TAKE ONE WOMAN
Shakespeare
wrote: "The World´s a Stage." Four centuries later, while making
Empire of the Sun in Spain, Steven Spielberg added: "And Andalucía is Hollywood´s
best film set".
It´s not only tourists who are attracted by the sinuous sierras and the long, sun-kissed beaches of the Costa del Sol. Since the days of Spaghetti Westerns, Hollywood´s movie moguls have found Spain´s lower production costs seductively alluring.
Its desert scenery was Egypt´s stand-in for Elizabeth Taylor´s Cleopatra, its Moorish castles masqueraded as Middle Eastern for Peter O´Toole´s Lawrence of Arabia, its rugged mountains provided an alternative Wild West for Client Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars and a setting for Harrison Ford´s Indiana Jones adventures. A recent survey by the Hollywood Reporter claimed that the big studios of Tinsel Town had lost 20 per cent of their film production work to other countries. Spain is near the top of that list.
WHERE THE ACTION IT IS
Scenery more striking than anything that can be reconstructed on a studio lot is to be found within a 300 kilometre radius. An Arctic adventure can be recreated in the Sierra Nevada, a Caribbean theme set by the white beaches of Tarifa, the rocky mountains of El Torcal are ideal cowboy country, the sand dunes of Almeria perfect for a desert adventure, while E.T. would feel quite at home in the eerie lunar landscape of Mojacar. Add to that the lakes, waterfalls and deep ravines of El Chorro, the luxurious yachting marinas, the modern cities and old world white villages, the jungle vegetation, manicured golf courses, farm landscapes and as many palatial interiors per square metre as Beverley Hills - and who needs Hollywood?
4U2 is one of several production service companies on the coast capitalizing on the fact that in Andalucía, you can shoot anything from a sci-fi thriller to a Bounty bar ad without calling in the set designers. But that´s not the only advantage, according to 30-year old Maren Müller, who set up business four years ago, using the marketing slogan: Anywhere Could Be Here. The weather, the infrastructure, the cost of bringing equipment from other EC countries through customs and the pool of talented, multi-lingual professionals available for hire at reasonable rates are additional reasons, which explains why it is not at all odd that Maren is negotiating with a French car company to organize the sheet for a British TV commercial in Spain.
"Spain is giving the rest of the world a wake-up call," says Maren. "America is slowly being priced out of the market by the trades unions, Australia is too far away and South Africa, which used to be a popular winter film location, has to much political unrest. Turkey and Greece don´t have the facilities and northern Europe doesn´t have the climate. The relentless trill of her mobile phone interrupts lunch for the umpteenth time. "Great" she says into the receiver.
"Then we can cancel the helicopter." Resuming her meal, she explains that her scouts have finally found a location for the Peugeot commercial. No need for the reconnaissance flight. The story-board specifies a particular style and colour of house with a certain type of driveway, and the swimming pool must measure precisely 15 by 6 metres. Karen has a database of 500 houses and thousands of geographical locations on her computer but they don´t always fit the bill and an aerial search may be necessary, as was the case when one client asked her to locate a T-junction, in a desert setting, opposite a petrol station. "Impossible" is a word Maren rarely uses. The average commercial costs eight or nine million pesetas a day to shoot and 4U2 gets a fair percentage. The owners of the house chosen for the Peugeot advertisement are also onto a winner. They could earn anything between one hundred and fifty thousand t one million pesetas for loaning their property for the shoot.
Born in Austria, brought up in Marbella, Maren speaks four languages fluently, has a solid grounding in the film industry and is the type who is cool in a crisis. Her film star looks probably don´t go amiss either. She gained an Honour´s degree in Media Studies at Munich University and worked first as a television news reporter, later traveling all over the world as a freelance producer for America´s CNN, Germany´s Channel Five and Britain´s Channel Four, handling everything from a pop promo for Vaya con Dios, a concert for Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Pepsi Cola Dance Challenge for MTV to covering the Middle East peace talks. She was junior producer on a film with Leslie Udwin whose current blockbuster, East is East, has attracted worldwide critical acclaim and she also worked on the BBC´s critically-panned Eldorado soap filmed in Coín, before deciding to marry and live permanently in Marbella. However settling down is not in her nature and in 1996 she launched 4U2.
A CAST FOR THOUSANDS
She has since amassed an impressive company CV, organizing the location scout for Ben Kingsley´s and Ray Winstone´s latest film, Sexy Beast, working with Spike Lee, dubbed The Black Spielberg, on Love and Basketball which was partly filmed on location in Trebujena, Cadíz, and with Sinead Cusack on the BBC feature film, Have Your Cake, shot in Tarragona and Puerto Ventura. Also under her belt are episodes for the BBC´s Eastenders, Channel 4´s Fragile Earth and countless commercials advertising products as diverse as Coca Cola and Lóreal, Visa, Airtours and the German national lottery. Maren works from a small office in Guadalmina with the aid of three staff and the key tools of her trade - the telephone, e-mail and her international network of contracts. Equipment, cast, crew, even casting locations, are all hired. Only the stuntmen are brought in from outside Spain. Maren uses an agency in South Africa which provides the 007 doubles for al the Bond movies.
Finding the location is only one aspect of the job. The producer and director are just about the only people she doesn´t provide. Costing out wages, transport, accommodation and catering for cast, crew and their entourage of focus pullers, clapper loaders, art directors, props men, wardrobe mistresses, sparks, dolly grips, make-up artists, gaffers, best boys, bilingual assistant directors, production runners and sound recordists is a full day´s work. To say nothing of detailing the cost of insurance, film permits, the hire of specialist accessories and personnel - a place, a yacht, a deep sea diver - and the casting agency which will audition, film and come up with the short-list of actors and extras. Even then, 4U2 may not get the job. Maren, or indeed her client, may lose out to a lower bidder.
If the job is a goer, the real skill comes into play. It´s a matter of performing miracle after organizational miracle, often with only a few days to go before shooting starts. Once, Maren had to throw herself upon the mercy of RENFE to arrange for a private train to take cast and crew to a bridge at El Chorro which was inaccessible by road. To capture the shot of a cyclist riding along the track, the camera crew had to film while suspended on bungies from the bridge over a gorge 140 metres deep. Stuntmen and climbing professionals were hired to instruct the crew on how to accomplish this safely and doctors were on hand in case it went horribly wrong.
STOPPING THE TRAFFIC
Though missions are rarely impossible, they are often dangerous. Maren goes on the trickiest assignments herself and has had two near-death experiences, both in helicopters when the pilot flew frightening low. On numerous occasions, she has literally been required to bring traffic to a standstill for a shoot. "I often think I get away with it in Spain because I´m blonde with blue eyes," she laughs, fingering her eye-catching mane of corn-coloured hair. "Using feminine charm can help a lot."
Maren and her equally driven husband, Ignacio Pérez Díaz, the busy commercial director of La Zagaleta, have little time for a private life. And that´s unlikely to change in the near future. Maren has recently launched what will be Spain´s first feature film company fully dedicated to producing English-speaking movies - Dream Pictures - in partnership with the Spanish film producer and script writer, Manuel Santa Cruz de los Ríos. She is in talks over a joint, five million dollar venture with a British and a Spanish production company for a feature film to be shot in Spain in the near future.
Ten years ago, plans to build the first film and post-production studios in Marbella were a non-starter. "It was due to lack of vision on the part of potential local investors who were afraid to sink capital into a venture they thought would never work," says Maren, a determined gleam in her eye suggesting that she may be about to prove them wrong.
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Contact Details: 4u2 Services S.L.
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Tel: +34 952 88 41 04 Fax: +34 952 88 61 71 email: info@4u2services.com |