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62
WHEN YOU GO TO MEXICO
What to film and where to film it
HERBERT C. LANKS
* Scenes of colorful and diversified human interest are to be found in Mexico, if you know what to look for before you go; directly below, a fiesta costume of Tehuantepec; at bottom, left, adobe brick construction; right, street musicians in Mexico City.
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FOR its color, for its fascinating variety of scenes and peoples and for its contrasts, Mexico offers more, perhaps, to the motion picture filmer than any other area of equal size in the world.
Nevertheless, motion picture work south of the border presents distinctive problems as well as verv definite advantages, and the visitor unfamiliar with Mexico will save time and film if he knows something of both of these in advance.
Nowhere is a light meter so necessary a part of your equipment, for Mexico is a land of brilliant sunshine, complicated by effects of haze at low levels and an excess of ultraviolet light at high altitudes. Along the coast, in the great port cities of Tampico. Vera Cruz, Acapulco and Mazatlan, the movie maker on his first trip to Mexico constantly finds it difficult to believe that the light is not really brighter than the meter indicates. This fact is a result of excessive humidity coupled with an almost imperceptible haze. On the other hand, one is continually tempted, when high in the mountains, to doubt that light can possibly be as strong as the meter indicates. It is wise to follow your meter except where it indicates, for color, a diaphragm opening smaller than
f/11.
Perhaps you will want to begin your Mexican movie record immediately on crossing the Rio Grande. It is well to know that the first hundred and fifty miles beyond the bridge at Laredo are by far the least interesting in Mexico. It is a flat, colorless world for the most part, with just enough scrubby shrubbery to give it a slightly fuzzy outline. So, rule number one in Mexico is: take a picture of your car coming across the bridge at Laredo, if you wish, and then forget that you have a camera until you get to Monterrey.
Monterrey is the next temptation of the innocent. You have traveled over nearly a hundred and fifty miles of dull desert, with nothing pictorial in it but occasional herds of goats and the short scenic drive over Mamulique Pass, and all at once you are in your first real Mexican City.
Monterrey is Mexico's Pittsburgh. Nearby mountains not only make an attractive backdrop for Monterrey, but also serve as vantage points for pictures of the city. Roofs of some of the fine new buildings lure the beginner with scenes of startling contrast. Spread for a considerable distance around Mexico's first — and the world's shortest — skyscraper is a city of quiet old colonial buildings, spic [Continued on page 77]
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