Challenging Shoots for Guatemala-Based Class

The BECA 580 class, now in Guatemala making a video for the women's weaving collective, Trama Textiles, has encountered some challenging shoots. This week, we captured typically Guatemalan marimba music at a music conservatory in Xela (the Mayan name for Quetzaltenango). A professor allowed us to record his students - and capture them on video. Imagine about 10 musicians, two large marimbas, a bass, maracas, a drum and a percussion instrument constructed from a turtle shell. They - and our production equipment - were crowded into a dark "studio" with fluorescent lights, few windows, one electrical outlet, and terrible acoustics. The Rifa light only created more shadows, so we dispensed with it and used "natural" light. Regardless, we have four tunes - and some great shots of the marimba musicians!

Last Saturday, we accompanied the vice president of the cooperative to her home village, Pujujil, which is about two hours' distance from Xela. We were greeted by eight women, two men (the only adult males in this group, given the devastation of the war), and an assortment of children. Their mud homes with tin roofs were constructed around a central patio - a tin-covered open breezeway under which the women gather to weave. For the purposes of our visit, they had covered the "floor" of this area with fresh pine needles (a custom used for ceremonial occasions). We interviewed the women in their native Mayan language and Oralia, Trama's vice president, translated the interviews into Spanish for us. There was electricity in one of the mud homes, and we were able to plug in our light kit. After completing the interviews - with a glorious view of the lush green landscape and volcanoes in the background, the women fed us a tasty meal of rice and beans, and tamales, which we had seen cooking in a huge pot on the wood fire as we worked.

There was the day we shot the natural dying process in a village near Lake Atitlán. The huge pots of boiling water, into which the women inserted carrots, achote (a tiny pepper used to accent food), beets, or zacatecas (a leaf for which I can't supply the English translation) - and then the raw threads of cotton - spread smoke all around the area we were shooting. And the day we shot the synthetic dying process - in a modest, cinderblock home surrounded by cornfields - with direct sun, close to midday, hitting the area where this master dyer, with teeth missing and surrounded by his children, grandchildren and aging mother, turned raw cotton thread into brilliant colors. And the day we taped the "confeccionista" - the tailor or sewer who makes products that appeal to buyers from the Global North from the beautifully woven cloth the women deliver to Trama. This man works with an assistant in a triangular-shaped storefront, with a "girly" calendar over the cutting table on one side, and countless soccer posters over the sewing maching and serger on the other side. To dim the noise from the trucks, motorcycles and reconditioned U.S. schoolbusses passing by on the street outside, we had to pull down the metal cover for the shop's front window.

In sum, production in Guatemala has meant a huge leap from the shooting conditions students encountered in their BECA classes in San Francisco. What versatility and ability to improvise these students will take to their future careers in the electronic media!