day 04 : osorio's oreos

Jason, Carlos and I have an early meeting with the director of school in the audio/visual department that ends up having all the technical things we would need to digitize our footage during the shoot. The director happens to be the brother of the late night guard at our hotel who heard that we are making a movie. Gotta love word of mouth and meeting people through people.

The facilities are great and we are thoroughly impressed with their equipment. Hoping to work with them when we come back. We try to find another production company that has editing facilities, but we have no luck. Apparently. just recently, the president decided that the street addresses were in a disarray and needed to be reorganized. Well, now, some people haven't updated their website and such to their NEW addresses, so we were never able to meet up with them. We head back to the hotel after giving up the search.

Daniel and Jamie went off on their own to take some great pics of the city while we were seeking out the editing facilities. Check out Daniel's by clicking here.

More casting upon the return to the hotel, Daniel and I dash off as soon as I return. A never-ending slew of people doing everything and all they can to get the part. We saw more auditions for other parts besides Serafina. The time goes by pretty fast, but the fatigue certainly doesn't let up. We finally come out to a wet and dark city.

Jamie isn't feeling well and never wakes up to our knocks or phone calls, so Carlos, Jason, Daniel and I head out for a dinner in Candelaria, hoping to also knock out a location scout for a bar in the film. We walk around the Bogota Town Square, the huge Christmas tree now lit, and the square filled with people taking pictures and such. Santas populate the area ready for pictures, trailing llamas to ride too.

We find a great little restaurant on a quiet street near the a museum of military vehicles and eat and drink to our heart's content for, as always, a great price. Carlos takes off to finish an early night. Daniel, Jason and I walk on to check out the bar location, called Escobar Rosa. We pay a door charge, but apparently, one door charge gets you three beers. Quite a price. It was quiet and chill on the first floor, but in the basement, the DJ's were getting things slowly started. After one beer, Daniel decided to return to the hotel, so Jason and I finished off the rest of the beers with our entrance tickets. We basically watched Colombianos dance their asses off, an odd mix of solo couples, huge groups of friends, college students and business people go crazy to odd remixes of 80's hip hop and latin hits.

After polishing off the last beer and watching the crowd swell till they were at our table against the wall, we took off in a taxi and called it a night.

day 03 : casting. yay.

Daniel and I have a long day of casting. We start at 9am (finally, a chance to sleep in a LITTLE). I meet Angela, the translator Daniel has hired. And Jaime, the casting director. Also in this particular casting office is Julio who runs the place, and his assistants Ivan and Melvin. We got off to a rocky start, but quickly found a groove, as potential Serafina's come rushing in, one after another.

While Daniel and I were busy casting, Jason and Jamie took a nice morning off, checking out some sights around Bogota. We all met up afterwards around 7 or 8 at the hotel. Daniel and I stay in to get some work done, while Jason, Carlos and Jamie take off for dinner.

Upon their return, we decide to go out and grab drinks (again) but Daniel isn't feeling too well (I warned him not to eat his leftover salmon without reheating it...). Jason, Carlos, Jamie and I head off to a club Carlos knows. Turns out its way to early for them to be open, so we head to a mariachi bar. As we walked into the door, we were greeted by blaring horns, but sadly, as soon as we reached our seats, they stopped. We stuck around, beers in hand, hoping for their return, but the mariachi band never came back out. Que lastima...

But by then it was time to head back to the club nearby. We went in, had a few more beers, and suddenly decided it was a night to rally. We called up Daniel, and decided to check out a bordello called La Piscina. Carlos, Jamie and Jason took off in one cab, I went to go get Daniel. After some deliberation on my part, we jumped in a cab to meet up with the rest of the guys.

After a thorough pat down, we entered a labyrinth of people, a chlorinated smell in the air mixed with alcohol, cigarettes and god knows what else. The other three guys are at a table waiting for us with a bottle of rum. A smarmy, drunk man would not leave us alone, another patron, continually getting up in front of us and trying to shake our hands. At least he was in a good mood. We saw some... questionable and disturbing and fascinating and wild and crazy things that night. You'll have to ask each of us our own take on it, but we definitely had a fun night out with each other. Sorry, can't take pics in there so no way to show you, but trust us, it would definitely blow your mind.

We grab two taxis back to the hotel, fairly inebriated ourselves but not worse for wear. Another long day down...

bogota day 02 : kirkham ham

VERY early morning today. Breakfast served at 6:20am in my hotel room, off in the van at 7am. We have a FULL day of location scouting ahead of us, so lets get started. First we're picked up to see a potential place for an apartment of a main character, Jason. A stark white, three room space, some potential, but we keep our hopes up in seeing something more feasible. We continue to walk to our next location, along the way, we randomly seeing a building with a cool facade. Turns out its a bar and Bernardo knocks on the door to see if we can take a look inside. We think it might be perfect for the character Valentina's bar that she works at.

We continue to our next scheduled location. We walk past a location that Daniel had already found for a shot of Serafina, we all think it'll be amazing, especially at night. More walking, its amazing how close everything is to each other. We head towards an amazing, historical area called Candelaria. Its a jumble of restaurants, colleges, theaters, residences, bars, hostels, and hotels. There seems to be a great artistic community here, the street walls are littered with some really amazing tags and graffiti. Definitely an area I could see myself living in.

Next up was a hotel to use a potential location. We were excited about the lobby, but once we got upstairs, it didn't really fit what we were looking for. Moving on to our next location, Carlos ends up recognizing an old apartment he used to live in, and we knock on the door. He is friends with the owner and she answers the door to show us some of the empty apartments in her building that are available. It has an amazing courtyard that all the rooms surround. And rent is ridiculously inexpensive here, furthering a notion to live here for a bit... The space she had wasn't exactly looking for the film though. Que lastima.

Our next stop was the highlight of the day because we discovered (well, Bernardo and Carlos discovered) an amazing place for us. Its perfect for the character Jason's apartment. Frankly, its also just an amazing apartment! So spacious, perfect to shoot in, beautiful light, great character and windows throughout the whole place. We're very excited about it, we couldn't have found a better place if we built it ourselves. The funniest part, the man that is currently renting the apartment, will possibly also be our caterer. Two birds one stone, gotta love it.

Walking through more of Candelaria, we passed by several government buildings, historical landmarks, and finally Bogota Town Square where we plan to shoot a scene. Definitely picturesque. We stop for a snack closer towards downtown, walking out of historical Candelaria. We try a soft mozzarella type cheese with a guava compote and syrup snack. Very different, very tasty. Also, yucca bread, salty, almost like a cheese bread, with a small sour aftertaste.

Our next location takes care of two areas in the film. A shady hotel and hotel room, and a dark alley. At first we're hesitant about the hotel building, but we realize that with the right set dressing, we can make it work perfectly.

The Santa Fe district is our next stop, we drive there to scout a playground, an apartment for the Valentina character, a cafe, and a city street Serafina runs down. The city street is half florists and half tombstone carvers, and is, of course, near a giant cemetery, which we also take a walk through.

Lunch is eaten at a popular restaurant called Sopas y Postres (Soups and Desserts), a chain restaurant in Colombia. We get a slew of food, soups, chicharrones, platanos, meats, salads, everything.

We take off from there to see more at Candelaria. We actually walk into a market where they're filming a telenovela. Funny to see how large their team is, and know how small our crew is going to be when making a full feature length film. We looked at an area we're considering for another scene with Valentina, near a college campus. Very artsy, several restaurants and bars. Along our walk we find a great new hostel nearby, only $10 a night! If you don't mind sharing a bunkbed with 10 other people or so, but the facilities are all very nice, clean, and new.

More walking around as the night goes on. We finally head back to the hotel around 9pm, but not before stopping at a nearby restaurant with some amazing burritos and quesadillas. We get back around 10pm, a very long day.

Jamie and Carlos hit the hay, Jason, Daniel and I decide to go out and grab a quick drink somewhere. We head to a safer area that Daniel knows of nearby, called Zona Rosa. Its pretty much like a 3rd Street Promenade in Los Angeles, nothing amazing, but a nice place to chill. We end up at a Irish pub style bar, grab a few beers, meet some very random South African women after their book club, and quickly retreat back to the hotel after our beers are empty.

A very long day...

estamos aqui

Oki here writing from Bogotá! That's right, we made it here, safe and semi-sound. Things got of to a semi-rocky start when Jason and I arrived at LAX first to find that we were in the wrong terminal (easy fix). Then, upon walking to the correct one and waiting in line for about 45 minutes, finding that we were required to have paper tickets in hand even though we purchased our tickets online 3 days before our departure. After a long phone call, a long walk to another terminal, a long interaction with the check-in attendants to print out our tickets, a long walk back to the terminal we are supposed to depart from, we finally checked-in. Upon return, we ran into Jamie waiting in line too.

We walked to the security check-in before the actual security checkpoint, only to find that there was a long wait there as well, with our flight boarding in only 10 minutes... The line inched along, hiding what lied ahead for us at the x-ray machines. Finally handing our boarding passes and passports over, we luckily found that there weren't too many people going through the x-ray machines. Brisk walk to our gate, still boarding, we calmed down.

7.5 hour flight, we finally walked out of the Bogota airport terminal at 6:30 to find Carlos waiting for us. Daniel and Carlos have been in Bogota since Friday, jamming like crazy, doing auditions and location scouting. Hector, our driver, pulls up our white van and we head off for our hotel.

We check in, throw our stuff in our individual rooms at Viaggio Studios, a four story building. Carlos is on the first floor, Jamie on the second, Jason on the third, and Daniel and I at the top. A quick hour for breakfast served in our rooms, and we're off as quickly as we arrived.

We met Bernardo, our location scout, and his assistant, Marvin. All of seven of us jump into the van, with poor Marvin stuck in the trunk area of the van. We stopped at several potential shoot locations for Serafina's home, especially loving a barrio called Sucre. Looked at places all over for a possible make-up store, clothing store, bars, and burlesque clubs. Two clubs of note were the Fourty (mispelled) Niner Club and the Vinacure Club. The first club is (no beating around the bush on this one) a brothel with insane design. Its like a maze of mirrors and booth seating on several levels all hidden inside a very plain looking building. We met the owner, a very nice gentleman, a Hugh Hefner of sorts, who took us on a tour of his own private lair within the building.

The other club, Vinacure, was a full size movie theater hidden in a strip mall, stage and all. The decor is a maddening array of mish-mashed, perverse, and macabre mannequins and statues littering the seating areas and hanging off the walls. The big draw there is a transvestite show on the big stage every hour or so. Check out some of my pics, and you'll get a better idea...

Finally, headed back to the hotel for a nice jet-lag rest, which is where I sit now. More to come tomorrow... Enjoy the slide show of today's pics I took. Jason also took a few of these. Jamie, a pro photog, is also taking some amazing photos which we'll try and get up for you to check out ASAP too! Ciao...

e-tickets in e-hand...

Great and exciting news! Pre-production funds have come in and that allowed us to purchase our flights for our scouting trip to Bogotá, Colombia. This is where 2/3 of the movie will be shot. Daniel and our production designer/Colombia pro Carlos Osorio will be leaving this Friday, and producer Jason Kirkham and I will be leaving soon after on Sunday night. We'll return December 13th, with plenty accomplished. This trip's purpose to do location scouting, auditioning, and more. Should be fun but definitely exhausting. We'll keep you posted as the trip progresses from Bogotá...

Check check...

Hey everyone, Geoff here. We'll be posting as much as we can to let you know about our whole process on our upcoming feature length film "The Disposables."

We're all gearing up for a scouting trip in Bogota in the next few weeks, creating storyboards, breaking down the script, going over budgets, keeping in touch with our contacts in Bogota. Plenty of work done, plenty more to go. One part of our preparation was to go and test some potential HD cameras for the production. Director Daniel and DP Christophe went to check some out. Check out the great photos taken by Jamie Wedow by clicking here!

Holy Monster

We make movies. You're welcome.