So on my second day of classes, there is a chico talking to the director as Im leaving and he doesnt speak much spanish, so the director asks me to help make sense of what he is inquiring about. Turns out this guy, Martin, from Canada spent a month volunteering at a biological reserve- hacienda called La Hesperia about 2 hours east of Quito. He decided to make a short doc about the people, their experience, etc ... the family he was living with hooked him up with a local camera man, , who connected him to an editor in quito.
So, he is now in quito looking for someone to help him with the translations from english to spanish and spanish to english... its a 30 minute film and he needs this done by friday.. it is monday when we meet. I decide to try to help him do the span to englsih. The next day I meet him, and we go this studio where Mario the editor works. Mario works in the commerical indistry by day, freelancing doing Tv work, etc . It turns out there is a lot of commerical work for editors, filmmakers, etc which is what most people do and then they do their independent projects on the side. His friend who he shares the office in does web and graphic design. they def seemed well paid, by the looks of his stuido, sound and video mixing equip, not bad...
so between mario and myself we go through the movie and the text, most of which had already been translated to come extent but needed revisions. I worked with them for 2 days... it was very interesting because a lot of the people that he interviews and work there are not highly educated and speak almost broken spanish. We wanted to stay true to their sentiment but also wanted it to be clear to a north american audience. Its difficult to convey an idea without losing the tone and inflection that you would have if someone was speaking, or if you were reading word for word what was being said. Also there are idioms like at one point a character says something like, you cant put money under a mango tree and expect it to grown and produce fruit... the same way we would think to say money doesnt grow on trees... but the meaning is different.
martin hopes to enter it in candian festivals, and specifically latino festivals. Its a nice overview of rural life, discussing the econoimic and social aspects of life in ecuador, in a a very small poor town, where most of the children who are born there are likely to never leave because they cant afford to...
the website is much fanciel looking than the footage I saw in the film....
http://www.la-hesperia.com/
it was a nice series of events that led me to help out on this project, and I hope to contact Mario and talk with him further about what the community of people is like who are working on creative projects using video.
