I really can’t believe we are more than two thirds of the way through ‘the long way up..’ it seems a world away since we were camped in Ushuaia looking at the ridiculous journey ahead of us. Believe it or not before going into Colombia we considered selling the van! After so many problems and with it money dwindling, moral was low.. there were times where the small budget we live on was completely consumed by paying mechanic fee’s but we couldn’t do it. We had to finish what we started..

Central America we flew through.. with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatamala being the most dangerous countries in the trip we weren’t too keen exploring the wondrous countryside and we were pushed for time to reach Mexico to meet up with Carlo’s friend Pietro. So we crossed three countries in as many days, no serious problems, other than a corrupt cop who wanted to lock Carlo in his makeshift jail/shed at one point but I did get to sleep in my first motel!! It was late one night after we entered El Salvador, without anything to eat all day and completely exhausted, we couldn’t be bothered to find a parking spot so, driving through Santa Rosa de Lima, we were talked into staying the night in a bright ‘lime’ green motel by its owner.. it was lovely and clean, it had air con, a hot shower.. lime green walls (inside too?!), matching bed covers and in the headboard was a love heart mirror and little love heart headrests.. Yes it was that kind of motel but i slept soundly ;)

The motel dreams are made from...

We stuck to the west coast and entered Mexico on July 28th. Slept on yet another cliff edge this time in a huge thunder storm and spent 3days on the beach of Saladita, a recommended place by a fellow traveler, thanks Anna. We had a campsite to our selves as this place was deserted, which we liked as we generally don’t like people..

I did make the leap, skip, jump to Cancun to meet up with some friends for a few days and had a wonderful time playing with sea turtles and swimming in the Caribbean ocean… We even went to some Mayan ruins and a Cenote cave where you swim in a fresh water pool deep at the bottom of the cave. Other than this little getaway from my ‘spouse’, I must say we’ve had a lazy time in Morelia with Pietro, it’s been pretty much a month here now, really getting into all the homely comforts, the sofa, a ‘real’ kitchen, hot showers! all these little things I took for granted before… but having internet is a complete life killer as we’ve both been sucked in on catching up with the world, it killed our enthusiasm to go out and shoot.. So, I made myself get out the other day and capture some of Morelia’s qualities as it is a beautifully cultured city and Carlo even got off his big fat a** and did a shoot with Pietro which was pretty cool.

I call it “Pietro the couch jumping Super Genius!!” – he studies quantum physics, i think he can read minds… (some people think that’s what it actually means he can do..)

It hasn’t been a complete dos this past month, our Canadian visa’s have been granted, which means our final destination in Vancouver will be our home!

Stay tuned for the US post!! Cali here we come…..

Drift Wood beach

like i said, deserted..

View from our campsite

Working hard, doing his thang..

Drift wood beach

LiGHT in THE SaND

same same

our long way up favourite star

Morelia Life - Real Mexico

Morelia Life

Morelia musicans

BEHIND THE SCENES: “Pietro the couch jumping Super Genius!!”

BHTS "Pietro the couch jumping super genius!"

Princes of Italy

The final result

The adventurous life of a physicist.

We have just finished our second short doco and yes we are still in Pisco! :)

I’m so pleased we managed to pull this one together! It means a lot to us and all the volunteers too! It wasn’t the simplest of documentaries to make and completly different to the last.

Its a unique story and we have been very fortunate to have a very cool and committed volunteer, Naveen from Pisco Sin Fronteras (PSF) to help us out and be our protagonist in the film. He is very close with this particular family, knows their story very well and in particular has a bond with their youngest child, baby Norma. This family is one of the many families Pisco Sin Fronteras have helped after the fatal destruction caused by the earthquake in 2007, however this story goes a little further…

Baby Norma, is a gorgeous 8months old baby. She’s a special little girl and so good, hardly ever cries and is totally fascinated by the world around her. Unfortunately.. and here’s the sad side.. she was born with an imperforate anus, which means she was born with a congenital (present from birth) defect in which the opening to the anus is missing or blocked and in this case she has two very sore and painful open wounds on her belly where she excretes feces – i’d never heard of this disease until now and is a birth defect that is relatively common and occurs in about 1 out of 5,000 infants. (please click here to get a better explanation of the diagnosis.

Not only this but she was recently also diagnosed with down syndrome.
Baby Norma is in critical need of surgery and the family simply are unable to afford the procedure for her.. Naveen has been fund-raising and it will literally save her life! This film is to show her situation and to get the word out to see if we can all pull together and get her the surgery she desperately needs.

So, just by posting this to all your friends, and by donating what little you can afford, you will be contributing to help save a beautiful little girl that deserves a second chance.

Take some time after the video and look around to what you have.. how fortunate you are.. life is short guys and its not often we get to give and contribute to help such a cause. We all benefit from having our lives in the western world and its not until we see something like this, that were reminded of how lucky we are, no matter how sh*tty our day was..

A ‘must’ is to specifically state that your donation is for Baby Norma’s surgery, in the notes box at the bottom of the donation page. Here’s the link: https://omprakash.org/DonationForm

Enough of me talking, bums on seats and click below (for the version with ITALIAN subtitles see at the bottom of the page):

Big love to you all,

Meet baby Norma Noelia

The man with the voice! ;)

The Familia

A more traditional family portrait

Anything is possible

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION TODAY AND YOUR DAY WILL BECOME EVEN MORE AWESOME!

Good morning Vietnam!

I know it’s been a while but we’ve been reasonably busy in the last period.

At the moment we’re working for an organisation in Pisco, on the coast of Peru. Pisco had been devastated by an earthquake in 2007 and it’s still struggling to recover. Pisco Sin Fronteras is an organisation who has been manly involved with the reconstruction of houses and community centres, but is now shifting to a more long term/social sustainable approach.

We were initially asked to produce a documentary about the organisation but to be honest they already had an awesome documentary made one year ago, all focused on the volunteers experience. So we decided to shift the point of view and thought about telling the story of locals who has been helped by PSF.

Here’s the film, if you’re spanish is at least decent, I strongly suggest you watch the version without subtitles to better appreciate the visuals. In case at the end of the post you’ll find the version with english subtitles.

This has been a completely different experience compared to shooting the short movie. We had to interview spanish speaking people and especially have a completely different approach: less scheduled/planned shoots, less control on it. So we had to improvise more and be flexible on the field coming up with instant problem solving solutions.

Pisco is a even poorer reality than Cusco, people here don’t really have much. Most of them are still living in tents and the crime rate is reasonably high. However we’ve had the chance to meet incredible people here and even if I have to say this has been very hard, it’s also been extremely rewarding.

Below are some shots taken from the two days travel from Cusco to Pisco.

An Inca God is pronouncing his judgment upon our heads

Mountain heights

Mystical clouds on the way from Pisco

End of the world, beginning of the tough part

The last town lost in the mountains before miles of nothing but high altitude..

Travel companion

Yum

A fake backdrop and the trick is done.

Two colours matching very beautiful and smiling young girls on the way to Pisco

The last glimpse of Cusco

Infinite skies and untouched nature

Wildlife, wildkid.

Breathtaking sunset on the way to Pisco

Delia's (our movie protagonist) youngest daughter

Jackie and mum, Delia

Our hero talent

Jackie and her beautiful sister

La Familia

Here’s the video with subtitles. Watch it, get the story, and then watch it with no subtitles back at the top. Much better.

We’ve got commissioned by FAIRPLAY (www.fairplay-peru.org), a Peruvian not for profit organisation based in Cusco, to shoot something which would represent what FAIRPLAY does in a unique way. When we spoke with John, the founder of FAIRPLAY, it was clear to all three of us that we didn’t want to shoot a boring documentary with interviews about what’s going on here, but we wanted to advertise the organisation with something more emotionally based and visually interesting.
FAIRPLAY consist of three parts: a spanish lessons and tutoring that employs exclusively Peruvian poor single mums, providing an incredible service in term of quality of teaching, and student care; a Salsa dance class for beginners and advanced, dedicated to tourist and the teachers are locals, generally young and coming from poor and underdeveloped areas of Cusco; and HelpingHands, a nursery school which FAIRPLAY partners with, which provides education and food to 4 and 5 years old poor children, who usually come for a very poor background and suffer severe malnutrition.
The dream of John is to be able to build a childcare for mentally disabled poor kids by 2013. But to do that he needs funding. And here’s the idea: shooting a short movie who will hopefully touch the consciences of the almost 500 volunteer and students who come to FAIRPLAY each year. If every student/volunteer, through the video, will be able to sell 30 keyring hats (the hat represents Peru, as it’s something very typical here), they will be able to raise enough money to build the childcare.

An ambitious project, but absolutely doable.

Too many words, here’s the visual:





I’m personally very happy with the outcome, and let me tell you that there’s been a lot of work behind.
Adele and I spent three weeks here in Cusco, a week of pre production (when we gathered information, then wrote the story and the script, the shots list, the list of props, location and any other detail we needed to know before starting to shoot), 5 days of shooting and recording audio, and then a full week of editing, music and sound research and color grading.
Considering that we had 0 budget and a crew of only two people to work, we believe that we achieved a pretty professional looking piece, thanx to all the people who helped along the journey when we needed information about the culture and the organisations, but we’re especially grateful to Sarah, our protagonist who has never been in front of a camera before and neither had acting experiences, but she worked so hard and with so much dedication that it made her look like a pro.
Weather conditions here during the rain season have been a problem as well, but thanks to a pretty organised schedule and backup plans, we (almost) always managed to shoot. And we did definitely learn a bunch of stuff during the shooting, also having to change the original script because what I had in mind for the beginning of the movie didn’t really come out as we wanted it.

Overall this has been an incredible experience, and I’m looking forward to start working on another project next week in Pisco, an area in the ocean which has been devastated by an earthquake a couple of years ago. Stay tuned.

FairPlay are also associated with an on going project with ‘Helping Hands’ to develop a charity school called San Gabriel. FairPlay give their students the opportunity to volunteer within the school, in one of the two classes with children aged 3-5years. These children are unfortunately from poorer backgrounds within Cusco and have parents that are unable to assist them with their homework or education due to illiteracy. We’d like to thank Lacey a volunteer from San Francisco who we grilled info out of when preping to shoot at the school, she’s been writing curriculums and developing the school for the past 6months now and is extremely devoted.

More information on their websites.

fairplay-peru.org
helpinghandscusco.com/english/school.asp

The intention for our stay in Cusco is to create a short film to portray what Fairplay is all about.
We don’t want to make a film directly advertising the organisation.. ‘What we want’ is the viewer to watch something emotionally touching and with story based around the experiences of a volunteer coming to Cusco…
I wont give away to much, you’ll have to wait and see!

We have our work cut out for us as “The Long Way Up Productions..” consists of purely Carlo and myself! But even in such a small team, were working in such an awesome city in a great organisation, so we cant complain.
We were very lucky to find our protagonist in the film, Sarah and grateful for all her hard work and the commitment she’s put in! All as well as juggling her daily responsibilities at the school everyday.

Were into our final days of shooting, so please stay tuned…

The Children

behind the lens

one on one

She's a cutie

San Gabriel School with Robbie, Nick and Adrian working hard.. or are they? haha haa

Amy from London talking to Mario, one of the founders of the school, informing him on her amazing progress with Fiorella (also in shot on right with Adrian)

Amy an Australian volunteer teaching the class their ABC's

Hmm.. are we all paying attention? Amy and Rosa (Rosa is the other founder of San Gabriel) talking to class..

Happy children playing with puzzles

Flor, a very special little student