By beginning of March 2010, we had a working draft of our script and we’d even begun principle casting. Within those first two weeks of casting we actually finished writing the script, and we started working out the scenes. It was also back then when I first met Iván Codón. I’d met him through Giuseppe. Up until that point I wasn’t sure if he even existed or if he was just Giuseppe’s alter ego or pen name, because I’d never even had a Facebook chat with the man. But there he was in the flesh; a walking, talking, smoking, heck of a screenwriter.
Time has just kind of flown by from the first night of casting and our first draft, to where we are now. As I sit here writing this and enjoying my vacation on this quiet August morning, we are very much in postproduction.
While our production schedule was set, Gayxample as a production itself was never some rigid entity that was strictly dictated by it. It was open to any and all creative input, and allowed to find its own voice as we rolled camera; never compromising creativity or quality to any time or economic restrictions that usually come with the territory. It was a work in progress, if you will, and we all willingly and willfully jumped on board. It let us discover new ways of making film, and showed us that there really is no “one way” to create cinema (although a few guidelines do come in handy).
The production was very centered in reality: organic from the word go. It was influenced by the pace and rhythm of our daily lives and we adjusted to it accordingly, instead of the other way around. We took full advantage of any new technology that could help us not only during production, but also serve as a means for distribution and promotion.
In just a matter of three months, we’ve managed to roll out a full-length project that is over two hours long. We’d just finished casting a month prior to that, and our script was registered shortly there after. If one stops to think about it, you’d think we’ve all lost our minds. And maybe we did a little. One crazy guy in particular named Giuseppe, who would talk about his idea to anyone who would listen, friend and stranger alike. It was an ambitious and contagious project, and as so, it attracted a group of people that would’ve never thought of ever working together. Everyone seemed to have a clear vision of the project in whatever capacity their role in the film would be. And this seemed to snowball into something that anyone who even heard about the project wanted to be a part of it, on either a personal or professional level, or both. People just wanted in, and they were excited about the possibilities.
Very few times did we sit and analyze what we were trying to do. I don’t mean from the actual production of it, or from any creative standpoint during production. I’m talking about the project itself. We didn’t sit there and analyze the scope of our madness.
I’ve come to two conclusions about our experience. The first one being that the actual audiovisual production and artistic and creative direction were subconsciously influenced by everything around us at the time of production, because our production was very present, and grounded in the “now.”
The second being that when you give in freely to the madness like we all did; giving our hearts and souls without limitations, with almost a blind faith as to the outcome, and opening ourselves up to the possibilities, there was really no limit to what we could accomplish. We can dream of best-case scenarios, and take on the worst, but our reality is that a dream we had last November has come true.Cenzo Álvarez De Haro - Translated and adapted by: Norman Giovanni Zelaya