In late March I spent five days in Galicia’s Costa do Morte working as second unit for a documentary directed by Isabel Coixet. The 30 minute film deals with the Prestige disaster and its most positive side: the thousands of volunteers who travelled to Galicia in order to clean up the beaches. It was an incredible shoot: I got to ride on fishermen’s boats, I saw numerous sunsets and sunrises at the most incredible locations, I heard amazing stories, laughed a lot with our small team, petted dogs and was just really happy to be able to film it all.

The name of the documentary is “Marea Blanca” and you after yesterday’s premiere you can now watch it online here.

You can find more info about the film and project on the website.

April is my favourite month after December. It is so for childish reasons, the main ones being that my birthday is on April and that it is when Spring really starts. I love that you can never really tell if it is going to be sunny or if there will be a storm in the next five minutes during April, it keeps things interesting. This month I did a lot of travelling, saw my family and did many other things. So, without further ado, here are April’s MPA.

Ducks crossing the street at 8 a.m.

More or less 600 km after: Bulli aka Ferral at my inlaws’ house.

These are my favourite flowers. I want to cover my future ranch with them. They just smell SO good.

One morning I took my car and went exploring on my own. I got a little bit lost and then I drove over a damm. This was the view.

I found the way and managed to get where I wanted: Finisterre.

It was super cold and windy…

… but absolutely beautiful.

I found this dead fish? on the beach. It was gigantic ( use my shadow as a reference…). Anybody know what it was?

And when I got back, I saw this. Spanning time: Bulli aka Ferral, Dos caras & Richi.

The view from my inlaws’. Dream life.

Reading by the fire place. Dream life pt 2.

Susanna & I.

It snowed on our way back to Madrid.

Monkey pulling a cat’s tail on the back of a van.

I went to have dinner at a friend’s house and I made the dessert.

Lolita.

Making the crown for my birthday photos.

27.

28.

I went to see the Waterboys live on my birthday. I bought the tickets as a gift to myself and it made my day so special because the concert was completely mind blowing & inspiring.

I also made this cake to celebrate. It was so incredibly delicious.

Dog with ponytails.

Feral cat in the park.

Oh hai.

Paw prints.

I took a plane to visit my family.

I was walking around my hometown and when I walked past the graveyard I felt the urge to go in and snoop around. This was the nicest grave I found, I think it belonged to a sailor who died young at sea.

I love all the little pretty details mixed with the dirt.

And the flowers.

Bougainvilles always reminds me of home.

My friend Caro invited me to have crumpets for breakfast at her house. She asked me if I wanted to go with her to walk her cat Anouk. You can imagine what I said…

Anouk waiting to go out.

She meowed impatiently all the way to the park, demanding to be put on the ground immediately.

<3 <3

I went with my mom to buy some flowers for her garden.

I love this greenhouse-nursery so much.

It makes me wish I had a garden.

Dream life pt. 3.

Saw this lady and her dog.

I went to see my cousins and when I got there I found Jagger napping like this.

The best thing is that Jagger loves to sit at the table while my uncle and aunt have dinner, so they always put out a chair for him.

Sketching some new ideas for a video.

My sister baked this delicious red velvet cake for me.

Iris stole my phone for a while.

And then we built a fort.

Dad playing guitar.

The view from my dad’s studio.

A frog somehow got in to my dad’s kitchen and we rescued it and put it back into the wild. <3

Walking in the rain.

Popppy, my sister’s dog. She is very neurotic.

I’m completely in love with Iris. She had to dance in front of a lot of people and I did her hair and make up. My favourite part of this photo is her teeth.

*This is part of the Birthday Project in which I take a picture every year on my birthday. If you haven’t seen the rest, you can find them on my website, under personal projects.

Dear Friends,

I know I am super late posting last month’s MPA but I haven’t really had time to sit down and go through all the pictures, resize them, edit them, upload them and write their descriptions (!!!) until now. This is because I have been trying to push some projects forward and they have taken up most of my free time. And also, I have been having adventures.

March was a good month. It started out slow as I spent most of my days revising a script I am working on but then I had to go away and work on a shoot for someone else.  I can’t really tell you much about it for now, but hopefully I will be able to do so soon. So, without further ado, here are March’s Mobile Phone Adventures.

My mother gave me an ice-cream maker for Xmas, so I made this vegan, sugar free, vanilla & walnut ice-cream. It was okay but I should have remembered that I don’t really like vanilla before making it.

Correcting the first draft of my script while sitting in the park, trying to keep away from all the distractions the internet provides.

But then, it’s hard not to get distracted by real life when it provides French poodles in stripy matching t-shirts.

Tempting.

Went for a walk with Julia and showed her all the places in the park where cats and squirrels live.

There were blossoming trees everywhere. They smelled so good.

I bought this nail polish because it reminded me of beetle wings.

This is one of my teenagers’ (from my teenager project) dog. I think he was called Tago, he looked so depressed.

I went to the park to work some more on my script. On the way back home I talked to this lady who was walking her cat. <3

Father’s day cake in the shape of an iPhone. I think I would be so sad if I was a father and I got this cake.

At the airport watching the sunrise at 6 a.m. and on my way to the shoot.

On the plane they had a poster with some facts about weasels. It made my flight much more enjoyable!

Location scouting.

This was the view from my hotel room. I almost cried when I woke up and saw the sun rise above the ocean.

When I saw that this almond cake was going to be part of my breakfast I almost cried too. : )

I met Alegría…

…and this really friendly Boxer.

We went looking for a sunset to film…

… and we found it.

Some hours later I watched the sunrise from a fisherman’s boat.

 I am a little bit afraid of boats but I always dare myself to do things that scare me. Those ‘scary’ things always reward me for making an effort, being there was so beautiful and exciting.

The Captain.

And me filming. I love my job so much.

Back on land I met this dog. I gave him a little bit of my breakfast but he didn’t want it.

We would just stumble upon the most beautiful places…

Here we met the dog with the softest fur I have ever touched in my life.

I must admit that I miss the sea and wilderness so much when I am in Madrid.

I found a dead bird.

Had some liquor instead of tea while a lady serenaded us.

This dog followed his owner everywhere and was so scared of everything.

Teenagers spanning time.

Back in Madrid. I went to see how Raulio was getting on.

And I was so happy because it finally rained.

Met this stray.

TGIF treat. Mint ice cream is the quickest way to my heart.

One day I was going to a meeting and I saw this really friendly cat which had been abandoned in the street. He followed me for a little bit and let me pet him, I wanted to rescue him but I had to go and couldn’t take him with me…

After the meeting I managed to get a pet carrier and get in touch with an animal shelter but when I went back to get him he had disappeared. : ( I hope somebody rescued him.

I went on a picnic with Héctor.

One night I was on my way to the cinema when I discovered that there had been a Holi festival in my neighbourhood.

Holi-goers.

During one of my walks I stumbled upon a dog & owner demonstration.

I took millions of pictures of all the dogs there but I have edited them for your sanity’s sake. Here’s one of my favourite dogs.

Photographer getting down & dirty.

I saw this man with his dog in the underground. What I liked best is that he carried his dog like it was the most expensive and delicate thing in the whole world, it was so cute to watch.

Everything is beautiful in Spring.

Even old wallpaper.

There was a general strike.

And to end the month, I went to take pictures of another one of my teenagers. The thing is that I am not posting any pictures lately but I am taking LOTS of them. I am just keeping them secret in hope of doing something a little bit more well thought out and meaningful than just blogging pictures as I take them.

Tippy toes.

Lately I have observed this new trend in which everyone feels they have the right to write articles, blog entries, rants, etc. telling others what they should do in order to live better lives. They say “you should behave this way, you should eat this and not that, you should use this brand instead of that one, you should believe this instead of that…”  but I think that it could all be summed up in one line: “live your life like I live mine.”

I must admit that I get angry every time I try and read one of these articles but what makes me feel like punching a hole through my computer screen are the hundreds of comments of people saying “yes, yes, you changed my life, you are my saviour, tell me more!” It is as if somehow people are replacing religion and priests for this pseudo gurus that present us with the opportunity to become someone else.

I am going to be completely honest and admit that I find it all so condescending and belittling. These articles make me feel ugly and inadequate for two main reasons:

1. I don’t want to settle for the idea they have of what my life should be and this somehow makes me feel like I am wrong, that I don’t belong.

2. Let’s face it, it is humanly impossible for me to be perfect and please everybody at the same time. The stages of my life when I have been unhappiest are those in which I tried to fulfill what I thought were other people’s expectations of who I should be.

The thing is, that magazines have been doing this for decades: telling you how to get on with dates, how to be more desirable, how to fit in more, what the latest thing is, what you should wear and like, etc. As a teenager I vowed to never buy a magazine ever again because I strongly believed that I could observe things, analyze them and come to a conclusion about them myself and I didn’t need anybody else telling me how I should do things. One thing is to debate and discuss, I am always up for that as it broadens your horizons, makes you see things differently and sometimes changes your point of view.  What I am not up for is preaching and imposing, because I believe that this is what most articles are doing as there no real place for discussion in them, you either agree or disagree and that’s it.

I also find that self help books are just the same. I am not talking about books about psychology that will help you understand your problems and improve, those can be helpful. The ones that I am talking about are those books that talk about how marvelous your life could be if you adapted to someone else’s pattern of behaviour.

One of the first things I noticed when I started dating my boyfriend was that he had a Wonder Warthog comic displayed on a shelf. I asked him why he had it there and he told me that he really liked the cover. In it wonder warthog is dancing with two naked women around a fire and he is screaming out one sentence. When I moved in with him a couple of years ago, I decided to frame it and hang it up on the wall as a surprise. Since then, I have looked at that sentence almost every day and somehow, it has become my motto. Do you want to know what Wander Warthog is screaming? Are you ready? Here you go:

So when people try to convince me or you that their choice of life is the right choice, it makes me want to cry with frustration because doing whatever you want to do do means that you need to live your life in a way that it is suitable for you, not for me or anybody else. It means that you can have kids if you want to and not have them if you don’t want to. It means that you can be a vegetarian or eat every animal you find in your path, it’s your choice, it also means that you can exercise every day or just be a potato coach, it’s okay if you feel good about it. It means that you can wear make up if it makes you feel pretty or that you can never touch the dammed thing, whatever suits you best. It means that you can shoot analog or digital pictures, whatever suits you best. But overall, it means that you need to do whatever makes you feel good with yourself and if that works for you, it’s great! But don’t force others to take your path because every person is different.

I know that by giving this speech it might seem like I dishing out advice like the articles I hate do. I also realize that I may be at risk of seeming like I think I  think am very clever and that I need other people to adapt to my philosophy of life, but no, I don’t. Just do whatcha wanna do and then, let me do what I want to do.

Dear Friends,

As I said last month, I would be pushing back January’s MPA and merging them with February’s MPA for two reasons: the first one is that I didn’t want to post any spoilers for the video I was working on and the second one being that I knew I would be locked up editing for most of February and that I wouldn’t have many pictures to post. These two months have been really intense and they were mainly dominated by the video: most days I would go to bed at 2-3 a.m and wake up at 8 a.m. the next day to carry on working. It might sound like I am complaining but I love working on projects, so I was very happy.

Of course, there were some cats & dogs too. So, here are January & February’s Mobile Phone Adventures.

Three King’s day cake. We always buy the smallest because it is so rich but, at the same time,  it reminds me of eating it with my family as a kid.

I spent the first week of January stoaryboarding the video…

I find storyboarding really useful in order to tidy my ideas up. It’s funny to see how much the video is or isn’t like the storyboard once it is finished.

Super cute puppy that is always sitting at the window of a shop.

Before shooting I always go location scouting. I like to see different places and imagine how each one would work with the scenes I want to do. Here is one of the abandoned sanatoriums we shot in. At first I was going to go there by myself but after reading lots of websites about paranormal phenomena (that’s how I find out about these places…) I was a little bit scared and had to ask my friend Hector to come with me.

One of the bedrooms in the Sanatorium.

This is the stuff horror films & nightmares are made of.

I imagine they used this lamp for surgery. I liked it but had no excuse for using it in the video.

This was the lab. As soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to shoot the fire scene in it. I love how that cabinet is turned upside down, its so uncanny.

And this was the chapel, which was really impressive and spooky in real life. I chose not to shoot in it because it had been completely ruined by graffitis. I must admit that I hate them, the building would have been 10000 times better without stupid ugly scribblings all over the place.

We went through each room in the building, which had 5 stories. I took lots of pictures with my phone but they don’t make the place justice. This room was incredible, it was filled with old medical records, invoices for treatments…

…and unopened syringes.

When we got out of the building there was this cute dog who came to say hi to me. He had a sty in his eye, which really matched the uncanniness of the place.

Then we went to another abandoned sanatorium. Here’s Hector with a giant stick.

And here is where we shot the swing scene.

The view from the place was magnificent.

This is where we shot the ‘fierecilla’ scene, the one where Paloma is eating chicken. We found the place almost by chance and it was so beautiful!

I was going to shoot the ending scene here and I was hoping for some snow but two days before the shoot temperatures plummeted and the forecast said it was going to be -16ºC at this very spot. So in the end, I had to change it.

It hasn’t rained at all this winter so when Kellog’s dumped a big pile of snow in the city centre as a publicity stunt, the kids went crazy.

My living room moments before I did the wardrobe test with Paloma.

We really loved this outfit but I chose not to use it in the end. Instead I decided to go for 90′s pop for the skater look.

Alba lent me these skates. I stuck the stars on them before she told me I could customize them if I wanted. So here is how they looked before…

…and after.

I also painted these shoes and put glitter on them. They were bright pink originally (you can see them in the wardrobe test photo.)

Here’s the state of my studio at 1 a.m. It is as if a glitter tornado hit it…

No matter how busy you are, there’s always time for dogs with jackets.

I put this note in the fridge. The red blobs are supposed to be drops of blood.

The night before day 1 of the shoot.

We had to be super organized to be able to work quickly in the sanatoriums, so I packed all the costumes in bags.

I didn’t take any pictures with my phone during the shoot, sorry. Instead here’s this dapper looking cat.

The swing in the making. This was literally the toughest wood ever to exist on planet Earth. It took me at least 40 minutes to drill the four holes.

Managed to borrow a bandurria which was just perfect.

I bought these treats for Coda as I wasn’t sure how we were going to convince her to do the things we wanted her to do in the shoot. She loved them and ate the whole bag in one day! I have to thank Markies for making the dog scenes work.

The sketch I drew for Paloma’s hair and make up in the swing scene.

Paloma’s hair and make up in real life. Pretty accurate, huh.

Hector took this picture of me playing the song on my mobile phone so Paloma could lip synch the lyrics properly. It was so cold I couldn’t feel my fingers and she didn’t complain once.

15 kgs of wood, water and mountain boots in the trunk of my car.

Oh, hai!

As I said before, two days before the last day of the shoot the weather forecast told us that we were all going to freeze to death if we went to film to the mountains. So I had to look for another location for the lumberjack & final scenes. This is where we shot it in the end.

Treyu.

The last day of the shoot I looked like Mr Bojangles. I considered posting a picture of me because it is really funny but I guess it turns out that I have more self respect than sense of humour. Here’s my shadow instead. (From this moment on my life was basically editing, editing, editing…)

Pretty teenager in the underground: She had a cat bag & cat earmuffs and was wearing different nail polish on each hand. <3

Cats snuggling for warmth. <3×10202

Sometimes I have real Jane Campionesque moments.

More cute teenagers in the underground.

Laughing dog in the street.

Raulio is my neighbour’s cat. She is very old and can’t really go out of her house, so when Raulio cut his paw with a shard of glass I had to rescue him. He wasn’t very happy as you can see.

Cat aid society.

Veggie burger with flowers.

I saw this beautiful sunset on my way to a mini shoot for someone else.

And on my way back I saw this man getting a shave at a barber’s.

When I am editing and pressure starts to build up as the deadline nears, I try to do nice things for myself in order not to end up like this. So, I made this bean salad with tahini dressing that was completely amazing. I used walnuts instead of chestnuts because I didn’t have any and even though my picture looks GROSS, it was delicious.

And that’s it for now. See you soon!

Dear Friends, the day has finally come and I bring you the new video I have done for Dreamend, as it has just been premiered on Prefix.

I have been working non-stop on this video for more than two months and there is so much to tell that I am unsure as where to start. I suppose I should begin by saying how much I love Dreamend’s music. They are one of my favourite bands at the moment and I have listened to their album almost every day since I last discovered them last July. So when Ryan, the brains behind Dreamend, told me that he was going to have a new album out  and that I could make a video for one of the songs, I was really happy.

Both the album from where this song comes from ( And the tears washed me, wave after cowardly wave) and its predecessor (And I ate myself bite by bite) were inspired by some journals Ryan bought in an auction in the woods and which belonged to a serial killer. The songs in both albums are his personal interpretation of this man’s journals.

So, for this video I wanted to dwell in what I believe makes Dreamend’s music so special: its naive, original and cheerful approach to a very dark subject. Inspired by the name of the song, Dreamend’s music, the story behind the albums and  the way I constantly shape-shift in my nightmares, I set to imagine the different scenarios that could happen in this man’s head.

So, here is a little story about an obsessive man and an elusive girl. I hope you like it!

Dreamend – The Sick Call Cabinet from Jennifer Cox on Vimeo.

—

Actress: Paloma Alma.
Actor: Luis Muñiz.
Make up for Luis Muñiz: Angela Arranz.
Assistant Director: Alba Diethlem.
Production Assistants: Hector M. Garrido & Regi Jimenez.
Animal wrangling: Manuel Silvestre & Juan M. Bello.
Best dog in the world: Coda.

ps. You will be able to read more gossip about the shoot & see some making of pictures on my Mobile Phone Adventures in a couple of days.