Lost in La Mancha

Lost in La Mancha

‘Lost in La Mancha’ is a documentary about the filming of Terry Gilliam’s failed attempt at making ‘The man who killed Don Quixote’. The film was a few days into filming when it was abandoned for several reasons. Financial issues, freak weather and ‘Gods will’ all played a part in the failure of the film.

Although at the beginning of the film all seemed to be going aright, it soon became obvious that ‘The man who killed Don Quixote’ was heading for failure. At the start of the film when they were talking about financial issues, you could start to tell that the film was doomed. Although you can make low budget films that are good, Gilliam wanted lots of special effects, which don’t come that cheaply. So without good financial backing the film was doomed, even with looking for investors in Europe. Another issue which made it obvious that the film wasn’t going to be finished, was when John Rochefort became ill and couldn’t do certain things, such as sit on a horse, which was a key element to the film. By the time that he had fallen ill, it was a little too late to pick a backup actor who would be able to just step in. Rehearsals and filming had already taken place and so to just get somebody else to do it may have be costly and not have worked out as well.

There are a couple of points in the film where I would have considered given up. When the freak weather occurred during filming and most of the equipment and film were damaged would have made me think of giving up. However I think that I would have stopped filming at about the same time they did in the documentary. If I showed the same passion for the project that Gilliam showed for it, then of course I wouldn’t let a couple of set-backs stop me. However when they were talking about the troubles finding financial help at the very beginning of the film, this made it obvious that this film may not be the success that Gilliam was hoping for.

One thing that stood out as being particularly challenging to do was creating the large props and sets. Not only in the designing process but also where to store them once they were created. Also the language barrier between the employees would present a problem, as American, Spanish and French employees were working on the film. It would be unlikely that everybody working on the film would be able to speak all three languages, so finding translators would need to be done so everybody could communicate with each other. Another issue which would have been an issue before they started shooting would be that the actors were busy and so couldn’t make it for rehearsals. This isn’t much an issue but an inconvenience, as when the actors get together to film, they may not know how to work with each other.

The reason why and animatic is used in pre-production is so that the producers, directors and anyone else who see’s it knows how the film looks in the directors head. This helps the crew come up with a plan on how to create each scene, and also to set a budget for each scene. In my opinion this is a good thing to do when shooting any type of film, live action or animated. The animatic will help you be clearer on what you are filming, and how you are going to film it. It would be important to use an animatic in this type of film because of all the special effects that would be used in the film. It just basically helps to see how the scene will look after the effect have been added and it moves unlike a storyboard, which makes it seem much clearer to the people creating the effects.

Several problems occurred while they were shooting the film, but the crew sorted the problems out as they went along. One of the problems that the crew faced was one of the places they chose to film at was on a military base. At certain times of the day fighter jets would fly over the set while filming, so it was decided to just film and add in sound later. Another problem they faced on set was that of the freak weather. At first they just lit the set up to try and match what it would look like in the sunlight. However when the weather turned for the worst not much could be done apart from filming another scene for the time being.

Nobody is really blamed for the films failure; it was just a mix of misfortune and bad weather that contributed to the failure of the film. Blaming the failure of the film on just one person, or group of people for that matter, would just be shifting the blame around and would be a little immature. People may have contributed to the failure but overall in my opinion if the failure was to be blamed on any factor it would be to

I think that the film could have been made if John Rochefort had been replaced and if the freak weather hadn’t of happened, then the film could have been finished. However I think that Gilliam made a good decision by abandoning the project when he did, otherwise the film would have been more expensive to put right than to start again from scratch. However with the attitude and passion that Gilliam had for the project, that he didn’t stop marching forward when the equipment got damage, shows that if everything that went wrong went even okay, the film could have been finished. However in the state that the film ended up in, I think I would have abandoned the project too as it would have been costly and prolonged to sort everything out.