Hello Enrique, thanks for your time!
Let's talk first about your career. How did you came into filmmaking?

Enrique: I come from the photography world, I studied photography in Madrid when I was just 19, I knew very soon that creating images was my goal, and didn`t doubt on putting all my time and effort to become a professional. But soon I started to feel very much attracted by film documentaries, since I was mostly doing documentary photography. So I went to study documentary direction in a private school, and very soon I shot my first doc, which was related to my second interest in life, environment and conservationism.

 

A while ago I saw your documentary "Vatn", which deals with the environment and especially water in Iceland. Why did you choose water as your topic of a documentary?

Enrique: The water is the most important element of nature, is source of life, and sometimes we forget that, assuming that is gave to us as a endless resource. Iceland is a great example to illustrate what is happening all over the world, with a pristine environment that is being threatened by huge corporations that just think about make their business more profitable. They don`t care about nature, sustainability, or the future of the people that live in these countries. They go where they can buy the cheapest resource they need for their business. In the case of Iceland, is water, cause this country has the biggest resource of clean water of Europe, and corporations need this to create cheap electricity to feed their aluminum factories. Cheap water means cheap energy, and they need lots of it. They even bring the raw aluminum all the way from Australia to melt it in Iceland just because the price of the energy they can get here.

 

Wow, that's really amazing! Which equipment did you use to shoot this film?

Enrique: I used Canon DSLR cameras, mostly 5D MarkII for the time-lapses and a 600D for the slow motion shots. For some of the clips I used a DIY motorized slider and that´s all. What I learned in the last years is that the more simple is your equipment the better, even more if you have to shoot in the raw Icelandic landscape, where the light change every minute and sometimes you have to walk hours to get to the best spot. What you want is a light, easy and small equipment that you can set up in seconds to don`t miss the shot. I also went crazy about buying the latest equipment, now I just want what I can fit in my backpack and set up in a couple of minutes.

From the 5th to 11th July this year, you'll host a Timelapse workshop with Dustin Farrell in Iceland. How did you come up with this idea?

Enrique: I`ve been conducting workshops in Iceland since 2009, when I moved there to live. I spent almost 3 years in Iceland, traveling and discovering every corner of the country. I got so much knowledge on that landscape and culture, that became easy to me to guide other people around,  showing them the best spots to shoot and the hidden places, and sharing my experience on filmmaking and time-lapse at the same time. I do up to 5 of this workshops every year, and I like to share at least one of them with a renamed filmmaker. I`ve been in contact with Dustin since he released his first time-lapse video, I was impressed by his technique and amazing skills, and I thought it would be awesome to travel with him around Iceland. He loved the idea of coming and rapidly we arranged a date for the workshop.

 

Are there still places left for this upcoming workshop?

Enrique: Yes, we strictly limited the participation to 14 people, and we are happy to see that is filling up quickly, but there are still a few spots available.

Click here to get more information!

You're not only a great filmmaker, but you also created an app for Timelapse photographers, which I already covered on this blog. What do you plan for the future?

Enrique: I think now more than ever we have to be multitasking, the times of being just cameraman are over, we have to know about many other disciplines, as internet, writing, editing, publishing and selling. I understood this quite early, that´s cause I created a DSLR forum for the Spanish community "hdslr.es", started working on apps, writing in several publications, etc. But I still believe on more traditional ways of reaching the public, as film festivals, where my films are still being selected. Right now I`m working on a documentary that will involve both social and nature topics, taking place in Iceland as well. For this project we decided to go on Kickstarter, since it´s a bigger project and we need more budget, we strongly believe in the crowdfunding and we are sure that this experience will be a succeed.

 

All the best for your Kickstarter project and thanks for your time!

Enrique: No problem! My pleasure!