Thursday, November 7, 2013

Great Guests + Lingering Pablo Thoughts

pictures courtesy of Dr.A's Instagram
Guest Talks  
This entire semester has been extremely and intriguing but nothing has been as compelling (and fun!) as our class talks with el Chascas and the actress Marisa Roman. Aside from their insight on production and the differences between mediums (telenovelas and film) and writing for countries what I found most interesting was their back stories. Perhaps it is because I am graduating in May that the stories of their beginnings stuck with me. Both were almost like telenovela stories themselves and they were both so young when they started/got in the thin of their careers, El Chascas was 19 when he came up with a telenovela idea that the network he went to liked. On the spot he argued for his eventual job. That was just so inspiring to me! He has so much personality in English and I'm sure it is even more so when he is speaking in Spanish. It just goes to show that if you know what you are good at go for it. A cliche but in all seriousness, he made this his life. His description of how he writes, not waiting for inspiration but going out and finding in was also inspiring. I wish I had asked him when he knew that he was good at writing, when he knew that was his career.
I wish I had asked Marisa that same thing, only in her case with acting. She is so charming and lovely! And she got her big debut with a part in a work by mega write Leonardo Patron when she was my age now! It just puts your life into perspective. I am really grateful for those talks and the talks to come!

Cannot Forget Pablo
With our consumption presentation I feel like there was still so much to say! The Chili fangirls is a blog topic in and of itself, I once fell for the Chili spell but once they started wanting to kill everyone just so they got paid more I started liking El Chili less and less. But I digress, what I really wanted to talk about was the differences in advertising the novela to Colombian Carcol audiences and to the advertising Telemundo did. I had both of these trailers up in our presentation but did not have time to play them. In the Caracol version they sell it based solely on the myths and kind of 'legend' of Pablo Escobar, ending always with "Que cree?" (top video). Which I thought was supremely interesting and a brilliant way to advertise it after I spoke with my grandparents about the novela. They both were blatant that they did not want romance, blood, guts, or glamour they just wanted to know the how. How he became "bad" (some may say evil), how he (a man) was able to go to war with a country and almost bring that country to its knees. While the Telemundo trailer is much shorter and focuses more on the violence quoting Pablo's most repeated quote: "I will kill you mother, siblings, grandparents, cousins, and friends" (I shortened it). It has a kind of summer blockbuster feel rather than asking the audience to bring whatever questions or myths they previously had about Escobar to their living rooms everyday and what as they get answered, as the Caracol tailer does. I just thought whoever came up with the Caracol version did an excellent job for stirring interest rather than eye rolls about some other biopic that goes more for glam than for truth.




2 comments:

  1. When I watched your presentation and your group talked about how this telenovela was advertised by each network it really surprised me. It had never crossed my mind how differently a telenovela could be showcased to the audience. I feel that in Caracol's case, they had to be much more sensitive with the subject matter because most of the viewer's had experienced Pablo's cruelty or had grown up hearing stories from their family members. On the other had, Telemundo had to advertise the telenovela to viewers from a much wider background and knowledge in who Pablo Escobar was. I feel that both networks did a great job in advertising the telenovela to entice very different audiences. I loved how you guys brought this up!

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  2. That is exactly what I thought too, Caracol knew it's audience. All I kept thinking when I watched their trailer was what my grandparents said when I interviewed them about the show: "I just wanted to know how he got to that level. I just wanted to see". And the Caracol trailer provides that exact kind of enticement, they did a marvelous job. And with telemundo they had a longer trailer that began with "long before la reina del sur" which i thought was funny since that is just a little extra PR for them and enticing the people who already watch La Reina to watch Pablo

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