Extraños en la carretera (Strangers in the road) is a Goya nominated short film produced by BeSweet films and directed by Carlos Solano. Starring Macarena García and Mike Esparbé.
"The way Carlos films", says Felipe Bravo (editor), "it's usually a very Fitzgerian style, with a very low pace, very suspenseful but, at the same time, the issues are very human". Iván Palomares, the composer, says that what attracted him to the movie project, at first, was what rested beneath the thriller. "The thriller was something like an excuse to talk about something else, which is revealed at the end of the film." said Iván.
"In that sense", says director Carlos Solano, "I thought that, maybe, instead of generating a tricky speech to create the desired emotions in the spectator, it was more interesting to involve the viewer as one of the main characters of that trust. To get to that I decided to show everything we got and let them decide how to feel towards the character of Miki."
"Carlos is a curious guy, as a director, because he is very reserved, very detailed, he always goes into detail. And, as he is a good director, he approaches to propose things, he pays a lot of attention to details and knows what you need and he will give it to you." - Miki Esparbé
"He is a very demanding director, but I like that. At the end of the day he manages to make us all go home happy with our work, as he won't stop until it is well done. I really enjoyed working with him as an actress." Macarena García
Miki Esparbé - Film Star
It's never easy to bring together National level movie stars as Macarena García, Miki Esparbé, Luis Zahera and Juan Díaz. So, once you have them on board you have to get profit of every minute. In a road movie like this one this can be a challenge to overcome, and we did. Some of the days we were filming with two simultaneous units to be able to make it.
Being all day on the road may not be easy, but when you see this great professionals giving it all and helping to bring the project to fruition, that gives a plus of moral to the rest of the teams.
Filming a movie is not like filming a commercial, although technically they may have many similarities, concerning the team is a much more intense, both physically and mentally. Because of that, it's very important to build up a team that believes in the project as well as in the director and those commanding the process.
"First thing I had to accomplish was earning the confidence of the technicians, and also getting those people that I have worked with before, and those that I haven't to trust the project and get enrolled in the adventure" - Carlos Solano
"It was an extremely complicated shooting due to the climatic conditions we were exposed at the time. A big part of the movie was filmed in roads and, as it was winter, we had to be very careful as there was plenty of snow all around them. We were lucky to have naturals in charge such as Borja Lopez, the DOP, who was able to take profit out of those climate conditions and capture the perfect thriller ambience." - Juan San Roman, executive producer
"The musical part could be seen as a game between the sound and the image, right?. The image proposes a very specific landscape, with those colors and that strangeness in the air, as the title says, and the idea of the music is to be another character inside of that strangeness vibe. The music would be placed on that sound level that accompanies Mikel (Miki Esparbé) all along his trip. You can't really tell if the music comes out of Mikel or out of the landscape. That's a little bit of what we wanted to achieve." - Iván Palomares
