When falling the dusk, actors and extras, the equipment of production, electrical, of direction, make up, clothes, catering and the atrezzistas began a frenetic day of shooting whose forecast was to finish beyond the six this same morning.
The shooting of several sequences for the film Captain Alatriste (Agustin Diaz Yanez) has already begun in the Beach of Valdevaqueros , and is based on a novel of the journalist and Spanish writer Arturo Perez Reverte. Several sequences will represent one of the multiple battles on which it will count this film, which is dated in century XVII, the Century of Spanish Gold.
Throughout the day of yesterday, with a frenetic rate, everything was preparatory and more preparatory, the service of catering prepared the lunch; the atrezzistas preparated the galleon (main scenery of the film) clothes and make up – mainly the very ample and complex clothes by the typical clothes of the Century XVII -, a task for which several caravans had settled next to the set, one of them exclusived for the film star Viggo Mortensen (Diego Alatriste) control of the accesses, always a hard task that is responsibility of the production equipment – the authentic creators of which everything works correctly -; the electrical equipment prepared the material so everything was developed with normality – current takings, stretchers, centers, energy that leaves from the generator set -; specialistic, actors, extras, figuration and experts in the art of the sword among other positions less important not to conform what is the gear of this Spanish film, that moves to an equipment of more than 200 people, and that during these days are shooting in Tarifa.
With respect to the shooting of these scenes of fight on board, two generator sets; half dozen of make up and clothes caravans; a great carp for extras and figuration, a carp for catering as well; vehicles for the stage; truck of electrical as well as a crane-camera to roll from high angles; fences to surround the zone of shooting, and of course, a lot of water to hold the sunny days on the locality, and that was made yesterday more discomfort when the wind went to west to the East, a situation that raised worry by the strong wind.
It is necessary to also emphasize that this shooting will extend until the next Saturday 16 of April; in that day, the equipment of the shooting of Captain Alatriste will move to Cadiz, where they will shoot the week that comes. Until then, Mortensen, Diaz Yanes and a long list of others workers will stay in the region.
Other localities like Sevilla, or Úbeda and Baeza (Jaén) will be host of other scenes of this film in whose set, there will act more than 10,000 extras and figurantes. Another place where they will shoot will be the locality of Ucle (Cuenca) where another hard battle will recreate sword in hand. The scenes shooted there will be for recreating the Madrid of Century XVII.
Yesterday, was constant the visits of people (curious, cinema lovers, Viggo Mortensen’s fans, media – press) that approached to the place to see his idol close, to capture him in a camera or to immortalize the moment, or simply to see how they made a film.
That constant visits became more outstanding from the four of afternoon, when by the movement it was known that the shooting was on the verge of beginning, arriving from extras and the figuration, that arrived on board from a bus, the ways were cut and the control, logical and common in all the shootings, was extended, surrounding the location completely and preventing the entrance of any person to the shooting, a last task that the production equipment took with great professionalism.
The most wanted by all, Viggo Mortensen, arrived on 5pm, agreeing with the arrival of the bus of the extras, and he went walking towards the shooting set, with a black cap, a red handkerchief, sun glasses and a coffee pot in the hand, without a doubt the night would be very long, and passing totally unnoticed for all those who wanted him with great enthusiasm and interest. Aragorn, King de Gondor, was in Tarifa and that was something that many people didn’t want to lose themselves, although this time he didn’t fight against orcs nor against the eye of Sauron, but against skilled swordsmen of Spanish XVII Century, and not in opened field, but in a Dutch galleon.
From the arrival of Mortensen, of the director of the film (Diaz Yanes), of the extras and the figuration and the rest of the equipment, the preparations went to forced marches, the first tests, that began on 5:45pm and extended by more than two hours.
They placed the Dutch flag of the time in the galleon, and while in the ship desk all practiced with the swords, outside the ship, in the beach zone, the workers installed an elastic bed for the falls from the skilled swordsmen to the sea.
All this was followed for almost a hundred of people whom, from the distance, looked for Mortensen, or observed with great interest the explanations of the specialists with the swords to the actors in the desk of the galleon.
At dusk, after the preliminary tests and to prepare until the last detail, about 9pm, the sound of the camera… action…, we return to first, it began to sound and taking to taking, Captain Alatriste, with his adventures of skilled swordsman on salary, began to immortalize this corner of the Field of Gibraltar, the Beach of Valdevaqueros in Tarifa, for decades and decades through the seventh art, leaving impregnated the Beach of scent to celluloid and negative, all to immortalize in the great screen to one of the fiction characters created by the pen of Arturo Perez Reverte, Diego Alatriste, skilled swordsman on salary of the Century of Spanish Gold, that these days stays in Tarifa.
Alatristé will begin to film in Cadiz the next week
Disembarkated in Canal Bahia-Caleta could be the title for the sequence of films Alatriste that the next week will shoot in the beach of the town la Viña because the stamp of the Balneario de la Palma has changed the image by the one of a port of the Century of Gold. Now there are boats, ostionera rock walls, cars of work, tools of fishing, cane ceilings and straw, in the place in which it will be received to a gigantic ship that will not exist during the shooting, but that will see in the screens because it will be reconstructed digitally. The people in charge talked about the possibility of constructing nears space after the doors that open in the walls after the white arcs. With the necessary angle, the cameras will immortalize an artificial wall that by means of a superposition of planes, will be prolonged until the Castle of Santa Catherine, creating the visual effects.