Falling over and twisting your ankle during filming in arduous terrain and under extreme conditions: Probably seen as good for the production, self-sacrificing and/or brave.

Falling over and twisting your ankle while drunk at the weekly crew party, not too many meters from your bedroom door: Makes you target of light ridicule and ribbing from fellow crew members.

This is the first day of my production diary for “Rio de oro”. I’ll try to get these posted as often as I can, although internet access is spotty and slow. This is really from March 3rd.

Up dead early, not much sleep, off to the airport for the 6:30 flight to Hermosillo, Sonora. The flight was unevenful, and when I got there, my instructions were to take a taxi to an address in “Cananea”. Not knowing better, I thought this sounded like a 10-15 minute cab ride, but no such luck, Cananea is actually a completely different town, several hours away, so I found a taxi that’s willing to take me, and off I went.

The taxi driver’s named Abundio, and repeatedly asks if I have an iPod or something, because all that’s on the radio is banda and norteña music, which he hates, unlike everyone else in the state. Finally, he fishes out a CD case from the glove box, and we listen to reggaeton and Mexican hip-hop while we drive.

The road is straight and boring, cutting through a slightly hilly desert landscape devoid of anything of particular interest, except for the occasional field of cactus, and some oddly out of place signs. There’s a McDonald’s one, not an ad sign, but the sort of small logo sign you’d expect to see by the entrance to a drive-in McDonald’s. It’s worn and faded, and there’s nothing else around for several kilometers in each direction. The same thing happens again ten minutes later, with a restaurant sign on a high pole, in the middle of nowhere. I consider the possibility of there having been buildings there in the past, but if so, they’re so thoroughly razed that nothing remains, not even a different colored patch on the ground.

That everyone in Northern Mexico drives a pickup truck is something of a cliché, but it would seem it’s also true. I see more pickup trucks, mostly of the moderately large to ridiculously huge variety, on the road than any other kind of vehicle.

I nod off several times, and when we arrive in Cananea after some three and a half hours of driving, it too seems empty and worn out. I go into a supermarket looking for a bathroom, and the shelves are half empty, the produce department sparsely populated only with some dejected looking week-old cabbage. The upper floor of the building holds the office where I’m supposed to meet up with whoever’s taking me to location, and when I get there, the office, that of an accountant, turns out to be the only non-vacant one on that floor, the rest of it empty, just glass doors with old logo stickers on them. I’m later told Cananea is mostly a mining town, and it’s in the middle of a strike that’s lasted more than a year and half now.

I meet up with the driver, and we go off in a truck, first along bits of paved road that gradually becomes more dilapidated, then the asphalt stops, we go along a dirt road that several times dips down to cross dry riverbed. The signs along the road imply that the river flows over the road when it rains, but the landscape shows little sign of that happening lately.

Finally, we arrive at the ranch that’s the production’s home base. It’s actually very nice, something between a hotel and a ranch. I’m told the Reagans stayed here several times, something I chalk up to exaggeration or rumor until, in the living room, I notice a framed photo of Nancy Reagan sitting on the lap of a Mexican cowboy, the ranch in the background. Both are smiling widely. The photo has a cheap plastic label stuck on it, which says, in Spanish, “Sitting in her favorite chair”. I wonder if Ronnie knew.

We leave in the afternoon for a location shoot in the hills, taking off in a couple of pickup trucks and a jeep. The jeep promptly gets a flat tire, runs the tire off the rim, and has to be abandoned. We reorganize people into the remaining trucks and go on.

We’re going to a nature reserve, looking to film some deer. We have some guys out on horses moving them in the right direction, and we’re going to film them as they go by. This turns out to be somewhat more difficult than it sounds, with much moving about and driving trucks up ridges that frankly seem unfit as roads resulting. Finally, just as we’re starting to lose the light, it works, and we get a herd of deer galloping past us at no more than 20-30 meters distance, over the ridge we’re on, and down on the other side. The director is somewhat disappointed there were no male animals in the herd, but otherwise, it seems to have been a success. We set off back to the ranch, chewing on the dust of the truck in front of us all the way.

I enter a coma some time around 9 at night, having slept almost nothing, and having to get up at 5:30 the next morning.

I’ve been stupidly busy at work lately, and it’s going very well. In a few hours, I’m off to the Sonoran Desert to do supervision and data management on “River of Gold“, a Western movie being shot on the Red One. This is our second Red One project in a few weeks, the previous one was an 11-camera megaproduction, the filming of Vicente Fernandez’ concert in the Zocalo on Valentine’s Day.

I’ll be mostly offline while in the desert, but will take pictures and notes. Expect updates when I get back. I’m a city dweller, so wish me luck.

The trailer for Parque Vía is on YouTube:

Parque vía apparently won the main prize at the 3 continents festival in Nantes, France, the Golden Montgolfière. That’s a pretty big deal, congratulations to everyone as usual. What’s even better is that Beto, the non-professional actor who plays the main role (also named Beto, and based on him), won the best actor award.

I was just told that Parque vía won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival. That’s a huge deal, actually, congratulations to Enrique, Paola, and everyone else involved, ourselves included, this time.

As you can see, Enrique got an enormous gilded (I assume that’s not solid gold) feline to take home with him. Locarno is one of the larger and more respected international festivals, especially for auteur and experimental cinema, and this should be a boost for the movie, both in terms of distribution and for consideration for the Ariels, the Mexican academy awards.

It’s worth mentioning, by the way, that the movie got a new poster just in time for the festival, and it’s pretty awesome.

I thought the old poster was quite ok, but the photo on the new one is great, and really works for what the movie is about. I don’t know who took it, but I know Macias at Raya en medio is responsible for the poster, and he did a wonderful job.

Oh, and it has our logo on it, second from the left.

Parque vía, the movie directed by Enrique Rivero that we did post supervision on, has its international premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland during the first weeks of August, according to The Hollywood Reporter and others. I’ve known about this for a while, but not been allowed to tell anyone. Congratulations to Enrique, Paola, and everyone else involved. I’m sure it’ll do very well, it’s a good movie.

The short we did post on for Atole Metafilms a few months back is now on YouTube, after being shown at parties and other improvised screening locations around Mexico. The sound is sadly not great, but apart from that, it turned out fairly ok.

Sorry about the long delays, I’m hoping I’ll get more time to write soon. In the meantime, we’ve been doing some good work. Latest news: We did postproduction supervision on the only Mexican movie this year to go to Cannes, in the Un Certain Regard section. It’s called Los Bastardos, and we finished just on time to get it to the festival, where’s it’s been getting mixed, but generally relatively positive reviews. Apart from the supervision, we also did some VFX previsualization for it, which was fun, and very in tune with genres I like, but I guess I shouldn’t spoil that part of the movie, it’s kind of crucial. Here’s Screen Daily’s review, there’s also Variety’s review, and here’s the Hollywood Reporter.

Oh, and the actual illegal Mexican immigrant to the US who plays an illegal Mexican immigrant to the US in the movie got treated rather badly by French border police when entering the country to attend the festival. Life imitates art, minus the shotgun.

My IMDB page is looking a bit less pathetic too, as a result of all this work, although it’s got a way to go before it matches my partner Øyvind’s page, now that he’s gotten in some of the stuff he’s worked on before.

What few readers I have might have noticed that I’ve not been writing much here lately. I’d like to, but I’ve been insanely busy. I’ve hinted at this before, and not said why, since I’ve been trying to establish a few things. But well, here it is. I co-founded a postproduction company (preliminary website) with my good friend Øyvind Stiauren, another Norwegian living in Mexico. We’ve been at it for about 8 months now, and results are starting to show, specifically, the first movie we’ve worked on to show up in IMDB, Ana Laura Calderón’s “La Isla de la Juventud“, a documentary shot on Cuba. That’s not the first movie we’ve worked on, though, the first was a feature film that was shot mostly during April-May. They’re doing pickups now, and post starts in November. There’s also a couple of other documentaries we’re working on right now, as well as several large feature films coming at the end of the year/beginning of next. We’re doing very well, and I’m quite happy.

This also means my IMDB page got updated. There’ll be much more there very soon.