We’ve been talking to 2 actors we know about playing a pair of Canadian ex-pats in Mexico; Phil Luzi and Jessica Hinkson. I proposed we take what is meant to be a shot of them in their ‘old’ life before Mexico, when they ran a florist’s shop together. The actors were game and had a good sense of humour about doing this, so we agreed – if it didn’t work or we didn’t like the shots, nothing lost.

If you look at this series of images, in order to end up with one that we liked, it does tell a funny little story.

Pansies Are Here! sign; My brain adds an exclamation mark.

Phil and Jessica, as a couple, standing underneath the sign in front of the florist’s.

Perhaps Jessica has realized something about Phil.

This made us all laugh, and gave us something to work with in terms of giving the graphic designer some material he could use.

This is simply candid; I took my chance to shoot Phil and Jess in between poses while they were laughing at themselves. They look lovely here and I just like the photo.

Here is the final art that Craig delivered:

I didn’t tell Craig what the purpose was, but when he finished putting it together and looked at it as a self-contained photo, it made him laugh suddenly.

So it works I think.

Hm. To keep it simple how about this: Just translate the dialogue first — later as his time increases, then maybe translate the whole of the scene.

Oliver Cantú arrives tomorrow — and it is Oliver who provides the 3rd and final level of translation on this project. In the same way that we are flexible with actors in English; discussing the dialogue and open to improvisation, so we will be working with the actors in the Spanish scenes. That’s why the final translation goes through Oliver as a young Mexican actor; to finalize colloquialisms, vernacular and the playability of dialogue in the scene.

It was their expertise I wished to have on the dialogue in the first 2 sets of translations — the first was done by an elderly academic gentleman from Spain, Alejandro Rabazo; the 2nd by Luis, also an academic, but younger and from Mexico; and the 3rd by Oliver, younger still (the age of the characters in the story) also from Mexico, but an actor as opposed to an academic.

In this way I believe we end up with much more lively dialogue that has been thoroughly explored. (In discussing a term like caretaker-handyman for example, we discussed whether or not it should be a term considered more general to Mexico or one that is regional to the Yucatan. In the end we made the regional choice.)
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My secondary concern is to have the scenes the dialogues appear in to be translated in deference to our actors who do not have much English.

Local actor Yasir Rodarte came to audition for the role of Alejandro the night after Luis took us to El Hoyo and he was great! Playful, inventive and willing to jump back and forth between genders in a scene reading. He was lovely and dear with a wonderful attitude. Wrote him a whole new scene today — only he doesn’t know it yet.
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Oh well — at least I welcomed them to the beach house with food and cocktails.

I mean, we’re indie, we’re not animals.
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For the sake of interest: We’re in the pueblo and port of Chicxulub – which is Maya for tail of the devil, referencing the meteorite that hit the earth millions of years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. It hit here.
This is what we are referencing in our title. We are also referencing the bad guy in our story — he is a devil, a fabulist and a liar.

Logline: THE DEVIL’S TAIL
Genre: Character driven mystery drama
3 friends go to Mexico to save their friend who’s disappeared. They discover they may need saving from him instead.

Possible poster slogan:
SOMETIMES, A GOOD FRIEND IS HARD TO FIND.

Hmm… we shall see…
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Photos deceptive.
House and whole property huge.

Great for shooting. Graded tropical garden down to the sea. There is a main house, a casa, and a separate little guest house, a casita, which I knew and wanted for our story — but even the casita is a substantial size.

In the casa, there is a huge beautiful rustic balcony off the master bedroom.
Huge deck off living/dining room with a separate palapa covered barbeque area. Quite a few tables. Palm trees on the property on the way down to the water have lights at their bases. Could actually re-dress the large deck as a restaurant if we need to.
We have decided the Barbecue palapa area will serve as our bar in the movie.

Walk down to separate palapa deck at the sea with the swimming pool is much larger than appeared in photographs. Whole set up totally believable as hotel type guest house or even as a hotel.

Still hoping to shoot in Tiburón restaurant-bar as “Cross’ hangout” in the pueblo.
Neighbouring property has small construction going on which is a sound concern – but it’s not constant during the day so we plan on getting up in the dark to prep then shoot as much as we can in daylight until the noise starts and catch m.o.s shots and quiet breaks after that. Nights are quiet so we’re ok for our night shooting. Our one day off a week is scheduled for weekdays, so in theory, weekend shooting during the day at the house will be quiet sans construction. Our shoot days away from the house are also scheduled for during the weekdays too. So we’re not overly worried about the sound issue. (Note; it ended up not being an issue at all. Noisy construction ended before the arrival of our first Canadian actor. We got lucky.)

Canadian actors arrive Monday with the Key Hair and Make Up artist. Mexican actor Oliver Cantú is flying in from Monterrey a few days after that — he is bilingual and extending his stay to become one of our true partners in production. We love him already  — great funny communicator and his audition was the best I’ve ever seen probably in my life. This will help us with the Mexican actors that don’t have as much English and also with negotiating on a place like the Tiburón.

First U.S. actor, Arthur Pellman, who will be playing our retired Texas Border Patrol man, arrives on the 8th.
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I had left (on purpose) a couple of white and black over-sized tank tops at home. Didn’t think I needed them, wanted to be responsible and practical and not over-pack.
Now that I’m on this glorious beach on the Gulf of Mexico, I have changed my mind. Being one of the producers of a micro-budget feature film, I think about little things like not buying new tanks when I know that it is not too late for another crew member to bring them out here.  Hey, they roll up real small… so if the DVD pick-up from the house-sitter neighbour hasn’t happened yet but it is still going to, it would be cool to include those. Hardly a production emergency, just layers of this type of clothing is proving useful.

After working on script revisions last night I was feeling the need to get out there and connect with the sea, so I walked down to the beautiful palapa deck which is in between the sea and at the pool to have my morning coffee today.

Suddenly I saw a huge flap of fish in the sea and a breaking dorsal fin.
And again and again, curving over and down… and another.
Two dolphins swimming by.!!!!

It really is true — I said to Chris, our hero-director — you’re just going to have to have the camera on you AT ALL TIMES, even when having morning coffee — to catch the unexpected.

The Unexpected can be a great friend to us no-budget movie makers.
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I left Samantha, Tania, and Emma back at the B&B in Merida to sort out some last minute business, and did the 50 minute drive to the casa.

The bad news is, although it was listed as being in the Chicxulub area, that was a pretty loose description.  It’s about 16 km from the village, and about as far from any village as one can get on the coast of the Mayan Riviera.  Definitely not walking distance, and the bus only goes by a couple times a day, so we’ll have to rent a vehicle for the whole time we’re here – something I was hoping to avoid.

On the big plus side, our property is in the middle of what was once a coconut plantation, and our nearest neighbors are hundreds of yards away on either side.  That’s way more privacy than I’m used to for this area.  Also, the grounds themselves are quite varied with open sandy spaces, little mounds, and various trails and pathways among the palms and shrubs.  Lots of good shooting opportunities there.  There are small flood lights at the base of several of the palm trees.

The pool is almost an infinity pool, and it sits atop a small hill at the edge of the beach.  It has a deck and a palapa and a clear view down the coast for miles in either direction. Excellent!

We have the use of a small beach house (casita) right on the beach, a basic kitchen/bathroom/bedroom affair.  The larger house about 80 feet further up has 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, a large kitchen, combination living/dining room.  A big back deck, and a big balcony off the master bedroom.  I’m not crazy about the colour scheme.  Every room and hallway in both houses is white with blue trim, so we’ll have to find simple ways to make rooms look like they are not part of the same house for other required locations, like the Cancun hotel room scene.

It’s really beautiful here.

I was met at the gate by maybe 30 local mongrel dogs, all very yappy.  They were all variations on the standard small brown domestic Mexican dog I see everywhere I go here.  I’ve just never seen so many in one place.  I hope they don’t bark while we’re shooting.  I led them along the path to the caretaker’s house just inside the gate, where I’d been told I could pick up the keys to the property from Carlos, the caretaker.

A woman met me and I managed to get the message that Carlos had gone to the village to get milk for the ninos.  No idea where the keys were or when he’d be back.  Oh well.

I whiled away some time wandering around shooting BTS with my small old digital Sony videocam, then suddenly fell asleep in a hammock for a couple hours.  I woke up around dusk completely confused.  I was on the deck of an abandoned house on an empty beach where?  Oh, right.  Had a moment or two of post-apocalyptic angst.

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The beach house is further away from the village then suggested, but only a 10 minute drive into the pueblo for free internet and we had our transport budget to include hired drivers and occasional rentals, so in fact, the private rental is only a bit more money then what we had roughed in.

Pedro Flores is our source for the vehicle rental and is a hired driver and tour guide. Line Producer Emma and I had arranged a meeting with him yesterday and it turned out I recognized him — I met him 2 years ago on here. Funny guy.

He’s bringing a local lady from Chicxulub to meet us tonight to arrange to be our cook on shoot days at the house — so the main meal of the day for cast and crew is a catered one. Her prices are more reasonable than what we had budgeted as well. So no disasters yet. Have met great people.

Re writing script — as always, to make it better — and now with specific actors in mind.

Keep fingers crossed All. Pray please that all goes well.
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