The hidden business between some robots and a drug trafficker

Four million years ago, somewhere in the universe which name I don’t know because they never said where, there was a highly-technified planet called Cybertron that was populated by two contending races of robots. They were called autobots and decepticons. Whom may I compare them with? The truth is just saying the first ones were the good and the others were sons of a high-tech bitch.

 

Their planet’s sources of energy were already dying and they faced a microchips starvation that whether they solved like homeless, whether taking their stuff and looking for somewhere in the space where they could flourish and survive. With the few resources they got, the autobots chose the B-plan. They lifted up their ship, them aboard.

 

The decepticons, that lived cloning everything the autobots did, were in chase mode. When they reached, they badly boarded the vehicle. Amid the struggle, they approached too much to Earth’s gravity that the ships lost control and crashed down in different points of the planet. The autobots one went to the base of a volcano called Saint Hilary, actual Oregon. Don’t seek it on Wikipedia – it doesn’t exist.

 

In 1984, Saint Hilary awoke and activated the circuits of the spacecraft turned into a fossile. A surveyor scanned the planet, that was not that hostile world they have crashed down but something primitively technified. To make you short the tale, the decepticons and the autobots were repaired and both concentrated in accumulating energy to return to Cybertron. The problem is while the second ones waited for their turn, the first ones shot lasers to everything meaning an obstacle.

 

What’s the love for Tawantinsuyo?

Meanwhile, the decepticons learned that in actual Peru, the Incas had a kind of energetic conduit that allowed them to take advantage on the energy of Earth’s core, over what they built a pyramid-shape temple, and the robots decided to catch the resource, terrifying the surrounding locals, apparently Cusco-natives.

 

After saying all this, and look that my merit is making a running-over brief of the first nine episodes of Transformers 1^st generation, I accredit that the beloved robots-in-disguise already have visited us, at the moment of posting this, 37 years ago, and we watched it on TV around the globe.

Although the cartoon series producers (with Marvel Productions and Sunbow Productions) don’t have any relation to the ones who, up to date, are rolling a movie of that franchise (with ParamountPictures), what I feel coincidental is they have chosen Cusco. Yes, I understand because of enigmas, untold stories (the cyberspace’s gossips say it would be based upon Tonapa or Tonupa myth), the impressing Inca architecture, and the beautiful landscapes of Urubamba River’s Sacred Valley.

 

It’s not the first time that Hollywood put an eye to this place. Since 1954 (Paramount Pictures, coincidentally) to nowadays, the trials between successful and frustrated (like a james Bond movie), national and foreigner, are counting for almost a hundred.

Like ever never before in the Peruvian history of the motion picture, two features from two American corporations that are competitors have been rolling at the same time, in the same place, and with big budgets.

 

The other one is the successful NBCUniversal Telemundo’s series La Reina del Sur (Queen of the South) that from a biographic novel became a fiction highlighting Mexicanactress Kate del Castillo, telling the adventures of drug-trafficker Teresa Mendoza, who really exists, but amid a kind of enlarged parallel universe.

 

Peacock + Artesonraju = blockbuster

Don’t stop just on the factsheet. Transformers – The rise of beasts and La Reina del Sur were not only rolled in Cusco. The first one did in Tarapoto, San Martin, and it was almost to implement a location in El Ñuro, right here in Los Organos,Piura. The second one,as much as we know, put upside down Lima Downtown.

 

But it wasn’t about the producers arrived, set up their cameras, let the director screams action, and what pretty actors and actresses perform. Only in Cusco, Paramount and Telemundo left about US$ 37,000 for filming rights and the physical installation of the places chosen as locations, what surely has activated the local economy.

 

And that’s what we know about Cusco. We don’t have yet the fact of how much Paramount left to Municipality of San Martin Province or how much Telemundo left to Municipality of Metropolitan Lima. It shouldn’t be a secret – it’s public information.

 

The cost and the benefit of filming in Peru

Peru is not a common destination for scouting film-&-TV locations but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have them. In fact, like anywhere in the worlc, my country has houses, estates, streets, cities, and especially natural places you should consider as the background of the shots (even for photography) if you are planning a feature for international audiences.

 

Let’s review Peru’s potentials for locations. Maybe, it’s the country with most diversity in a territory similar in size to California State. We don’t have fiords and tepuys but the amount of other imaginable landscapes is overwhelming. Highlands and the Amazon Basin were also loved by Hollywood and Europe. And the coastal strip has a complex landscape mixing desert and valleys to discover. Add the beaches.

 

Piura Department is quite bigger than Maryland State, going from sea level(even under sea level) to some summit over 12,800 feet altitude. If I’m not wrong in numbers, we join 70% of Peru’s biodiversity, what also means a diversity of landscapes except snow-covered mountains. Check this out.

 

Of course that if you are interested in producing anything in Peru, you have to get some reliable connections allowing to understand with local authorities, officials and homeowners/real estate brokers in order to do a favorable negotiation once you have scouted the possible locations. The good news for you is like Peru is an almost rookie in locations management, the prices you can get here may result most competitive like anywhere around the world, especially the destinations you are accostummed to take for this purpose.

 

Add to this, that Piura in particular has three schools of social communication and many undergraduates and graduates are making motion pictures. Plus, there’s a school of fine arts with hundreds of junior and senior plastic artists who can work with your art director advising and making your sets.

 

For sure, there are other people and companies those can supply different products and services, since transportation to rights & clearances, so you also can find out great local crews in constant training, some of them awarded nationwide and worldwide. Even, some of them are bilingual.

 

About the places, major cities have a mixed architetonical style, but médium and small ones own the typical Latin American town skyline. But going out the cities, you can take deserts, valleys, rivers, forested and non-forested hills, mountains close to the sea, highlands, cliffs, archaeological rests, sea, islands. What are you thinking of?  Since 1956, Piura has been considered by Hollywood for locations, for example Cabo Blanco Beach.

 

You can contact me for further information at nelsonpc.com@gmail.com (my personal e-mail), or chat on live with me on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. And if you’re not looking for a location but you are interested in do some tourism at an unusual destination, but plenty of Nature, you should checkthis out.