The Official Home Page for "Soulsaver" by James Stevens-Arce

In my day job, I'm an independent writer-producer-director working in the advertising industry in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Sometimes I get hired to work off-Island. This was the case in February 1997, when I spent ten days driving around the State of Veracruz, Mexico, with a terrific local video crew in a Ford Suburban and a Volkswagen Minivan, shooting material for what would end up being edited into a dozen 30-second tv spots, along with about thirty 10-second spots.

We started shooting at the Xalapa campus of the University of Veracruz. The kid in front of the camera is an actual student. The guy in the parka with his back to us is the campaign copywriter, Ticho García, who is also an award-winning fiction writer in Mexico. The scripts were written on the run. We'd meet the subject -- in this case the student -- Ticho would interview him, and immediately compose the dialogue and voice-overs for the spot. Then, after I had contributed the visuals, the agency producer, César Gaytán, would pitch the script to the client's people over his cellphone (the client was the Governor of Veracruz). We'd make whatever revisions were requested and shoot the thing. We tried to average two 30-second spots per day or the equivalent (i.e., one 30-second spot and three 10-second spots).

Mexico was building a lot of modern highways in '97 -- and is probably still doing so -- and we were sent to do a spot letting the public know that the State of Veracruz was bulldozing its way into the future fast.

Many of our meals, when we got them, were eaten on the run. Here we wait to be served our garnachas at a roadside diner while traveling between locations. Although I love Mexican food, I'm not usually big on the hot sauce, but I started to acquire a taste for it after the first week of shooting. Not that I had a lot of choice in the matter.

We spent one night shooting in the Museum of Natural History in Xalapa. One of the exhibits we shot that I found particularly fascinating featured giant Olmec heads such as the one above. These heads, each of which can weigh several tons, are all variations on the same theme -- a face with what appear to be African features (note the nose and lips) wearing what looks like a leather helmet with hand-tooled designs. So, whaddaya think -- pre-Columbian NFL running backs...or pilots of long-ago UFOs?

Some of our accommodations were nicer than others. Doña Lala's in Tlacotalpan just across from the Veracruz River was one of the nicer ones.

Remember the Alamo? So did the guy who lived in this house, who happened to be in command of the forces that took it -- General Antonio López de Santa Anna. He later became president -- and subsequently dictator -- of Mexico before eventually retiring to this hacienda, which is now a museum in his memory. Texans don't much care for him, but he's still big in Mexico.

The City of Veracruz is home to one of the largest shipyards in the world. Mexico's equivalent of OSHA has rules requiring that everyone entering the premises be issued a safety helmet, safety goggles, and brand-new steel-toed shoes. We got to keep the shoes (the Health Department wouldn't allow them to be re-used by someone else), but I gave mine away when they blistered my heel. One of our grips was grateful he'd hung onto his when some talent we were videotaping accidentally drove the right front tire of an SUV over his toes. Turns out steel-toed shoes laugh at that sort of thing.

Veracruz is a sugar-producing state, so we headed out into the canefields to shoot the harvest. I got to suck on some freshly-chopped cane the first day, then had my picture taken with the newly-harvested field in the background the following afternoon.

We set up across the road from the canefield to do a wide-angle "Days of Heaven" type panning shot. I was just about to call for camera and action on the shoulder of this country road in the middle of nowhere, where the only people in sight were our crew and the caneworkers on the other side of the two-lane blacktop, when, seemingly out of thin air, a herd of cattle appeared ambling down the road, followed by two vaqueros on horseback. We had to hold the shot for ten minutes, until the last of the cows had desultorily passed by. Even beef are hams, but apparently no more so than our crew, if the picture above taken while we were waiting for the bovine parade to pass is anything to go by.

Harvested cane must be processed, and behind me stands the second-largest sugar refinery in the world. Because of a bureaucratic snafu, they didn't let us inside till around 8 p.m. and we didn't finish shooting till nearly 4 a.m. At that time, the agency producer informed us that the town mayor's wife had prepared dinner and was waiting up for us, so off we went for some wonderful re-warmed fajitas and refried beans served by a very gracious bleary-eyed woman to a very sleepy and bleary-eyed crew (pique was optional, thanks be). And as I recall, nobody said, "Yo quiero Taco Bell."

We got back to Doña Lala's around 6:15 a.m., hit the sack, and were up again at 8 a.m., bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the new day's shoot. At least some of us were (possibly because Doña Lala laced my scrambled eggs with tiny jalapeño chunks).

The City of Veracruz is famous for its norteños, or northers, which usually bring clouds, rain, and winds of 50-75 m.p.h. for periods of 24-48 hours. That lovable Murphy fellow who made up those delightful laws was kind enough to send one our way while we were trying to shoot the usually sunny beaches around the Hotel Fiesta Americana.


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