of the crew, where each explained what they do in their role on set. It went well except for lots of disturbing noise. Luckily we used a lavaliere mic that captured the sound well. The idea is to use these interviews in our film school, to explain what people do in a film crew. We were glad that we were allowed to do the interviews for our school, but I'm not aloud to publish anything online, not even photos.

It was fun to be on a feature film set, and for a film tech geek just to see a RED camera in action, surrounded by a substantial amount of c-stands and French flags.

An important meeting.

Today we met with a señor in the municipality of Medellin with an important position of film production. It was a rewarding meeting and we were able to tell him what we do in our film studio. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it.

In the evening I held a workshop about "writing for film and television" for out team. We analyzed a couple of tv commercials using classic screenplay structure. Then we all had to come up with film ideas which we looked at together.

An important phone call

Today I called Juan Pablo Tamayo, a film producer here in Colombia. He produced The Colors of the Mountain, a recent renown drama film. Just having talked to him on the phone is an achievement for me. He invited me to come visit the set of his current production, Eso lo que llaman amor. Well for a guy like me trying to enter Colombian film industry, this made my day.