Living in Cancun is amazing for diving, hanging on the beach, and exploring cenotes. Is not amazing for buying photo related product, enjoying art exhibitions or finding interesting people to learn from. Our city is 45 years old, and was created as a touristic attraction to raise money and promote private investments.The people that came to work during the 80s were mostly young and looking to make money. Today, the population grew up to 1.5 million habitants but 90% of local economy still depends on tourism.
Luckily, the caribbean lifestyle also attracted a design agency from CDMX. GOLPEAVISA was, and still is, a role model. They were small, working with big clients, and drinking a lot of beer. In 2011 we invited them to be part of a small Art Show (Que Elgancia la de Francia), that day it was clear that they played in a different league, so when 4 years later they asked us to be part of a project with British GQ, we felt happy like a quinceañera. And of course we accepted even though we had no idea how to do what we were supposed to.
Que Elegancia la de Francia 2011
Que Elegancia la de Francia 2011
Pre-production for GQ 2015
Pre-production for GQ 2015
We had to create an scenario for the 2015 Food & Drink Awards cover of the British GQ. On that set we should recreate the magazine logo using kitchen and bar props. The result was a 25 seconds clip for Ipad Edition Cover and a picture for the printed supplement.
Since it was impossible to sketch it or do any kind of pre-production without knowing the exact place and props, we skipped right to production. We choose Hotel Cacao because the bar had a clean caribbean look, and also, our friend and favorite PR Gina Alfeiran arrange everything so we could worked during the night while the bar was closed. BTW big shout out to Bruce James for pampering us.
The first night, we stayed from 10pm – 4 am. It was really hard to create a composition that worked both for vertical and horizontal framing. We didn´t had all the props, so we decided to work with the tables and key elements on the general idea and then start from there the next day. The problem was that during the day the bar and terrace had service, so we leave some marks hopping that the weather or a courious turist wouldn´t move them.
Second day we called for backups: Lau, Javi, Ale, Penny and the rest of Golpeavisa arrived. Awesome Chef Alex Cuatepotzo created some sponges and other delicacies to be used as props. And yes we asked for some cocktails, you know, for props. At 10.30 pm we picked where we lefted the night before, and pretty much just started to add stuff, trial and error. When everything was in place we flashed area by area in every angle trying to obtain as much detail as possible, because we still had no idea what we were doing.
By 7 am we shooted the last pics. Art direction and the heavy post was in charge of Golpeavisa, with emphasis on “heavy post”. When you worked +30 hours in 2 days you tend to make mistakes, ours was to rush the production beacause the sun was rising. Truth is… we were using flashes (sic, THE STILLS fault D:) . So we run with some problems editing the ipad clip. We tried different solutions and we hit a death end, it was impossible to re-do the shooting of course and we were short in visuals. Moments like this are when you understand why Tom Brady, Messi, or Vettel receive those big checks, the difference between A league from the B squads. This time ElPincheMoreno delivered, and his and the solution was nothing but more hard working hours.
Long live GOLPEAVISA and all those amazing projects that we have no idea how we made them.
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