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.

We left our dear friend in Morelia and continued north, dropping back down into the desert conditions of north/west mexico.. I would say this was by far THE MOST uncomfortable, and disgusting I’ve felt and I’m sure Carlo too (apart from sleeping in the humid climate of Cartagena in Columbia..) throughout the trip. The heat was incredible, dry like a sauna with no escape but paying for an air coned motel room for 6hours, which i think you can guess is one of “those motels..”.

The crossing into the US was another successful and unexpectedly quick accomplishment! I loved the west coast of the US, it’s simply awesome but a complete culture shock to the system after the year we’d had… All I can say is, “Ralphs Supermarket?!” We’ve been used to corner shops that have bars where the door should be, and having to point at the very limited options on display to the shop keeper! so this was like walking into a palace for us.. We must have spent a good hour walking the isles in awe of all the choices!

We made several stops along the way up with friends in: San Diego, LA, San Francisco.. and took our final “excursion” to visit Yosemite Park, which was epic! Autumn in Yosemite is beautiful, and even saw snow on the ground for a couple days! Then, returning to San Francisco had us wrapped into a new production!

The New Production:
The “Omprakash” foundation, we hadn’t realised properly until we met up with our friend & fellow volunteer Lacey (whom we’d met when at Fairplay/Helping hands in Peru) that Omprakash is directly connected to both organisations Carlo and I did productions for in Peru. Over night she’d come up with an idea!
Within the following morning we’d spoken to Willy the founder of Omprakash, and were commissioned to create a film/documentary showing an outreach program of a volunteer, grant recipient & now member of their committee, Vance, who was riding his bike from Seattle to San Francisco and stopping at pre-arranged university’s along the way, to spread the word of volunteering for no costs through using “Omprakash”.
Visit: www.omprakash.org/howitworks – to find out more details.
Video coming soon!

With the tour already well underway, we had a week for pre-production planning and were soon on the road from San Fran to meet the man ‘Vance’ in Eugene, to then travel back south, getting the footage we needed of him riding the coast, the ‘avenue of the giants’, and riding through wine country – which was a definite crowd pleaser ;)

We spent three weeks on the road with Vance, documenting his outreach tour for Omprakash.

I won’t give to much away, you’ll have to wait in anticipation for the finished result… coming very soon!

Omprakash Foundation - Outreach Tour PhotoTeaser

SAN DIEGO

Tori Roze & The Hot Mess #1

Tori Roze & The Hot Mess #2

Tori Roze & The Hot Mess #3

Tori Roze & The Hot Mess #4

2/5 of the Hot Mess

Causing a splash in San Diego with Tori & The Hot Mess

Yeah, we kind of went for that dead looking look.

Tori & The Hot Mess band shoot - Adele's vs

Some 'behind the scenes' action from Tori & The Hot Mess shoot

more BTS

Getting cold 'behind the scenes' but still having a laugh

COASTAL FREEWAY

Freeway 1 - Coastal Freewayway. Beautiful views from our ride betsy

Has there ever been a picture of us on here together?? Don't think so.. must have been that sea breeze

Gorgeous day & Stunning views

I recommend this drive to anyone going to California! We were lucky with the weather being it was October, the summer was still lingering

Hovering over the edge..

I actually have no idea where this was.

LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES BABY!

Sleepy seaside town at a place called Shell Beach

SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco! Taken at Lands End, cool view of the Golden Gate Bridge

Lands End, another point of view

Nice and close using the 300mm.. Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco Fire Dept

Rolling hills of San Fran

Yeah baby!

San Francisco Blue "Grass" Festival. Were we in a time warp?

Blue grass Festival - and no i dont know who the young guy is ;) ??

Stunning image here by multi talented photographer Adele Thomas

Early morning light overlooking the city of San Fransico

YOSEMITE:

Maybe I looked too much at that Ansel Adams book uh? Or maybe not enough...

This doesn't give justice to how magnificent these trees were.

Yep, it was cold in the van.

Sunset in Yosemite

Shining bright

There's a rainbow faintly showing in the mist

Yosemite Park

Yosemite Valley

OMPRAKASH ON TOUR:

Avenue of the giants. Omprakash Movie

Hanging out. The other awesome VW couple Siomara & Rustin, Vance on a GIANT log.. Ricci in awe

Rustin not stuck in a gigantic tree! Unlike someone else we know whom was! lol

this, not only make's Vance look like a flutterby but is the actual bottom end of a fallen sequoia tree.. its huge!

Behind the Scenes of the Omprakash tour film..

The beautiful & ancient redwoods - Avenue of the giants (Old Highway 101)

Yeah, you know, just some location scouting on the way up..

An awesome day off from shooting

The redwoods. Pretty much incredible.

Same same

A shot from the Omprakash shoot. within seconds a bike running at 300km/h will cross the frame

Yeah! Let's go check out that lighthouse!

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!

Hard workers and crazy people, that’s how we like it.

In the best tradition of the terrible place we worked before, here’s a little fun/fundraising studio we mocked up for a casino night (thanx Nick for putting it together) we did at PSF on friday night.

Despite the terrible past experiences on location studio, this has been a lot of fun. People here are crazy and interesting enough to actually get some good shots out.

Click here for viewing the studio gallery. To download a full size version just click on the image and you’ll get printable version. Just right click and save it on your computer.

Click here to see some extra shots from the night.

Crazy mdfckr . Smoking mdfckr.

Il gatto e la volpe

Spot the difference

Not too sure about your skills, doctor.

Bonnie and Clyde (aka Will Smith) . Be suspicious of italian speaking spanish people.

Horny witches? Stay away.

Scary sh*t

Mexican wrestlers are just everyday business here

Well, I don't really know how to comment this.

No caption needed

There will be only one, Ozzy.

Angus beef fest

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