What failures (of your own) have you been able to learn from? How did they change you and your process?

After making my first short film I learned that to tell a good story you don’t have to be overly ambitious in terms of locations. The story of my first short film required complex things, like: filling a house with trash, shooting in a prison, shooting a fight scene, working with a child... I think because it was my first short film, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Ultimately, I was able to pull it off, but the result wasn’t something that satisfied my expectations of the type of film I wanted to make.

My first short film taught me to be more practical. That’s why when I was given the assignment of making a second short film; I decided to follow Robert Rodriguez philosophy of making a story with what you have. I knew that the best thing would be to write a story that could be shoot in an easy setting, so I came up with a story that took place in the University. I ended up shooting a story about a student who wakes up late for school and has to overcome many obstacles to get to the University, just to realize it’s Sunday. Shooting a more practical story really made a difference. My first short film took me 8 days to shoot, while the second one only took two days.

I also learned that you don’t need to come up with as many angles as possible for every scene. I also learned that having a storyboard could make communication with the cameraman easier. During the shooting of my first short film, I always wasted a lot of time trying to get the camera operator to frame the shoot as I had picture it in my mind. Halfway through the shooting the instructor suggested me to do a storyboard, so I made one and it worked. The storyboard helped me show the cameraman how I wanted the shots and he was able to set them up more quickly. After that I always use a storyboard.

I also realized after my two short films that you don’t have to stress about lighting. Lighting a scene usually takes time, but in my case I realized that no matter how long we took trying to make it look right, it never satisfied us because we didn’t have the proper equipment or a technician who knew how to properly light a scene. After learning more about editing, I realized that It would be better for me to stop wasting time trying to light a scene that was always going to end up looking bad, when I could correct that later in postproduction. Now, when I shoot and I don’t have someone in my crew who can light a scene really well or if we don’t have all the lights we need, I don’t worry because I can see in my mind how it’ll look after doing some postproduction. I know that you can’t do everything in postproduction, but you can do a lot, especially if you set the lights thinking about how you might alter their look later.

When you get angry at a movie, what sets you off? Are there common qualities in cinema today that you dislike? Is there something you try to subvert or avoid or rebel against in your work?

I don’t like stories that seem little pretentious. I hate when I see a movie like “Black Swan” and I suddenly feel like they are banking on the essence and effort of a previous film like “The Piano Teacher”. Making it look like they are the groundbreakers when someone before them came up with that style of story. Talking about the Black Swan, I also don’t like films that exploit sexuality just cause they think that putting a sex scene increases the art status of their film. If you are doing a film like “Fatal Attractions” then sex scenes are justified or “Irreversible” where it’s a key part of the story. Sex scenes, like any type of scene need to have a reason to be in the story and sometimes I feel like some filmmakers just like to throw them in there to shock the audience like in “The girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.

I also hate when there’s a trend that starts getting out of hand. For example, one person makes a good movie about pirates, and then suddenly everyone starts making pirate movies regardless of the quality of the scripts. Repetitive storylines are boring too: the ugly girl who gets transformed into a beauty, the college kids who always end up on a deserted house where a killer awaits them, etc. In my work, I try to stay away from this. I try to give my stories a twist in the end that takes them away from what’s expected.

Another thing that I have a problem with are overly dramatic scenes that have a exaggerated style of acting. In my opinion this doesn’t work anymore because it belongs to an older film language or style. I remember watching the third season of Damages (which isn’t a film but I think it illustrates my point) and thinking what happened? When did this turn into a soap opera?

I also can’t stand character’s that are way too good. Character’s who are designed to portray an image of moral incorruptibility, kind of like a superhero. Unless, they are outstanding characters like Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird” or Eliot Ness in “The Untouchables”. I like flawed characters that convey real human emotions. In my stories, I always try to create characters that make mistakes; who may have petty emotions because they feel more real to me. I try to stay away from making characters that always do the right thing. I find more interesting creating characters that might do things for selfish reasons.

But, the thing that really irritates me when I see a movie is bad novel adaptation. I just hate when they make changes to the original story for no reason at all. Because when I’m watching a novel adaptation I’m always analyzing whether they made the change for production or time related reasons. When, I find that the changes they made didn’t represent a benefit, I get angry. Especially when scriptwriters cut scenes that I though were essential to the story or the character’s motivation and make changes that may totally alter our interpretation of the character’s actions. For example, in the film “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” during the scene where Dumbledore is killed, Harry is supposed to be paralyzed by spell casted seconds before thus preventing him from doing something to help him. In the film, however the scriptwriter chose to just let Harry hide and witness the attack. In my opinion, a change like that alters completely our perception of the character. In the first case, he was portrayed as someone brave who might have done something, while in the second example; he comes across as someone too scared to act. Leaving the story as it was in the book wouldn’t have cost more or less money to the filmmakers because the scene would have been shot anyway, just with that slight change. I think this why people usually feel disappointed when they watch a novel adaptation.

What films have been the most inspiring or influential to you and why?

Some of Lars Von Tiers Films have been the most influential to me in terms of style. The ones that really made an impression in me were: Dogville, The Idiots and The Boss of it All. Dogville’s minimalist approach showed me that to make a good film all you need is a good story. You don’t need a diversity of locations; you don’t need special effects or a huge budget. All you need is good actors, a captivating story and creativity. Who would have thought that you could make a film with only a theater set as background, using marks on the floor divide the stage and some props?

In this same direction, Rodrigo García’s “Ten Tiny Love Stories”, a film composed of a series of monologues, where all we see is a woman sitting in a chair telling a story, made an impact in me. It made me realize the importance of casting, because the only way to pull off a film like that is by choosing someone who can actually captive the audience with just her voice.

Going back to Lars Von Tiers, I also found inspiring one of his next films called “The Boss of it All” because it showed me that you can tell a story without caring about continuity or photography. Through out the film we see disjointed cuts and bad framing but that doesn’t stop the spectator from watching it. Again the audience is so engaged with the story that nothing else matters. In this film, Von Tiers used a technique called Automavision, where the director of photography chooses the best position for the camera, frames the shot and then a computer takes over and randomly decides the camera movements. It decides when to tilt, pan or zoom. This shows you how much you can strip away from a film. You can choose to forget about the traditional rules of editing or composition, as long as you tell an engaging story.

Other films that have inspired me are Errol Morris documentaries: The Thin Blue Line and Mr. Death. Watching these documentaries I realized that the secret for telling a good story is to always try to recreate the classical dramatic structure. Even in the case of documentaries where that might be seen as something more difficult because you are not making up a story, but rather capturing reality and that limits your control. These two documentaries amazed because of the way the stories were constructed. You can fell the three-way act. Before watching them, I had seen many documentaries that just lingered in the exposition of a reality or conflict. When I compared the two styles, I realized the importance of the dramatic structure. Because with the second type of documentaries, I always felt the audience left unsatisfied. There was never anything wrong with the idea behind their stories; they had just forgotten to construct them in a way where at some point there would be a resolution to whatever conflict they were addressing.

Another film that I would have to mention is “The Silence of the Lambs”. I have watched that film about 100 times and it taught me that when a film is good you can watch in a small TV, with people talking around you or dubbed to another language and if the film is good none of that will matter. Sometimes we get obsessed with watching films in the perfect screen with the best sound possible, and when we don’t enjoy a film sometimes we blame it in those technicalities. This film is also what got me hooked with thrillers and crime novels, which is something I want to explore in the film I’ll shot as my thesis. 

Why do you want to make the film you are working on at UCF?

Corruption is a well-known secret inside government institutions in Ecuador. It has always amazed me how this type of illegal activities can exist so openly in the Ecuadorian society without ever being any repercussions. It’s like the Prohibition period in the EEUU, where although alcohol was banned, people kept selling it and drinking it. When something like this happens, people stop seeing corruption as an anomaly, it becomes standard procedure. But just like with the Prohibition it remains an underground activity. The dark secret in the family, something people would try to hide and never admit openly but which they practice everyday. You want to skip a driving ticket, you pay the police officer; you want your son to pass in school you pay the teacher; you want to win a trial, you pay the judge; you want to succeed as a government employee, you let the politicians steal, etc.

I have always wondered too about the process a person goes through when what he or she’s been taught to perceive as a good or acceptable action, gets confronted with a corrupted reality. How would this person react? Would the person embrace or fight this reality, which asks him or her to act against their principles?

In a society, the government sets the rules. If the government is corrupt then the whole system becomes corrupted and I think that’s what has happened in Ecuador and other countries. So I thought what if there's someone out there that becomes so sick of corruption that he or she decides to take vengeance against the people responsible for it. Someone who becomes a sort of vigilante that wants to get rid of the bad politicians or government employees who have committed acts of corruption. It could be, one of these people who are always whispering about it. What if someone would actually dare to do it? When people lose faith in the system, it’s usually a matter of time before they start taking matters into their own hands.

I want to make a film that addresses this type of perceptions in a comic way: Can the system ever truly change? Is corruption impenetrable? Is death the only way to get rid of corrupt politicians? 

What makes a film great for you?

The approach that’s given to the story is what makes a film great to me. Aside from the details, stories revolve around the same themes and premises. What may change is the approach filmmakers give to their stories. Like Jacques Aumont says in his book Aesthetics of film: “When we go see a fiction film, we always go to see the same film and a different film”.  When a filmmaker does something creative and breaks the traditional format of constructing a story like Christopher Nolan in “Memento” or David Koepp’s approach to the ending “Secret Window” (if we focus on content alone) where instead of showing the usual negative consequences of murder, he presents it as a healing action for the main character. This is what makes a film great to me, having that something else, which makes it different from the rest of films, we’ve ever watched.

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