The Little Engine That Could

BAM, Locamotion rolling all up in your face! Sorry, but Loca’s lingo is too fun to say; it just rolls off the tongue. I’m sure you’ve caught yourself repeating a few of Loca’s signature expressions.

That’s the thing about Loca, you take away the racism, stereotyping and bashing aspects associated with Loca and you’ll find that Loca is fun. She has a sense of humor, great wit and at an outrageous perspective on daily life. The trouble is some people can’t get past the negative aspects of Loca, and I have to admit, I can understand their position. The cholo culture brings up a lot of negative images; cholos are thugs, dope dealers, drug addicts and welfare recipients and there’s nothing funny about these images. I’m not going to address these issues here, but rather, I want to talk about how we developed the film’s story with these aspects in mind.

As Angel and I continuously adjust Loca’s story, I keep thinking about these two viewpoints that viewers bring to Loca. There’s Loca the comedian and Loca the hated chola. However there’s also a third side, Loca’s internal motivation. At the heart I believe Loca is like “The Little Engine That Could”, she thinks she can or as Loca might put it, “ Damn fool, get the hell out of Loca’s way!” In plain speak, Loca believes she will over come the barrio life by remaining a virgin and going to college to achieve her dream of becoming a filmmaker. It’s here on this perspective that Angel and I chose to focus our story. Loca, like any good dramatic character, is striving for a better life while overcoming difficult situations.

Now that I’ve set the stage, here’s the story. Loca is about to complete her most important project, her college video submission. Prompted by the racial comments from the YouTube board, such as “fuckin Mexicans we need to get rid of them”, Loca talks to friends, neighbors and community leaders on how to handle the discrimination she faces as the subject for her video. However, before Loca can finish her video, her camera is stolen and destroyed. As Loca looks to complete her project she tangles with a clothing stylist, two opportunistic homies (the photo above) and an eccentric woman that make her journey the more difficult. I won’t give away the ending but we believe this story finds the balance between the negative and humorous aspects of Loca, while she continues to grow as a character.

At this point we are almost half way through filming, with two very big shoot days next week. Our deadline is fast approaching and we have a lot of work to complete. As I continue to write entries about our production I’ll try to elaborate more on how we wrote the screenplay and found the balance of all the story’s perspectives. Like Loca herself, we still have to overcome some difficult obstacles to complete this film but as the little engine from the barrio would say, “Toot, Toot, can’t stop the Locamotion. Much love and respect everybody”.

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Location, Location, Location

A funny thing about making films, it’s all about location! I’ve come to realize that without a location it doesn’t matter how many actors, equipment, and crew members there are, if there’s no place to shoot, then there’s no shoot! Well, fortunately Angel knows people who know people, and today we went to visit a café owner to see if his café would be a good fit for our LittleLoca project. (The picture above is a test shot to see how the scene might be framed. I hope Angel doesn’t see this picture, she’ll kill me if she knows I used it).

The owner of the café was very cordial. He permitted us to move tables, shoot photos and he even turned the music off so we could get a gauge on the noise level in the café, which was still very noisy from exhaust fans, clanking dishes and people chatter. We talked with the owner for twenty minutes before he mentioned a fee of $200. Well, Angel and I admitted that the price was a bargain, considering that we were going to close down a section of the café for an afternoon. However, as Angel and I talked, we began to consider that we should bring in an audio professional to assist us so we could shoot the scene quickly, which brought the cost up to almost a $1,000! Again, it’s not much money if you have a budget. The trouble is we don’t have a budget.

When we began this project our plan was to show this film in segments on YouTube where production value is done on the cheap! (This by the way was in the works before the LonelyGirl15 revelation came out…just some trivia for the YouTubers). However, as we started to tell friends about our film with Stevie, the news traveled around until it reached the founders of “The Other Venice Film Festival”. As it turned out, one of the festival’s directors was familiar with LittleLoca and asked us to submit the film for the next festival. I believe my response was, “What? Wow, …what? Are you sure?” Then I fell to the floor having just realized that our small Internet film had just been called up to the big screen.

Needless to say the pressure was on. Angel and I wondered how we would shoot a film with no budget and little resources. Our answer was to shoot it guerilla style! Shoot it fast, free and creatively. In case you don’t know our meaning of the word “creatively”, it means beg, barrow and steal whatever is necessary to get the job done. If you read my first entry then you know that Angel and I are extremely experienced in being very “creative”. Well, after leaving the Café we realized that paying for a location and hiring an audio professional goes against shooting guerilla style, and after all, rules are rules. At this moment, we are rewriting the café scene to an outdoor scene that will cost us little to nothing, exactly within our budget.

I guess the real estate people are right. It’s all about location, location and location, and if the first location doesn’t work out there’s always another one just around the corner. I’ve also realized that having limited funds doesn’t mean that our project is undoable it just means we have to be more creative.

More about the story to come…stay tuned,
Paul m