American Cinematographer - December 2006 - 115

Tito and

blankets, whatever

Gonzalo take
the bold first

was

around. It

was

convenient that

Cady didn't want a lot
of handheld work!" The cinematogra¬
pher used a small set of Zeiss primes
and an old Taylor Hobson 25-250mm
zoom. "The zoom was damaged, so we

step into the
brothel.

couldn't

zoom

below 35mm." Nervous

about the

quality of the lens, he used it
only occasionally, when he needed a
200mm focal length.
Despite equipment difficulties
that are inherent to low-budget filmmaking, Barrera notes he was lucky to
work with an experienced local crew.
"Almost all production in Lima is
commercials; there's very little narrative
work, and that's

one

of the

reasons we

lucky with the crew." Barrera
singles out his 1st AC, Richard Vera,
who frequently had to pull focus without
being able to see the lens. "We would
block out the scene, and just like any
were so

other AC, he'd make his focus marks.

Then, when

we were

the

with

camera

ready, we'd cover
jackets and blankets,

and Richard would have to snake his

hand underneath all that stuff to
focus. Somehow he

was

pull

still able to hit

his marks without

an

seeing the lens!"
replicated inte¬
rior portions of a Lima brothel in an
abandoned hospital, and used the real
brothel for a few exterior shots. El Viaje
unfolds as Gonzalo visits a prostitute
named Milushka (Magaly Bolivar), who's
in a red bedroom, while Tito lingers with
Dolores, who is eventually revealed to

1.33:1 for two reasons,

be his mother, in a blue room. The two

The filmmakers

all the rage. Cady hates that stuff,
and when he started telling me how he

was

wanted the film to look, I could see it
would be a challenge. Cady didn't want
the

camera to

call attention to itself."

A crucial

scene

where Tito

begs

his mother to let him stay with her plays
out almost entirely in a two-shot. During

Barrera suggested pushing in for
close-ups, but Abarca insisted on only
the two-shot. "I just watched the movie
again last night, and I think Cady was
right," says Barrera.
After debating whether to shoot
prep,

on

16mm

decided
Abarca

or

on

35mm, the filmmakers

35mm, largely because

thought the film would only play
at festivals in Europe and South Amer¬
ica, where screening 16mm often isn't

106 December 2006

option. They framed the picture in
according to
Barrera. "We wanted to go toward a
documentary style, and also, this is a
story about two kids who are short, and
they spend most of the time talking to
adults. We shot 1.33
the frame with

a

so we

kid and

an

could fill up

adult,

or

the

two kids and an adult. If we'd shot in a

wider aspect ratio, the camera would've
had to be farther away from the action,
and

would've wasted

space."
The weeklong shoot took place in

we

Lima, and Barrera used

an

Arri BL-2, the

only

camera available locally that was
within the film's budget. "It was very old

but well maintained," he says.

biggest problem

"The

was that it was very
loud. We did the old pile-on - jackets,

bedrooms

actually the same room
angles. "We did that
because it was the only room that satis¬
fied all of our various blocking and
production needs," says Barrera.
In designing the rooms, produc¬
tion designer Mario Frias was faithful to
were

shot from different

what he'd

seen

at the

location, down to

the knick-knacks and wall

hangings.
"Many of the women simply take Christ¬
mas wrapping paper and tape it onto the

walls,

so that's what we did," says
Barrera. "We also re-created the colors

and the

lighting we saw there. A lot of
people have commented that the rooms
look so stylized, but the truth is there's
no style at all. We just re-created what
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