Betty Kaplan, nine days after the end of her most recent film, when COVID-19 caused closures in Puerto Rico in March, stopping production without securing when it could resume. Tears flowed. Someone circulated a bottle of vodka. The long term of the film suddenly comes into question, but Kaplan, the writer and director of the literary adaptations “Love and Shadows” and “Doa Berbara”, is no stranger to perseverance.
He had spent seven years fighting for his fifth feature film, “Simone”, directed, going through monetary setbacks, false beginnings and, in 2019, his own war on cancer. Adapted from Eduardo Lalo’s award-winning novel of the same name, he nevertheless entered production in San Juan, where the story of Lalo of a university professor tangled with a mysterious admirer and where Kaplan, born in New York and raised in Caracas, is ready. now based.
This March afternoon, the thirteenth day of filming, he amassed his team and cast, led through Esai Morales and the actress of “Tigertail” Kunjue Li, and announced the news: the total closure of the island.
“There’s a line in the film where [the protagonist] says, ‘We’re traveling where there are no maps,'” Kaplan said from her home last month, where after completing the film according to COVID-19 guidelines, she’s now in post-production, practically with a Los Angeles-based publisher. “This line has where we all are.”
In June, after a three-month hiatus, “Simone,” the moment when American production allowed the pandemic to roll amid the pandemic, according to the filmmakers. With strict new conditioning and protection processes implemented, Kaplan and his team finished filming and packed in July, without a single COVID-19 case.
“I don’t think I’ve ever made a movie that’s had so much magic,” Kaplan said, “in more tactics than one.”
Morales had long attached to the star as an editor and instructor who entered into an intriguing date with an aspiring artist, performed through Li, in the community of Santurce de San Juan. Kaplan to film in opposite chronology, a selection that would be fortuitous because it meant that scenes of intimate characters were over.
While waiting for Green Gentil to resume production, Kaplan practically worked on an animated series for the film, rewrote and condense the rest of the script, and finished writing an unrelated television project. Producers without delay began to take prospective precautions opposed to COVID-19. Meanwhile, Li returned to Los Angeles, while Morales stayed in Puerto Rico.
By the time production resumed, the pandemic had erupted, as had anti-Asian sentiment, spurred by President Trump’s use of terms like “Wuhan virus.” Li, who is originally from China and founded in Los Angeles, encountered this unforeseen byproduct of coronavirus upon her return, which caused her to have to visibly show others that she was not the virus.
“Because I’m Chinese, when I first went there Array … other people said, “How are you doing in China? “, ” said Li. “When I was given home, Esai said, ‘I spoke to my friends and said that my teammate was Chinese and that I had to protect you. Those are the things that are sophisticated and different. So I sought to be braver.’ , because I’m Chinese.”
To return to the set, manufacturers implemented new protocols through trade union and industrial rules that accounted for about 12% to 17.5% of the budget, according to the filmmakers. A doctor explained the new precautions to Kaplan and his branch heads, and to the filmmaker a diary documenting the trip.
After the packaging, Kaplan and his collaborators commented on their reports as unforeseen pioneers of coronavirus filming: protective devices and social distance measures on set, tests and tactile search for all, greater sanitation measures, more equipment and therefore greater time and cash constraints. .
With additional paints needed for COVID-19 protocols, the 12-hour days have suddenly turned into 10-hour days, “so each and every shot makes sense,” Li said. “We can’t ask for another take for each and every one of the things. They get lost two hours a day, so they basically get lost 12 hours a week. One day of filming a week is lost, and for independent films, it’s huge.”
But Kaplan’s career in independent films prepared her for new challenges. “I’m from Latin America, I’m filming for nothing,” he says. “It’s a great movie that we had to shoot in 20 days, and we shot in 22 days, and that’s very little time for the quality we aspired to. So we had to make some tough decisions, my [cinematographer] and I, when we saw that time drowning.”
While productions are leading the way without a vaccine that opposes the disease, the images and entries in Kaplan’s diary, published for duration and clarity, offer an idea of what cinema looks like:
“We all had our molecular tests of COVID-19, which were sent to the doctor, which allowed us to take off,” Kaplan wrote the day before filming resumed. “I almost felt like I was going into space.”
The 60 team members were separated into spaces with credentials based on their roles in the film, with limited access to those allowed within the area. The cast and team members took the temperature and completed contact questionnaires. With a curfew at night, the production had received a special permit to film beyond 10 p.m. Cut. Kaplan’s diary described the new reality.
It must have been a beautiful day. We had some wonderful scenes to shoot. And it was our first day out of the door, and we were jumping for happiness, all without COVID-19.
We listened carefully to the orders of our leading physician, Dr. Ivan Irrizary. We had a security assembly and we’re in a position to stop by. MJ Delgado, advised through our final touch link as fitness production and protection supervisor, one more doctor and a team that disinfects everything…
Manufacturers took every ounce of their fibers and brain cells to get approval from unions, the government, the mayor of San Juan, the police and the exemption from night movies for movies beyond the curfew limit. Well done to them. And here we are masked: distance of 6 feet, hygiene stations to wash hands and spray alcohol before water sources.
I said, “Hi. Have you had any contact with anyone with COVID? Do you have a cough, etc.?” A gun in the head for our temperature, of us, 60 beings we test COVID, temperature taken and signed according to our zone A or B or C. Our shipment is a great old yellow school bus. Flashback of all our school days.
Today, our bus takes us to a hill on St. George’s Street between two churches to film the walking scenes through San Juan. We started filming the opening of the film, with Esai Morales as a screenwriter and Melanie Ramos as a skater girlfriend, and a cloud falls on us. We will have to return to this level, because we lack time to complete the great level on the beach, letting the words of the colored chalk “San Juan, San Juan” disappear in the rain.
Our island has been declared in a state of emergency due to a severe drought, and to our surprise, it rains all day, forcing us to shoot in the raindrops. But my team is amazing. They go through the rain … and we have our scene. However, we do not know how it will fit: dry surfaces and rainy surfaces. Whatever pain we caused the clouds and rain, we were lucky enough to have a sunset.
With less interaction between team members, Li dressed in his trailer and made up with artists dressed in masks and face protectors. “It’s not that hard to adapt, ” said Li. “Everything is very protocolary. The only thing complicated is the unknown. Everything is so unresolved. It’s more for other people to coordinate.”
It was a day we were looking for: two actors in controlled scenarios, also the crucial moment of the film. We had worked on all facets of our pre-production explorer, pre-COVID, so we were sure we could make our day.
Our producer, Peter Rawley, had a wonderful concept [to play a key role]: Joanna Cassidy, the woman with the snake in “Blade Runner”, who had the courage and guts to come here and was perfect. The representative of the IATSE [craftsmen] industry union visited the plateau without us knowing … approved and advised the changes, which were implemented without delay.
I had to do the molecular test of COVID-19, as did the actors and others in my A domain. The production brought nurses to the set, which stored time.
We made a great scene in a doctor’s office, where the characters communicate about love and writing, and among the patients, a saxophonist plays a sad melody.
On their last day in March, the filmmakers rushed to press part of a scene by Italian actress Caterina Murino before she returned to Europe. When production resumed, Kaplan and his team had to adapt to past images.
It’s a rough day. All the apartments had to recreate a scene that we started brilliantly 3 months ago and that we had to prevent because of COVID-19 …
The team that day we had to shoot Caterina Murino remembers it as an extracorporeal delight of natural adrenaline and determination.
Our supporting agent, Bonnie Wu, did a miracle in locating an actress who not only had hair similar to that of our Caterina Murino, but also had compatibility in her wardrobe.
We had filmed only one aspect of the 11-page sequence, so we had to film all the sequences of the other faces, master, two shots and close-ups, and then do the scene before the outdoor party in the writer’s car. . Our shipping team had studied and received their permission to disinfect the cars. Our editor Luis Colina had sent the edited scene so that we all matched, tone, texture, movements and costumes.
We filmed the scene that was missing. Then he went on to do a little scene of actors.
The mask was needed on set, even if the actors simply take off theirs to film. “Every 4 hours we had to stop,” Kaplan said of the accumulation of protocols. “And we coordinated it so that it can block the actors while the film crew disinfected the cameras.”
The call is at 6 a.m. in the middle of the San Juan Monetary District. It may simply be called Wall Street in Puerto Rico. We had sought to do the scene in the middle of Muoz Rivera, the main street connecting all the iconic buildings, but we may not get permission. However, it had a small card up its sleeve: a street looking with the most iconic view of all.
The operator and drone pilot were as excited as the entire crew … a naked guy face down in the monetary district to see from the clearest. The cloakroom is in a position of towels, robe and cups for soldiers, because our actor, a double frame for Esai Morales, and a full-fledged actor, Ely Cay, will be naked face down in an eagle position extended over the sidewalk. The pavement has been diluted and disinfected.
Later, with the sun falling on us, the SAG representative advised a replacement at our water points: individual bottles instead of a cooler. We’re all in a position to learn.
I’m touched by the courage, precision and harsh paintings of my team. While I wait for the preparations, my co-producer, Frances Lausell, informs me that the much disputed location of the Rio Piedras market has a likely infection and that they are waiting for testing. In the meantime, you’d like me to replace the day. I have no problems, that the security team has re-disinfected the place. Well, as Simon Bolivar says, when you do things twice, they’re twice as good. “Or there’s no harm in not coming.”
At 8 years old we started a small action scene, which in Hollywood’s opinion is nothing, but for us here on the island it’s something. We finished early and we will return to our original location to shoot the beginning of the film, which the storm of the first day prevented us from doing.
A director friend lends us a GoPro camera to film my skater through the colorful chalk letters “San Juan, San Juan”, which had taken me off the first attempt.
We finish two hours early, and I call the team to tell you how much I appreciate your paintings and compliance with the new protocol, and to warn you the next day, where we all have to be precise, focused and attentive to make a day. that even pre-COVID would be difficult.
No matter how nice, I even won my applause. Maybe it’s my Venezuelan humor!
The hardest day of filming was at the historic Paradise Theatre, Kaplan says. “We had to climb the cameras to a mechanical elevator because the stairwell doesn’t go through to the projection room. Then there the rain. But it’s a very vital place. It is the fine arts theatre of Río Piedras that the elders remember, where they went to see Visconti, Bertolucci, Truffaut; it’s an iconic theater, which is absolutely destroyed for the moment.”
This is our most complicated day. It was an iconic scene in the remains of the ancient Paradise Theatre, where many others watched beloved European classics and films.
Now, what left a steel arrangement of a roof, a projection room full of leaves, with which our art branch did wonders, had to clean, disinfect, and the fabrics and chambers had to be lifted by a scissor lift. The dark and empty remains of this former screening room have come to life.
In a separate, I feel when a spirit is close to me. I’ve had goose bumps. All day of the theater, I felt a spirit and sought to perceive who I was visiting and why. Later that day, my husband manufacturer told me that my favorite composer, Ennio Morricone, had passed away and that “Cinema Paradiso” was one of his favorites. So much magic has happened in this film … it’s like he has his own mind.
We’re fine. Just in time.
I called to do my fourth molecular control of COVID-19: wrap the nose up to the brain. I thought, because our doctor said it was transparent until Thursday, that maybe, maybe, maybe, it would save me next week. Of course not… I’m Zone A and I have to be controlled three times a week.
My [relay] assistant instructs the co-producer to prevent at midnight, an hour and a portion before my general end time, due to the final time of COVID-19. We finish at 12:15.
My co-producer gives us the extra time our ordinary team wants to complete our “martini” movement. There’s nothing like brightening your day! And we created them all.
With the time already short due to coVID-19 precautions, Kaplan occasionally had to organize several locations in combination on a non-married shooting day, which would require disinfection before and after filming. After one place fell on day 6, the novelist Eduardo Lalo advised another site that ended up working even better. “Magic happens,” Kaplan wrote. On the same day, the production had its first concern about COVID-19 when it was discovered that a member of the base camp team had imaginable exposure to the virus.
It’s not a simple day … but never an impossible idea.
The administrator of our site worked miracles because the security manager would not allow us to paint on this iconic Art Deco staircase that I wanted. He controlled the site, disinfected it, communicated with each of the 14 families who live there to reach an agreement with the owners that would allow us to do so. My DP and I thought we only needed an hour, but the heat and tight spaces were very difficult. We all joke, paid sauna and weight loss … we leave “blood, sweat and tears” on those steps. We left kilos of sweat.
My co-producer had to replace the water coolers I had installed to save the planet from plastic, with individual bottled bottles for COVID protocol requests. It took us twice as long, but we had our shots that were beautiful. I think this is one of the most beautiful scenes in the movie.
The next location is interesting. He speaks at the center of this film that has his own mind.
We were going to do a bookstore across the street, but it had acrylic protections in place and it didn’t forbid its customers. Desperate, I called the editor of the novel on which the film is based, Eduardo Lalo, to talk about bookstores imaginable and he told me that the bookstore where we had shot the previous day had opened a new position. So I called our site manager and our production designer, they went to see him and enjoyed it. My DP and I came here to see you. Yes, it was much bigger than the one we sought to shoot. Magic works.
At dinner/lunch, my co-producer comes to see me. He had asked to print the afternoon license signed by the governor’s secretary for the entire crew. With all the shootings on the mainland, my boys were worried if they took out their cell phones to show the resignation, they might have been shot. Although this has never happened here in Puerto Rico, beware. As they say in Spanish, “cautious woman is worth two.” The prudent woman values her weight in gold.
He also told me that my 2d AD base camp had been in contact with a positive person for COVID, so now our doctor has quarantined her until the effects come. You can paint from home, however, since our UPM Colleen Comer ran with her, it had to be quarantined just like at PA base camp. Subsequently, it showed that it did not have COVID-19.
Go ahead. A typhoon breaks out and we’re worried we might not be able to fire.
I’m amazed at our team. They continue to work, dismayed by nothingness, and when the typhoon passes, we are in a position to fire again.
Kaplan filmed after curfew in the Rio Piedras neighborhood, where Lalo’s novel was filmed, and where the protagonist of the story, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico, lives.
Today is a day I’m looking forward to, a rainy scene I fought so hard for through budget cuts and calendar cuts. Our team calls at 4:00. When we do evening photo shoots, I can never sleep more than four or five hours.
It’s beautiful today. Nothing to do tai chi on the beach under the scorching sun and showering temporarily in the sea can be repaired.
The set access, the temperature and the questionnaire. It took about 3 hours to set up the rain take, but once it was over, it worked.
The creativity of our special effects specialist here, Rafi Perez, is brilliant. He invented a design in which he placed a contraption and a tank on the roof of the car so that he doesn’t have to create rain for a block.
I rehearsed actors in a beautiful old church that was emptied, but the remains of its altar and stained glass remain.
Kunjue and Esai are a poem in the rain! Esai dances like Fred Astaire.
Step-by-step procedure with tomorrow’s action scene. I love the action scenes!!
COVID’s new precautions for DP Velázquez and its branch included disinfecting the cameras every 4 hours, cutting game monitors on set, and restricting the number of other people in physical contact with the camera equipment. “The only ones allowed to touch it were the operators and assistants who supported us,” Velázquez said. “We didn’t let the handles grab the camera because there was some other user in the chain.”
Although the filming speed is slower, the delight in “very good,” Velázquez said. “It gave me confidence that we could paint with COVID protocols and be safe, and here I am. Nobody got sick. That’s the most productive thing.”
It’s a long day of preparation for an almost accident on a rainy day. I couldn’t get any rain, I had to settle for a mooring.
This is one of the scenes covered by the governor’s resignation, because we have to shoot after curfew at 10 o’clock. Crew call at 3:30 p.m. Shoot at 8:00.
We are closed a crossing in Rio Piedras, the university city. With the university closed, Rio Piedras is a ghost town, so with our two state cops, we can only the streets.
Again, we are blessed. The pavement plate at the intersection where the drift will have to occur was a bit complicated when we did our pre-COVID technical recognition. Miraculously, when we returned to the post-COVID lock, this piece of pavement had been repunvated, which facilitated skating. Magic works.
During the assembly, two nurses are in a van. One by one, Team A went for a COVID-19 sample, just like me.
We have everything we need. Very exciting. Esai prepared himself through the specialists and drove his drift with skill and safety.
A wonderful ending to a complicated but fruitful week.
I slept for 10 hours, relieved to know that the hardest component is us.
After packing “Simone”, Kaplan and his team toasted. “We all had beer without blood and celebrated it, because we were very happy, we had our hearts in our mouths for days.
“Every day full of a complete program of mines, because there were so many variables, so many people. We’ve been blessed, that’s the word I can use. We finished Array … and no one got sick.
Today’s position is what we thought we couldn’t film. Our manager, José Hilera, performed miracles, as did our fitness and protection production supervisor, María José Delgado.
The Mercado de Rio Piedras officially closed on Sunday but opened for us, the most productive option. It’s been disinfected. The branch of art came in to do its magic.
That morning, I was treated through an office assistant. He took a path to Río Piedras that I wouldn’t have taken. And we crossed the Moscoso Bridge, which miraculously had all its flags hoisted and floated, an occasion rare and invisible during the more than 3 months. An exhibition I had sought to film.
When I got to the set, and after the protection protocol, I told my team that we had to be punctual and quick to take the image on deck. That’s what we did.
I also did a bit of Live TV [technical] to combine two shots, which would have been arranged in combination but filmed [with a setup]. Fun and artistic solution to time.
Then outdoors for a scene of the arrival of the little circle of relatives that will not be. The art branch simply had neither the time nor the resources to keep up. We controlled the flags on the flag post, and suddenly it occurred to me: pigeons, my friends from my tai chi categories in the park of my neighborhood. I asked my guy accessories, Danny, to start feeding them where the hero’s car arrives…
That’s what he did and it worked.
They gave me my image of a bridge, and we all piled up on the basketball court that served as the basis for lunch to toast with bloodless beer to wrap the film.
We are all very happy and relieved. My manufacturer spoke, I spoke, we laughed, we applaud and toast.
We had climbed such a steep mountain and reached the top of the COVID-19 challenge.