We left Guatemala City on Thursday afternoon to head to one of the most incredible cities in the world … Antigua, Guatemala. We slept in on Friday and relaxed by the pool at Hotel Antigua. It was nice to have some R&R after working so hard for over a week. We stopped by a few of our favorite spots to enjoy the cuisine: Cafe Condessa, Fridas, and a few others.

This morning our friend Mayra drove us out to Ciudad Vieja so we could get footage of Ortiz Estuardo, a baker who has three children in the Kyros School. We started at Estuardo’s place of employment, a bakery in Ciudad Vieja. The owner graciously gave us full access to the location as we documented the baking process. The aroma was simply amazing. The bakery makes over 250 cakes and 750 pastries a day.

After shooting for a couple hours we drove over to Estuardo’s house in San Lorenzo. It was wonderful to see the Ortiz family again. We fell in love with them in January. We interviewed Estuardo and then began to interview Veronica when it started downpouring. It hadn’t rained the entire time we have been here and it all came down at once. So we took advantage of our rain gear an shot some rain footage. After out shoot we returned to our hotel “basecamp”, archived our footage and then ate dinner at the infamous Rainow Room.

We head back to San Lorenzo for more filming today. J.Mac and Bobby fly back to the US on Tuesday. Bengy and I will be sad to see them go. We are quite a team and I am so thankful for their companionship. Los Magnificos!

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We had some busy days previously but this episode Bengy and I shoot from the cemetary, we visit Shorty and Tita in La Limonada, get Cesar down and dirty in the dump and head to Antigua.

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Here are some photos from our first five days in Guatemala.

J.Mac, Bengy and Bobby walking  in an alley by the dump.

A scavenger digging in the trash for doll parts.

Our team working with the Doll Lady.

The Doll Lady – Maria Del Fina.

The Doll Lady’s neighborhood.

The Doll Lady’s neighborhood.

Doll parts waiting to be assembled.

A view from the Potter’s House.

Trash with discarded baby doll parts.

The Doll Lady entering her house with doll parts.

The Doll Lady washing doll parts.

Trash at the dump.

The Doll Lady sells a doll to a little girl.

The Market where the Doll Lady sells her dolls.

A scavenger shows dolls to the Doll Lady.

Doll parts soaking in water.

The Doll Lady – Maria Del Fina.

Children playing in an alley by the dump.

The Doll Lady puts the doll back together.

Bengy and J.Mac push a doll arm off a table for one of the shots.

Bengy hugging the Doll Lady.

Bobby rigging up his camera.

Bengy giving some direction to some extras.

Bengy giving some direction to the mother and daughter.

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Our first five days have been eventful. We arrived into Guatemala City on Wednesday night and hit the ground running. After dropping our gear off at Joel’s house, we went to a local McDonald’s for a production meeting to review plans for the week. We went to bed about 2:30AM.

Thursday morning came early. Our alarm was set for 5:30 AM so we could be ready for a 6:15 pickup to take us across the city to an organization called “The Potter’s House”. We spent a couple hours getting to know Edgar and Gladys and then drove out to a neighborhood next to the Guatemala City dump to begin filming. We worked with a scavenger (a person who digs through the trash at the dump in search of things of value) and a “Doll Lady” (a person who takes discarded doll parts, cleans them up, and sews them back together to make new dolls). The Scavenger and “Doll Lady” were so kind and happy to help us. We ate lunch at the Potters house and then spent the rest of the afternoon shooting at the “Doll Lady’s” house. We returned back to Joel’s around 7PM and spent some time with a crew of Guatemlan’s who are helping us (Hubert, Diego, Pablo, Esteban, and Jonathan). It was a blessing to hear their heart for Guatemala. After the guys left, we archived our footage and were in bed by 3AM.

Friday was another early morning – 5:45 wake up and 6:30 Pickup to travel to the Potter’s House. We spent the morning at the “Doll Lady’s” house filming more of the process with the dolls. Then we walked through the community shooting footage of other micro-economy enterprises. After lunch we spent the rest of the afternoon shooting interviews with people from the Potter’s House about their work in the community around the dump. After dinner we watched a couple videos about the Guatemalan Civil War and the dump to give us more information and context for our project. We finished up some file backups and went to bed about midnight.

Saturday we hired a security team to take us to a market to shoot the final scene with the “Doll Lady”. The market was chaotic with vendors and people everywhere – we were thankful we had the extra security. We hired a mother and daughter to be a part of our scene and they worked wonderfully. After the market scene we traveled across the city to shoot some wider shots in a dump at Villanueva because we are not allowed in the main dump in Guatemala City. However, when we arrived at the dump, we were told that their was an “armed conflict” going on in the dump and it wouldn’t be safe, so we drove back to Joel’s and interviewed one of the Gang Pastors about his work in the prison. After diner Scott was feeling pretty bad and went to bed at 8:30PM to try to get some rest. The rest of the team was in be by 11:30.

Sunday Scott woke up at 10:30AM ate breakfast, went back to bed and slept all day. Bengy and Bobby went around the city with Diego to get various shots. After Bengy and Bobby returned form their shoot the team decided to take Scott to the Emergency Room because we were concerned that he might have the Swine Flu. We were seen immediately and Scott was given an IV to help bring down his 102 fever. The doctor took some blood to test for Swine Flu and took a chest X-Ray. We all tried to stay positive in spite of the situation. After about 45 minutes the doctor returned to give us the unfortunate news. Scott’s blood work came back positive for “Influenza A” – a strain which could be the H1N1 Swine Flu. The doctor prescribed Tamiflu and suggested that Scott be quarantined for five days to prevent the rest of the team from getting ill. There are 24 hour pharmacies all over Guatemala City but only a few keep Tamiflu in stock, so Joel drove to a few until he found some. Scott took the first dose and went to bed. Bobby and Bengy and J.Mac worked on a video podcast episode and went to bed at 2:30AM.

We are hoping that Scott will be feeling better and will be able to jump back into production asap.

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In this episode, J.Mac explains rain gear, we meet some new friends who are lending a hand, and our team leader Scott falls ill.

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The Athenti-Core arrives in Guatemala City and setup camp. The first day is a successful but blistering one.

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It is hard to believe that July 29 is already upon us. Time flies when you have a lot to do. After all the writing, planning, editing, drawing, more planning, laughing, crying and even more planning … here we go again.

I am not certain what to expect on this trip.  We are headed down with a very long list of footage that we would like to capture and are doing our best to be as thorough as possible. We have categorized our shots in a database with storyboards, detailed camera direction, character, location, etc – and we can pull reports “out the wazoo” and check things off as we go. Yet, I recently read a quote in a book, “No amount of planning stands up to contact with an enemy.” This is so true. So, in addition to the massive amount of planning, we are prepared to flex.

Hopefully we will come back home with the footage we need to finish our project. Regardless … I know we will return home with incredible stories. Stay tuned …

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The Athenti-quad team of Scott, Bobby, J.Mac and Bengy are packing up and ready to head down to Guatemala

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We are 6 days out from our return trip and are trying to get all the odds and ends completed before we leave. Our stories are written, shots are outlined and we are finalizing our storyboards (Stephen Major Chisholm is cranking them out like a machine).

I have developed a database to keep this enormous amount of data together so we can check things off and log them as we complete them in Guatemala. Our production team is much smaller this time, so we need to streamline things as much as possible … last time we had 16 … this time we have four.  Hopefully this data prototype will work as planned.

We are excited about this opportunity to continue working on this amazing project.

Athentikos Production Team – Summer 2009
Bobby, Bengy, J.Mac, Scott

We plan on posting video podcasts of our daily production while we are in Guatemala.  You can view them here in our blog, or subscribe to them in iTunes by going here:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=324375363

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