It was an extremely hot night in November of 1977. I was trying to sleep in the noisy non-air conditioned room of what was supposed to be the best hotel in Surin, some 300 miles east of Bangkok, Thailand. The phone rang: It was Weepa, my Thai production coordinator.
“The elephants’ owners want more money or they are not going to show up tomorrow morning!” she said. The next day was our first shooting day and we needed 20 elephants for the first set-up. I told her, “Wait for me downstairs. I already made a deal with them – I want to talk with these guys!” Since I didn’t fully trust my local crew, I had personally made the deal about the elephants already.
I got dressed and joined Weepa in the lobby of the hotel. We drove a few miles to the place where the elephants and their owner were staying. When we arrived, 25 to 30 men were sitting around a few big fires in the middle of a wide field surrounded by tropical vegetation.
I asked the leader of the elephant keepers why we were again negotiating when we had already reached an agreement a couple of days before.
Weepa cut me off and said, “Let me do this!” She started talking in Thai and she went on for a while. I was watching her face and the expressions of those men while I was killing some of the hundreds of mosquitoes that were trying to bite me. I could understand some of the words they were saying, especially numbers. “Song roi” the leader of the elephant owners kept saying. “Paeng bai. Nueng roi.” Weepa kept answering.
Minutes later Weepa told me “We have a deal if we offer them 100 Bahts more per elephant”. “That’s fine”, I said (after all, back then, it was approximately $5), “but how do we know that we are not going to negotiate again in one hour or in the middle of a shot?” “I am making a deal” Weepa answered. “I know they will keep their word.” And they did.
We shot all day with the elephants, which turned out to be extremely well trained and surprisingly well behaved. It was the first time I was shooting in an exotic location and I immediately realized something: when you shoot in a country other than yours, you have a lot to learn. And, if you are lucky, perhaps you have something to teach. You cannot reproduce the systems, the processes, the methods you use at home: you just have to understand how to make things happen in a different way. This doesn’t mean that you just sit, wait and pray for the production to go smoothly. It means that you have to understand “the local” methods and try to make them work for you. Sometimes you discover that in the most remote areas of the globe, a place with an incredibly limited production industry, they are able to achieve remarkable goals in a very unexpected manner. Sometimes, on the other hand, you realize it’s the moment to teach something to improve the system. But what you cannot do is pretend that shooting in the jungles of Guatemala is the same as shooting in downtown L.A.
The principal thing to understand is that, with the exclusion of a few cities worldwide, there are not many places with a supporting industry as the one we know in the US. That means that local production teams cannot count on a sophisticated structure to achieve their goals. They sometimes have to invest hours in solving problems that in L.A., New York, Miami or London could be solved with one single phone call. But if they are good, they can put together an extremely complex production with excellent results and, often, for a very limited amount of money.
I spent the last 27 years watching production teams in all the continents organizing productions: I like to observe them, to understand how they proceed and how they work. I accept the local methods that are proving themselves efficient and sometimes I import them back home. Sometimes, to the contrary, when I see that it is necessary, I ask the local production team to work as we are used to in the U.S. I explain why I believe that our systems are better in this case and why we should operate in this manner.
I have been shooting in more than 30 countries all around the world since then and I’ve learned a lot. In New Zealand, how to improve the safety of a crew shooting on a road. In Grand Cayman, how to coordinate efficiently a team shooting underwater. In Morocco, how to operate in the sand of the dunes. In Malta, how to build a 12-foot miniature of an oil rig that looks 300 feet high. In Costa Rica, how to move crew and equipment in the jungle. In Italy, how to put photography, wardrobe and art direction in sync. I’ve also learned many precious tricks.
Only once have I had to fire the production team and start over: only once in so many years and it was in a country where I considered from the beginning it could happen.
But in these many years I’ve also taught many things. Some trivial like how to make a proper pre-pro-book or how to set up a video village for the agency and the client. Some more critical such as how to define clearly the responsibilities of the team members, test properly the special effects, coordinate a helicopter shoot or put together an achievable production schedule.
Looking backward, I can positively say that it was a wonderful experience.
Massimo Martinotti is the president of Mia Films, a production company based in Miami with offices in Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica and Spain. He has produced commercials in over 30 countries for clients such as GM, Ford, Toyota, Renault, Citroen, Peugeot, P&G, Nestle, Sony, and McDonald’s. Martinotti is a member of the Board of Directors and President of the Florida Chapter of AICP.
