Digital Video Latino

Jorge Diaz and Vladimir Merisca

With a story about a Mexican boy who wants to get to Heaven so badly that he steals bags of potato chips for the Pope's visit to Mexico, you can't help but be curious. Shot using a Sony VX 1000 dv cam, Alex Rivera's short film Las Papas Del Papa (The Pope's Potato Chips) is a modern look at how capitalism collides with traditional beliefs. In this case, it's the United States marketing machine invading Mexico under the cloak of divine intervention. The film is that rare combination of social commentary and entertaining humor. dScoop sat down with the energetic young director to talk about his experiences using dv in Mexico.

dScoop
How are you doing?

Rivera
Doing good-it was a crazy weekend with the festival and everything. Finally just coming down to earth.

dScoop
Tell me, what prompted you to choose the dv format instead of the traditional film format for your film?

Rivera
For two reasons. The first is we had absolutely no budget. It was really just something I did for fun. It was with a community of friends, so our whole budget was just $200.00 dollars.

Also, I wanted to tell the story in Mexico before people forgot about the event . While the event was still hot - and I had no budget to do the film. And so for those two reasons, I wanted to do it quickly, I wanted to do it cheap. I'm really interested in developing a kind of cinema that can be instant and have a fast turnaround. Digital video was the only way to go.

dScoop

How does this apply to Las Papas Del Papa?

Rivera

With Las Papas, it was both a documentary and a narrative film. It's sort of a documentary of this moment that happened in Mexico with the Pope promoting himself using these bags of potato chips, right? That was a real happening. And then the narrative inside that world was fiction, but basically because it was something that happened sort of quickly, I wanted to make a comment on that, so I wanted to work in a format that had a really fast turnaround.

And working in film with all the process of getting the film transferred, cutting it, matching back to film, that whole rigorous process wouldn't have worked. I'm interested in developing a kind of responsive, sort of instant cinema that can make comments on interesting social events… dv is perfect for that.

dScoop
Instant cinema. Sounds like we'll be hearing a lot more of that in the future.

Rivera
Right.

dScoop
What were the pros of using this VX1000 digital video format?

Rivera
I think there was a really huge list of positives. You get a really solid, really beautiful image for no cost - practically no cost. For instance, there was the first scene where the mom is sort of chastising the boy.

dScoop
Yes-in the market square, and in the room.

Rivera
Well we didn't get location permits or have anyone controlling the location. We did it all by just putting the actor in a location that was alive-in the market place or the street. And so everyone in the background - they weren't extras, they were just the people (laughs).

dScoop
They were just there.

Rivera
So, when you're working with a film camera and a boom and the whole deal, people freak out, especially the authorities. If it looks like you're making a movie, then you have to get all the permissions necessary, you have a whole set of delays and costs. But with a digital video camera people just think you're tourists.

It produces a whole set of (new) opportunities. Again, it is not just budgetary concerns, it has an impact on the type of movie you can make. With the video camera you can put your actor in a live setting like a market and there it is. No one, you know, bats an eye. They think you're just shooting your cousin on vacation (laughs).

dScoop
What were some of the negatives in using the dv?

Rivera
I was worried that I wouldn't be able to extract a look from the video that people would believe as a narrative - you know what I mean? Because when people see a video texture they want to associate it with news, or documentary . But they don't want to associate it with fiction. But in post-production, I was able to do a lot to change the video look. And to extract a kind of film look from it. And so, some of the negatives - I can't really say right now. It was really a positive experience.


dScoop
Did you have to use a sound system, or did you just use a mike connected

to the VX1000?

Rivera
We used a mike connected to the VX1000 - we ran the audio like that.


dScoop
Did you utilize any special lights?

Rivera


We just used a basic Lowell lighting kit. And it was real basic lighting. I wanted to try to have a pretty natural look. But you want to be able to get that look with as little a crew and headache as possible. So we kept it simple and efficient with just one lighting kit. But really, in terms of what I liked about the process is the post-production, I edited the whole thing on my laptop. You know my Powerbook, including those animated sequences. I did those entirely on my laptop too, with After Effects.

dScoop
What other software did you use?

Rivera
Photoshop and Final Cut. And so again, it was just really easy to turn it around and I couldn't - I mean, the quality you saw - I couldn't believe how good it looked up on that screen. I thought it looked really beautiful, because they were screening it off Beta.

dScoop
You mean you didn't transfer it to film?

Rivera
No. What we saw in that theater was coming out of a Beta SP video deck. So my process technically was to shoot on the Mini dv and then go through fire wire, into my laptop, and then in Final Cut Pro I put together a rough cut. Then, I exported the material I needed to use in the animations to Adobe After Effects, did the compositing, edited the graphic elements, brought that back to the Final Cut Pro, and sent it out to dv via firewire. After that, I took the final dv, and bumped it to Beta, which is now my distribution master.

dScoop
So that daydream scene where the boy was shirtless and he was looking at the sticker book with the clouds and angels fluttering around - that was After Effects?

Rivera
I'm really lucky that I've been working in digital imaging for a while, so I know how to do Photoshop, how to do compositing in After Effects, how to do all of it. So I shot this kid sitting in bed, looking at the ceiling, and I'm like "Oh, what is he thinking?" He's thinking about going to heaven, but maybe my directing wasn't strong enough, maybe the expression of the kids face doesn't communicate that. So I said - "Oh, let's make a dream sequence."


So I took that video of the kid just staring up at the ceiling, pulled it into After Effects, made some graphics in Photoshop, brought them in, and told the story more effectively. The material is so flexible, sort of malleable, in a way that film isn't. It's very expensive to do that in the world of film. So in that way I think that digital opens its doors.


dScoop
How do you feel about dv in the future of independent films and major films in Hollywood?

Rivera
Well, my interest is in using this technology to do two things: to bring stories that wouldn't be told otherwise - bring them onto the screen. And to draw people that wouldn't otherwise be filmmakers into the world of making films. So when I was in Mexico-I got to know a lot of people in the filmmaking community there. Obviously there's less money there for making movies. As much as people complain in America about how hard it is to be an independent filmmaker, you know, in the rest of the world it's thirty times harder - a hundred times harder - nearly impossible.


But as this technology gets cheaper and cheaper, I'm really interested in seeing digital movies from people who would never have the access to make them any other way. And so far, I haven't seen a lot of that, but I think it's coming down the line. Filmmaker friends from Mexico City would tell me that there's definitely an awareness of this technology. In the next two years, five years, I think you'll start seeing people who could only buy tickets to see the movies start buying the cameras to make them. And that to me is what's really exciting.

dScoop
What effect do you think dv will have on Latino filmmaking in general, besides in Mexico?

Rivera
Well, I mean, in the States, it's the same. Latinos have been so entirely shut out of filmmaking -- it's amazing. I was at a panel at the Latino Film Festival and someone was telling me how incredible it is that there's fifteen Latino projects in development. But to me, what's incredible is that the film industry , which is in LA and NY, both of which have a majority of people of color, have kept us out for so long!


And so-hopefully Latinos will, instead of trying to climb into that Hollywood game, take advantage of the digital technology and build their own cinemas that can serve us -that are responsive to the needs of our community. It's like with Hip-Hop… no one waited around to go to an executive and asked him to approve Hip-Hop! (laughs).

dScoop
They were selling tapes from the back of there cars, starting their own labels.

Rivera
Exactly. And with cinema, everyone is caught up in getting a green light, and going to a studio and asking permission from these people who have been shutting us out for a hundred years. So I think it's time, using digital technology, for Latinos to learn about it and to do with cinema what we did to Hip-Hop, which is build our own local, responsive, necessary cinema at the ground level. Without asking permission from anyone.

dScoop
Will you be shooting any future films in dv?

Rivera
Yes-I'm taking a feature film script to Sundance this summer, to the Sundance Writer's Institute. I'm going to be finishing up my script, working with Sundance, and hopefully in the Fall I'll start working on this. It's a science-fiction feature film, to be set on the US-Mexico border.

dScoop
What kind of camera will you be using? The same VX1000?

Rivera
Right now, I have bought one of the PD100A's, which is in PAL format. With this next project, since it is a feature, I'm hoping to do everything I did in "Las Papas del Papa": shoot in digital, do the graphics in digital, keep it entirely on the hard drive throughout, but then at the last step bump it to 35(mm). For that PAL works better because of the comparable frame rate. Film is at 24 (frames per second) PAL dv is at 25 fps. So you don't lose any frames. You have 25 frames to 24 frames and then you have one additional frame every second so the movie just gets longer by 4%.

dScoop
Did you get to check out Timecode, Mike Figgis' dv feature?

Rivera
I actually wanted to see the quarter of the screen that had Salma Hayek in it and just pay two dollars. I wanted to pay one quarter the ticket price just to watch Salma (laughs).