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!

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.

Alright folks, here we are.

I know it’s been a while, but hey, we didn’t just mess around. I believe this last month has been the most intense of them all. And we like to show something interesting rather than just writing a post for the sake of doing it.

We knew the boat crossing had to come at some stage, but you’re never ready for something like this. Especially when our always incredibly small budget doesn’t really allow us to treat ourselves in any way, especially when we really need it: stressful moments.

So when you combine the worse and hottest weather we had in the whole trip together with driving many miles and shipping our beloved (and behated) Betsy on a Cargo boat, you soon realise that there wasn’t much time and mind space for creativity and pictures.

Having said that, definitely a lot happened in this last month.

We left Ecuador, crossed all Colombia, stayed two weeks in Cartagena to organise the shipment of the van, met up with Miky who traveled with us until Nicaragua, sailed to Panama, got the van back and drove to Nicaragua trough Costa Rica.

In between, all this (in no specific order):

• Stuck in the middle of nowhere in the Colombian highland, under a tropical storm, dark at night with the engine not able to cool down because of the very steep uphill mountain road, we then slept on the side of the road
• Spent two weeks in the most horrible climate ever in Cartagena, with unseen bureaucratic procedures to ship the van to Panama
• Sailed from Cartagena to Panama in the open ocean, puking my soul
• Snorkled with a shark
• Had to fix the transmission joint under a storm with just a screwdriver
• Seen 5 more mechanics
• Spent my 30th birthday in a mechanic shop
• Spent the day after my 30th birthday with an Ecuadorian family of 30 relatives dancing Macarena and what not
• Hitchhiked with a few truck drivers under the rain and in the middle of nowhere with the van down
• Had no shower for over two weeks
• Had a night shower and a pool bath on the roof of an authentic colonial palace, gently offered by Giuseppe, a 73 year old italian ex military now in Cartagena where he founded a school for disadvantaged kids, and his wife
• Got wasted on a desert island with the boat captain completely drunk, naked, with a starfish on his penis. And we almost sinked on the way back from the island to the boat, because the weight on the dinghy wasn’t properly distributed. You can imagine how funny it was to then watch the same drunk captain trying to lift the dinghy up on the boat.. Same guy who then eventually tried to “cure” a wound on the forehead of one of the passengers by pouring rum on it. He eventually brought us to Panama.
• Sailed in open ocean at night under a full thunder storm
• Had a fight with the guardian who had to release the van from the Colon Port, under pissing down rain, completely wet deep to my underwear
• Got drunk with a bunch of locals in Anton, a 200 people town in the middle of Panama, in a local bar with porn on the TV on the wall, and Elton John jukebox songs all over. But hey, 60 cents a beer? Adele and a prostitute were the only females in the bar.
• Biggest achievement of my life: finishing the Rubik cube while spending 5 days on a fantastic hostel on a beach, in front of the pacific ocean swinging in hammocks.

As usual, I’ll let you guess the rest of the story from the shots below. Stay tuned, the rest of Central America and Mexico are coming soon.

The first glance of Colombia, one of the most beautiful drive of the whole trip

A photographer's heaven. Landscapes don't usually get much better than this.

An open breach after climbing up a very steep mountain in the clouds

While Adele is hanging out of the van to take this one, a gigantic drop is underneath her camera..

Frames of life on the side of the road: #1

#2

#3

A breathtaking sunset in open ocean on the way to Panama

Enjoying the open ocean? Not exactly. The boat is swinging like a bi**h and everybody is just concentrating to avoid vomiting. So romantic.

Gypsy Moth, our ride.

Fish cooked on the BBQ, naked bath under the stars, starfish on penis and rum on wounds. Ah, desert islands..

Our best producer/photographer/advertising guru/agent on the boat doesn't want to be bothered while she's working very hard on her tan.

Storm is coming, boat is ready.

Kunas working in the San Blas

The Life Aquatic #1

The Life Aquatic #2

The Life Aquatic #3

The Life Aquatic #4

Entering Nicaragua. It's not always sunny beaches, palm trees and cocktails.

Miky aka "Diamante" aka "Merenda" aka "Il cocchiere" aka "The gringo who counts money at the hostel" aka "speedo"

Carlo's vs

Adele's vs

The biggest achievement of my life. By far.

A lost surfers beach. Betsy almost didn't make it back. Shot with the same first camera I started my passion in photography with! #1

#2

A little corner of paradise in Nicaragua we treated ourselves with before hitting the road again #1

#2

#3

Worldwide released advertising by Adele Thomas / Photographer and Wonderful Person

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

n.2

n.3&4

n.5

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