Juan Carlos Oganes' film-making and work blog.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Another radio interview








I was invited to a radio show hosted by my friend and actor Fernando Petong and co-host. We talked about music and my band Alter Ego. It was good to recall those times and listen to it over the airwaves.
Also invited were new vocal R&B group that really sang good.

Next week I'm invited again to talk this time about the film and all details.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Advances and progress






Been days of much stress and activity here and there.
Apart from stopping filming for a couple weeks to put all efforts into more uniforms making, meetings to prepare the grounds for sponsors to come in advance as filming reaches almost 70% of completion.
Already had a meeting at the TV station to show the progress and screen captures of the film.
I have to say that I'm happy the station is happy to see the results so far.

Let's see what happens. I'm very expectant here. Stress is high.

Also been to another workshop to do some maintenance to my camera and accessories. Found a lot of dust in tight corners and tightened some bolts here and there as well as the french flags and support rails. I cut them off a bit shorter at the back as I found it hitting the jib-arm crane extension when doing low angles. Couldn't pan past a certain point.

Meanwhile, we were all been doing more Bolivian uniforms and delegated it to one of the extras to paint the forearms and necks. Cesar, as a pro painter, did an awesome job painting the arms and necks I had the main body of the uniforms sent to a laundry company to have them dyed to the color I specified and telling Cesar how to paint just the forearms and necks. Also, Cesar's cousin Christian, is a good craftsman in wood and metal so I commissioned him to make a decent looking telegraph out of a picture found on the net. The results are seen here. I like it much, just need to age it a bit to look make it look used. As stated before, it's not a museum replica....just a prop made to look good on camera.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Making more uniforms





So, after some days of personal heaviness, life goes on and gotta keep moving. Like if life hits come from many directions at once and you are forced to stand still and close your eyes for a while. Certain experiences always makes you feel odd but one's strength pushes you up in order to move on with one's dreams. No one will do it for you anyway so I just have to put on my social face around.

Now that I'm like 65% done with the filming of the movie, there are certain additional battle scenes to be done and completed like the battle of Alto del Alianza and the Morro siege where more soldiers than I have used so far are gonna be needed to make it look massive as I want it to be. So I decided to make more uniforms.

Called the textile workshop where I made mine like 7 months ago and it was good to see the same people there. Of course I don't have the budget to make plenty as before because this is an impromptu situation so I'm ordering 300 more. The people I'm gonna use are thicker so I'm making the size "large" for all. The locations to be used for those battle scenes are gonna be outside of Lima in the desert outskirts.

Today I went to Gamarra to get around 3,100 buttons and rolls of red fabric to make the chilean soldiers pants.
It is kinda weird to be doing all this walking around and uniform-making again.
Will keep me busy for a while.

At least I know that no matter how hard I try to fight for this movie, it comes out close to the way I need it to be...not like a human being where no matter how much effort you put there, it always has a mind of it's own and not necessarily it's one that you'd like.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Hacienda Buena Vista: planning the siege.







The past days I filmed the interior scenes to be the continuation of the Quinta Heeren ones.
This time in Chorrillos at an old republican house of the era that belongs to a good friend of mine from my theater years.

Mac Lennan, Calvo, Sarmiento, Villavicencio and Zarauz portraying Chilean officers Baquedano, Lagos and others and also Abrisqueta playing Peruvian engineer Elmore.

Script lines were a bit difficult to memorize as I used several tactical words of how the Morro de Arica was taken over.

Calvo invited a couple of young filmmakers who happen to have a web show interviewing poeple in this field so they were around while I finished the scenes for the day to interview me. Perhaps it will be online soon.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Another interview

The impromptu interview made by Alejandro Nieto for his gutenbergtv. site after wrapping up filming a few days ago.
Igor Calvo (who plays chilean Carlos Weguelin) asked them to drop by and this is what came out.