After our lectures on production I have not been able to watch my telenovela as before. I now notice the music like never before. There is music for when people seriously suggest that the cartel should kill someone, when some action is happening (like an assassination or a police raid), a song set and ready for the memory sequence of when a character dies, like Don Guerillmo and Rodrigo Lara. There are more but I'll keep the list relatively short. I now notice all the names mentioned in the entrada. Although when I tried to do research on those who were not the main actors, like executive producer Juana Eribe, I could not find much information other then a mention of their involvement with the Pablo Escobar telenovela. I know notice how many times the director clicked the 'switch camera' button and how many cameras there were. For example in a one minute and fifty-five second scene were 6 cameras switching 15 times. That is a lot for just under two minutes!
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| House of the Matoa brothers |
But what I now notice most of all are all the beautiful houses and ranches all of the drug lords have and what it must be like coordinating filming in all of those houses. There is Pablo's house, Pablo's hacienda "Napolis, Mariachi's ranch, The Mota brother's ranch, Pedro's ranch, Marcos's ranch Mauricio's ranch, Chili and Topo's house, Peluche's house, the Morocco building and the separate apartments inside etc. There are a lot more but these places just make me wonder if it's just one GIANT house that the production leased and all the "individual" haciendas are just different parts of the house. Or perhaps, the production got lucky enough to find a bunch of these houses, with owners willing to leave them, in the same neighborhood, so actors/crews and la pauta in general can all be completed in relatively close locations. However they did it, it is a spectacle and a true achievement.
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| Pablo's house |
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| Mauricio's Ranch |
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| Napoles (Pablo's hacienda/ranch), he has a zoo here too. |
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| Pedro's (far left) house |
It's interesting Escobar's haciend had a zoo! I've heard that drug lords in Mexico have exotic animals, as well. I've even heard that famous artists have a taste for these kinds of luxuries. The beautiful scenery is something so important. These places become familiar to the viewer, and homes are essential. Therefore these places must be intact for every scene. I've notices many novelas have specific music when they show the outside of a building, such as the mansion, workplace, or hospital.
ReplyDeleteSo I was scrolling through past blog posts just for fun and I had to stop and comment on this one!
ReplyDeleteI will let you know that I'm almost done with La Tempestad and when I finish, Pablo Escobar is the next one I will watch. I am so interested especially because my family is Colombian. My mom was an immigrant when she was young but my grandfather grew up on a ranch. I always wondered what it looked like and how beautiful it was. He always talks about his ranch and growing up as a little boy and it sounds so beautiful!
I think back to my imagination of what my grandfather's ranch looked like growing up and then I multiply that by a million thinking of what some of these drug lords own as their ranches.....I bet they are simply beautiful! They were so wealthy that they had money to spend on these gorgeous ranches in Colombia.
I'm actually studying abroad there this summer and so now I will be extra curious about the Colombian ranches. It will be so fun to explore the country in such a hands on way so that I can really experience the culture and people. Hopefully I'll come back and be fluent in spanish ;)
Also, thanks for the pictures! I'm about to google search more pictures of Colombian ranches just to see more!
Napoles was an amazing place. And along with all of the historically-based sets, production did a great job making it look like a real hacienda. Looking at the comments from everyone else, people were shocked that he had a zoo. I am not sure why but obscenely wealthy individuals seem to have an obsession with the exotic.
ReplyDeleteThese comments reminded me of a ridiculous article I found that complied the instagrams of young men from the Middle East who owned exotic animals. Take a look here:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/the-rich-guys-with-lions-of-instagram
Immediately, I thought of Pablo Escobar and his obsession with feeling luxurious. Because he was not born into the upper class, he had to pretend. I thought it was interesting how these men, similar to Pablo, are extremely excessive with their wealth, even having their tigers pose on their lamborghinis.
While I am not sure where these men got their money from, they love being flashy, even at the detriment of the health of their animals. I am no scientist but I am sure that tigers and snow leopards are not meant to live in Saudi Arabia (or hippos in Colombia).