January & February’s MPA

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!