Creativity and innovation came together to make a short film that involved the projection of images about untradional places, such as the tombs and trees of a cemetery in Mexico.
By Richard Santa
Audiovisual technology is available in all countries of the region, but it depends on the creativity and innovation of each one when using it, which allows works with surprising results, such as the one made by Nice Productions and the animation agency Flare of Petate, who came together to map the graves of a cemetery.
Juan Luis Martínez, from the production department of Niza Producciones, says that the result of this project was a short film, called Santolo, in which the idea was to take typical places in Mexico City and express them differently. In this case, the Pantheon of Dolores was chosen, located in the Colonia Bosque de Chapultepec in Mexico City.
"In the cemetery they did not want to represent the gloomy, but to do it totally the other way around, as if it were a party, taking striking elements, colors, pyrotechnics, village music combined with modern aspects and figures like alebrijes. The idea was to go to the opposite of what you think when you go to a cemetery. Instead of thinking about sadness, it was to grab the funny side and put a lot of color on it," he explained.
The recording of this short film meant a great challenge for the people who intervened in it, not only because of what it meant to make the mapero on a non-traditional space, that is, to replace the façade of buildings with trees and tombs, but also for the stage and the time in which the project should have been carried out, a cemetery and work at night until dawn. "The experience was very strange, half dark but very funny," said Juan Luis Martínez.
Months of preparation
When they proposed the projection, in Flare of Petate they thought that just putting the projector in front and making the animation to the measure of the tomb was enough, they did not take into account that a whole mapping work was required. That's when the vinvulation of Nice Productions emerged, who had worked on projects before.
The recording was made between the sixth and eighth of May 2013. A month before all the planning was done, they excognized the tombs that were going to be used for the projection. Although the animation was working since the beginning of the year.
For the projection, 5,000 lumen projectors from the BenQ company were used, and for the mapping a Macbook Pro i5 and the Madmapper program. In addition, systems for on-site editing when it was required to make some modification to what was already planned.
Juan Luis Martínez commented that for the projection it was necessary to move to achieve the appropriate distance. According to the selected tomb, in many cases they had to install the projector on other tombs or trees to achieve certain shots, adapting to the conditions of the place but taking care not to disrespect it.
Projecting on trees
One of the novelties of this project are the spaces on which the mapping was carried out. The main difficulty arose when it came to doing it on the trees. As it was the first time it was performed, they did not know what technical conditions they required.
"One of the most difficult shots was the one made on a tree in which it was intended to simulate some fireworks. We thought the projectors we had was enough. We wanted this shot to be impactful, but since we had never mapped a tree we didn't know we needed projectors with more power. Now we know," he said.
The shot in which two characters are lighting fireworks, was designed so that the characters were in the same tree, but this one had two branches that came out of the middle, so they changed trees. But initially it wasn't going to be from a tree either, they were going to be in a grave. So there were several changes they made when they were already on the site. There is also another shot in which there is a bull touring tombs, that was also experimenting on the site and that gave more value to the final result.
The work of editing the short film by Llamarad de Petate was wasteful, because the recording was made tomb by grave and then required doing all the editing so that the images could be seen together. Otherwise, they would have had to use a projector and a computer with the software for each tomb and tree.
A dark scenario
Although technically the project did not require major challenges, the production team did have to face the normal conditions of the cemetery at night. "During the recording it got very cold and it was very dark, because at night a cemetery is full of rats, cockroaches and mosquitoes. But from the place they gave us all the facilities, they had a person who was pending all the time so that they did not get lost at night in the cemetery. We were so many people that it was not afraid to be in the cemetery at night, it was more scary of the bugs than of the dead."
In addition, the recordings were very repetitive because the images had to be recorded again and again. The scenario attracted a lot of attention, they were even called crazy for wanting to map the graves of a cemetery. But behind that there was dedicated work because they found graves that were broken and required greater care.
The representative of Nice productions stressed that this project, which was officially presented on August 30, has reached many countries in America and Europe. The most gratifying thing, he added, is that it was not lucrative but an idea in which he wanted to capture all the creative capacity of animation and the possibilities of the AV industry. The money they received with the prize was stretched to make this project possible.
A different look
The Santolo project arose after the animation agency won the call "Investment projects in the production of National Painting, Plastic and Visual Arts" created by CONACULTA and the INBA and supported by the Filming Commission of Mexico City.
Thus was born Ciudad Intervenida, a compilation of six short films with a total duration of 30 minutes of animation. This project in the hands of animation producer César Moheno Plá, brings together the talent of six studios and directors who represent the spearhead of the creation of independent animation in the Federal District. Santolo is one of six short films, directed by Alejandro García Caballero.
Juan Luis concluded that "The final relfexion is that there are no limits in this industry, creativity must be pushed to the limit. It shows that you can map on anything, it's going off the basics, the façade of the building that breaks and collapses." If you want to know the works visit www.ciudadintervenida.com
