Interviews with crew of the indie feature film Gabriela.
Yesica Pineda- Producer’s Assistant
I worked in pre-production. We were looking for locations, we were looking for the crew and receiving all the resumes. We were kind of organizing the project and it was a lot of office work for me. I also had a line in the movie in Spanish that I didn’t know about before hand. My line was "Vas a estar moy feliz " meaning "You are going to be very happy". I’m from Mexico City and have been here for three years. I studied music but I like to be acting, I like performing and I like to be on camera as you can see. That’s what I like, but mainly I love to work with creative projects like this one.
First thing, is the sprit this project had, beginning from Vince [Miller, director], what we want to say with it, and it involves a lot of ethic culture, Latin culture, but mainly the spirit of it [was what attracted me to this film]. My opinion is, you always have to work with what people know about other cultures. You cannot get to a stereotype because it is hard to explain in an hour or an hour and a half what a culture’s about. But I think it talks about a really strong part of the Latin culture, at least the Mexican part that is very important. Yes, I think he [the director] gets the essence of what is the Latin culture about in some ways, the themes he was talking about in the movie.
Mainly what I do is perform, so I work with all the tools that I can have like acting, like writing and music, that’s what I love: to sing. I write lyrics and I’ve been working with scripts, and stories. Mainly I like to write what I see in life.
I have really believed in this project since the beginning. I really believe that when you do something that you want to do, and you believe in it, it doesn’t matter what other people think. Either it’s going to work or it isn’t going to work. I love this project, because everyone who worked on it really believes in what they’re doing.
Yes [I was challenged] because being in Hollywood, and in any place, but mainly here because everybody that is here is trying to express whatever they want to do, and I love people who make movies. So it’s a challenge just to be able to fight with all the concepts that already exist in this city, just to get an idea expressed. Basically money, which is really important and also to fight with people instead of helping each other to express their ideas, they always fight against it. So its like a challenge to get to express what you feel. I’m sorry I’m trying to say what I feel.
It’s hard to make other people understand that you’re thinking in the same frequency. Everyone has their own perception of things so think what fits this project is that everyone put a little of their own understanding of what it is, but I think that Vince has a lot of talent to communicate what he wants for his project. No, it’s the first time [that I with anyone from this project] and everyone is lovely, very talented. I met really talented people here and I think that’s great for the project and for everything else. It’s always good to find talented people.
Interview by permission from the producers of Gabriela.