Archive for category Video

A Journey of 1000 Miles

Feb 17

Posted by Carlo in Video, Volunteer | No Comments

Hey folks, so here we are, more than a year later from the day we flew into Chile from Australia.. We eventually arrived in Canada, we have a roof over our heads, a toilet and Betsy is miserably parked outside in the cold Canadian winter (not actually that cold…).

We will write a closing posts with our thoughts later on, because today we’re here to proudly announce the release of our last production that we shot in October/November in US. In the previous post you had a quick preview of what went behind the filming and a few shots of the way up. But here’s the final result, we’re pushing it out on youtube to try to get a couple of thousand views in the first week, so watch it an share it!

Shooting this bad boy has been challenging but also extremely rewarding. We shot on the road, sleeping in the van, having very few hours of sleep and constantly struggling with the mechanics of the engine. I even fell out of the vehicle while trying to get the “eye” shot that you can see around 1.30min in the movie… (I saved the camera, and my Italian ass soften the drop). See below.

Stay tuned for the last post with our final evaluation on this “incredible to say the least” experience.

AAA. Looking for a working van. Desperately.

Jun 17

Posted by Carlo in Landscapes, People, Photography, Places, Route, Travel, Van, Video | 7 Comments

First off, I would like to introduce the third and final video we have created for Pisco Sin Fronteras: The Challenge. The idea was to challenge the wanabe volunteer, while also showing the diversity of the international people that come through PSF.
Take a look: (if you see a freaky looking Italian a couple of times and a wind swept English slangy Cornish girl.. we had to make up the numbers.. apparently..)

After one month of volunteering with PSF and putting together some videos, photography and helping out here and there with projects, it was time to get back on the road again.. It was sad saying goodbye to the cool and interesting people we had met, they had made our experience even more unique.

A quick jump in, jump out of Lima and we were back on course, heading north following the Peruvian coast. Spending our nights again in the sticks, the first night in particular was spent on a towering cliff top over looking a bay and the open ocean.. it was a lovely spot with nothing but dunes all around. We had parked reasonably close to the cliff edge on a slight angle which didn’t bother me at all until we were tucked in to sleep that night, waves were crashing into the rocks and it grew very dark, I suddenly felt very disorientated and all I could picture was the van sliding off the edge into sea… I felt like every movement might plunge me to my death! Not the best night sleep as you can guess…

At sunrise we drove on, the scenery stayed dry and dusty with desert dunes, sometimes mountainous, sometimes bumpy and flat. We were stopped by ‘every’ police officer along the way… which made the journey seem to take forever, (we should change the colour of the van to look like a taxibus!) but on the final one that got us, Betsy’s wouldn’t start up… when we turned the ignition it just clicked over.. this turned into 4 days living in a mechanics workshop in Truijjo, with replacing the ignition itself, which technically should have taken… hmm, around 3-4 hours! but we had to wait for the part to come in.

Around one week after, we were crossing into Ecuador. Greeted at the boarder with a warm welcome and given gifts?! That’s never happened before.. we instantly had a good impression about this country. It was clean, green and the people were so friendly. We stayed west passing banana fields and mountains until we entered into the national park where the land became blander in colour, but the ocean came back into view with stretches of golden beaches and restaurants perched along them. Throughout this part of the journey there was a slow but definite tapping sound when accelerating, coming from underneath the van, towards the drivers back wheel.. it grew worse as we progressed towards the capital city Quito, and the taps soon became bangs… hence Quito becoming part of our agenda..

The mechanic changed two parts on the back wheels before finding out, that wasn’t the problem and the banging was still there.. They figured it must be the gearbox! As you can imagine, we were pretty upset hearing this, and it would honestly be the last straw if we had to replace. The diagnosis on Betsy’s gear box was a gear piece had broken into bits and was clanging around inside the gear box, and is not exactly a straight forward piece to replace either, you can’t just pick up a new from a store.. We have three options, SELL! Replace the gear box, or replace the piece.. We don’t want to sell for obvious reasons and the last two options cost $1000 and more. We cant afford that kind of money, so the mechanic proposed to take the broken part to a specialist and ask them to copy the grooves and nooks into another piece we found, to make it fit.. $150. Plus mechanic fees. So, we’ve spent the last 10days and nights on curfew to be back at the workshop by 5:30pm for when they lock up and lock us in. 7ft walls surround us with broken glass shards sprinkled along its edges! At home we call this prison. We sleep in the van that’s perched up on jacks, waiting for this new part to come in.. All fingers and toes crossed that we are good to go by this wknd so Carlo can at least see his 30th birthday out of these four walls and perhaps within four walls of a nice bar? Sounds reasonable.
I think we’ll keep you posted on that one ;)

The "scary view" which kept Adele awake..

Those tires signs on the sand are Betsy's. She was looking to commit suicide.

Carlo is cooking while Adele is taking this picture. The world up-side-down

A lonely man lost in the.. wait, oh snap. That's a woman.

Well, this is pretty cool, isn't it?

The answer is: I have no bloody idea..

On the way out of Peru, breath...

Jungle and bananas

An incredible morning, waking up in front of the ocean after one of the really few dinner out just off the beach... Priceless.

Our prison

In case you missed it in the previous one

The one on the left is the ma*a*uc*er which broke. The other one is our $150.

A series of shots for Angus' (a friend met at PSF) upcoming album. He's not just an amazing carpenter. He's a great musican too. n.1

TheLongWayUp_4_Peru_PSF_Angus_152 copy copy copy

n.2

TheLongWayUp_4_Peru_PSF_Angus_156_together

n.3&4

n.5

Baby Norma..

May 20

Posted by Adele in Culture, People, Video, Volunteer | No Comments

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!

A real story from Pisco

May 9

Posted by Carlo in Culture, People, Video, Volunteer | 4 Comments

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.

Kate’s Story

Apr 18

Posted by Carlo in Culture, People, Video, Volunteer | 4 Comments

Just a bit of info to better understand the purpose of the movie itself.

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.

Cusco – behind the scenes

Apr 12

Posted by Adele in Culture, People, Video, Volunteer | 4 Comments

Were into our third week here in Cusco creating a short film for Fairplay, a non for profit organisation.
They help disadvantaged people in Cusco build stable, prosperous futures for themselves.
Motivated by the shocking fact that almost three-quarters of Cusco’s poorest people are single mothers and their children, FairPlay’s founders decided to target these women and help them out of their poverty trap. FairPlay provide high quality services to tourists, including Spanish tuition, facilitating volunteer placements and homestays, while helping local people to help themselves.

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

A week of Sun, Sand and Stars…

Mar 16

Posted by Adele in Landscapes, People, Photography, Places, Route, Travel, Van, Video | 11 Comments

We have never experienced such a diverse way of living.. From sleeping in a mechanics workshop for a week! To waking to the crashing of the waves on a rocky shoreline, to star gazing into a vast expanse of crystal clear sky – showing all of the beautiful milky way in the southern hemisphere and Orion’s belt in the north. After days of driving through the Atacama desert, the driest desert on earth, being able to dreamily take a walk upon the Atacama Salar and hearing the snow like crunch under foot from the crystallized salt… with nothing else but pure silence.. An eerie silence that is actually able to make a buzzing noise to your eardrum.. Life’s really all about taking the good with the bad or the bad with the good.. depending.. for instance, the hell Betsy puts us through some days, the last week makes it all worth while and even thanks to all ’16′ (yep, I’m counting!) mechanics we have had the pleasure of meeting, Carlo has managed to pick up a few mechanic skills along the way! Which of course has already come in handy, many a time.. Especially now, as tomorrow we venture into a new country, Bolivia. We have to acclimatize to being several thousand meters above sea level in landlocked La Paz and lake Titicaca before making another crossing by April into Peru!

Another motor to fix and these two customers also stay the night..

The Burbs of Vina

Neighborhood up the hills of Vina Del Mar

La Pangue observatory in vicuna, where we had a private tour with an astrophysicist called Eric! Thanks again Eric!

Telescope with 40cm diameter lens to observe the night sky in Vicuna, to the west of La Serena

Southern hemisphere, Milky way. Among these stars we were told by Eric, is one very unstable star that is dying and is turning into a supernova! (Which of course has already happened.. your always looking into the past when studying the night sky) and we are due to see this transformation happen within our life time, the effect will be like a 2nd sun and bring constant daylight to the earth and our galaxy for a couple of weeks! Good to know I think?! Eric told us, nothing to worry about though...!

Northern hemisphere.. Orion's belt (the polar bear..) visible on left of observatory

Osvaldo the mechanic in Chanaral, again very kind and fixed the accelerator cable. The list goes on..

Portofino beach at sunset

Hills of the Atacama Desert

It really is the driest desert on earth.. We kept hoping to glimpse a prehistoric geoglyph in the hillsides, to keep us amused.. but nothing but desert hills

The creation of a 'twister' in the distance, not quite as bad as the twisters in the movie..

The Salar de Atacama. An untouched part at least..

All deserts have an oasis

Just before reaching our destination of Arica, at the end of the desert, a prehistoric geoglyph?

Modern geoglyphs.. The new frontier of advertising for Coca Cola

Looking forward..

Betsy was a race car driver…

Feb 28

Posted by Adele in Landscapes, People, Photography, Places, Travel, Van, Video | 9 Comments

Due to some very goods news we received recently, we left Ushuaia with a certain urgency to head back north and hoping to reach Santiago in the next couple of days. I’ve been working on finding us volunteer placements in non-profit organisations in Peru and was really pleased to receive all very positive replies! We have been fortunate to have some project proposals come our way and have been asked we provide our skills and services as photographers to help their cause. We have a lot to finalise, however we probably will be shooting documentaries and updating photography for their websites and folios to help generate more fund raising and new volunteers for their program’s. We are really looking forward to getting involved with these organizations and more than keen to work with them on the projects proposed. Which is why we have re thought our plan and now want to spend a little longer in Peru and spread out our time there over hopefully 3 organizations. To make this happen, we will need to be in Peru by the beginning of April and so realised we have little time to get there. Especially as we want to spend at least a month in Bolivia before so..

Which is the reason for the hectic amount of ground covered this last week, not only have we managed to get 3000km north! But also…. we’ve picked up 3 hitchhikers, seen 2 mechanics, had the pleasure of waking up to a flat tyre! (which lead to the buying and mounting of 2 new ones!) And enjoyed two different Argentinian BBQ’s on two separate occasions – offered to us by some wonderfully kind and generous Argentinian people we met along the way..

Encase your wondering why we needed to stop at ‘two’ mechanics, Betsy is a little greedy with how much oil she likes to consume.. Around a ltr of oil in 250km! So we had our mechanics help us to temporarily fix the problem until we can get to Santiago. The first in rio Gallegos with Marcel and the 2nd Enrico, in Esquel. A beautiful little town tucked away in a valley with a mountainous backdrop, hence it’s popularity in ski season.

All being well, the van shouldn’t take longer than a week to fix up at our mechanics in Valparaiso (close to Santiago), we will take what time is needed to have her prepared for the roads ahead in Bolivia… And then we will continue up through northern Chile, stopping in la Serena, one of the worlds best spots to star gaze before entering the heat of the Atacama desert….

Enrico the mechanic in Esquel

Last glance of the gorgeous landscape in Tierra Del Fuego

A hill top cross - Ushuaia

Carlos, the hitch hiker whom walks the earth.. (I honestly thought I was looking at my dad standing on the side of the road! you never know, he likes walking 'alot' too.. Partly why we had to pick him up)

First sight of open ocean seen in weeks - Between Rio Gallegos and Bariloche

Mars?

About the authors

Oct 19

Posted by Carlo in People, Photography, Video | No Comments

Carlo is a Vancouver based photographer and director. He specialises in editorial portraiture, fashion and advertising.

Born and bred in Italy, Carlo moved to Australia in 2008 and worked as a commercial photographer and DP for 2.5 years. He recently completed a year long exploration of Latin and North America shooting film documentaries for international NGOs.

Please visit carloricci.com to see his portfolio.
Follow him on twitter: @CarloRicci_

Fascinated by all aspects of photography, Adele is a producer of photography & film and is a photographer herself. She has spent this past year working on film & documentary productions with international NGOs, on a 50,000kms exploration in beautiful “Betsy” an orange VW campervan.
Originally of cornish descent, however, her career keeps her in the big smoke. London, Sydney & now Vancouver BC.

Click on adelethomas.com to see her work.
Follow her on twitter: @AdeleThomas_