Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1490572
scenes filmed downtown. Every facade was meticulously controlled and deliberately designed and modified for the action of the scene, both to fit in our color palette and for the subtext. One main concept of the film is the fluidity, how Silverio transitions from one reality to the following almost seamlessly. Early in the process, the creative team understood that in order to have this fluidity around the characters, we would need a lot of precision. The choreography and camera movements had to flow to depict the main action. To create this fluidity, we used a lot of previs concept art, 3D models, old-style miniatures, and full-scale panels made of fabric to show the size and main elements of the sets for rehearsal. Silverio is always out of place, he doesn't feel comfortable in Mexico because he left thirteen years ago and things have changed, but he feels he doesn't belong in the US either, despite his life as a successful, celebrated professional. Although there is a celebratory party for him in Mexico, some of his old colleagues are sarcastic about his success. The audience can sense that his family relations, even when there is a lot of love, are in a moment of flux. This contradiction and paradox are reflected in the sets. Elements are often in a place where they don't belong. For example, the train in LA flooded with water. Silverio's apartment is also flooded in certain scenes and is full of sand in others. Later, this same apartment appears in the middle of the desert. The banister with lights is found in a limbo landscape with a flat horizon and a cracked desert floor. There is a mountain of bananas in the middle of a street and a pyramid formed by the inert bodies of pre-Hispanic fallen warriors in Mexico City's main square. That made the design fun but challenging. The train set was built on a stage on top of a platform with springs to recreate the natural movement of a real train. The set was built to contain water and to hold its weight. It was surrounded by LED screens that provided background and light effects and finally, plates shot of the real train in movement completed the magic. The apartment was also prepared to contain water and piles of sand. The crew took the entrance hall, the living room, the corridor and the dining room of the apartment, including all the set dressing, to the desert in Baja California, three thousand miles away from the studio in which it was originally built. In that same desert, we built the banister and after several weeks of failure, finally mastered the technique of creating cracked soil in the flatland. In the main set, the apartment, the crew created a complex and efficient system of moving walls in order to shoot it the way we wanted. We had walls on rails, ceilings connected to electric hoists, walls that had guillotine systems, walls and furniture on hinges, and the old ceiling technique that lets the light bleed through from above when needed, but that when lit from the interior appears solid. A. SILVERIO'S APARTMENT FLOODED. PRODUCTION STILL. B. SILVERIO'S APARTMENT WITH SAND. PRODUCTION STILL. C. MEXICO CITY STREET WITH BANANAS. PRODUCTION STILL. A B