Me Alegro De Verte
Have you ever wanted to read someone else's diary?
“An elegant tribute to a cinematic past. Wonderfully shot and expertly crafted”
In Depth with the Creators -
N3 Films
Hi guys, tell us a little about yourself and your background in filmmaking
JLlamas (Director): Hello, a pleasure to meet you. As a brief summary of my career, I started making short films with my friends when we were 16. Later, I studied in a film school and, once I finished it, I began to make projects as director, producer and editor.
N3Films (Production team): As a team, we have been working together for 4 years already. We are always eager to start new projects and we love making ideas become videos.
How did Me alegro de verte (Happy To See You) first come together as a project?
JLlamas (Director): It was through a friend who is the guitarist of the band. He commented to me that they had signed with a record label and asked me if I wanted to shoot the music video. It was just after the lockdown, so we completed the project with excitement.
What appealed to you about the music?
JLlamas (Director): It was the mixture of innovation and the influence of classic indie spanish groups, as well as the casual yet vulgar lyrics.
There is a strong homage to 'quinqui' films in this clip. How would you describe this genre to people who are unfamiliar with it?
Lucas Sierra (Screenwriter): ‘Quinqui’ films is a genre in Spanish film history from around the 80s, shortly after dictator Franco's death. With Eloy de la Iglesia and Jose Antonio de la Loma as main directors of the genre, these films were heavily focused on crime, committed by the curious, lost and bored lumpenproletariat youth of the time. These kids were mostly picked up from the streets (and later dumped back on the streets again post-“fame”) hence the absurd lack of experience in acting, which gives these films an aura of freshness, mischief and nonchalance.
If one wishes to know more about this social class during such an interesting time as was the post-dictatorship in Spain, “Colegas” and “El Pico” are definitely a good way to start. The visual impact of these films is considerable, since most scenes in which drug consumption and violence are involved actually took place. These elements were a great contribution to a country that was, at the time, not yet used to seeing these things first-hand, and were filmed thanks to the amount of impudence that often characterised the cast. It is worth mentioning that some of the main actors in this genre or movement ーsuch as José Luis Manzano and José Luis Fernandez "El Pirri"ー would die of overdose after a short lived period of relative success.
There is a wonderful vintage look to the film. What did you do to achieve this?
Antonio Sanz Jiménez (DOP): Both the choice of using a zoom lens and the bluish and greenish color palette transports us to the 80s. To achieve this style, we worked a lot on colour correction. We changed the black tones to green ones, and changed the tones of the tree leaves and the most saturated elements of the image to fit our colour palette.
What were the challenges in making this film?
Carmen Gándara (Production Manager): One of the biggest challenges was to fit the budget to all the ideas from the script, as it is all set in the 80s-90s and we had to find all these vintage elements. With the help of parents' (and grandparents') clothes, different furniture and other useful "atrezzo" they kept from those years, we could finally make the best adaptation to the genre we could.
Fátima Martín (1st AD): We shot the video in two days due to different logistic issues. The fact that we had to finish the shooting in those two days with maximum detail, so that the proposed aesthetic was maintained, supposed a challenge.
What projects are coming for you in the future?
N3Films (Production team): Several music videos of different record labels, projects with many companies, advertising… Soon we will begin with our own fiction projects too.
Do you have any message for our Melbourne audience?
N3Films (Production team): First of all, thank you very much for watching our clip. We are delighted to be in this Festival and really impressed by having people watching it so far away from our country. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did while shooting the video.