At first we thought it was just a simple ad to sell the iPhone 15 Pro. It’s also a highly artistic and completely surreal narrative short film, in which nothing about the device is mentioned, but which could become the best advertisement for it.
The frontmen of this Spanish-language work, which has just been released for free on YouTube, are Pascual Gutiérrez and RJ Sánchez, two Mexican-American professionals from Los Angeles who decided to join forces creatively in 2018 after developing separate careers in the field of music videos and commercials.
The title that first made them known was J Balvin’s “Reggaeton,” which became the precursor to a prolific career that later led them to tackle Bad Bunny’s “La Hard” and also allowed them to collaborate with Rosalía. , Ozuna and Cuoco opened the doors for them to do several similar works with “The Weeknd.” Until then, the duo called themselves Cliqua.
With the specific use of visual language and the use of narrative lines that are not necessarily common in the clip format, Cliqua appeared as the best candidates for Apple’s project, although it is worth noting the interesting strangeness of the proposal presented by these generations of Sonorans and Jalisco does not guarantee that the mega company will carry out its suggestions.
“Good Luck!” features Iván Cornejo, a regional Mexican music sensation from Riverside, California, as well as appearances by popular singer Eden Muñoz and prominent Puebla actor Luis Felipe Tovar. They all intertwine in a story that features a young artist who suffers from a creative block, which eventually draws him into a strange parallel universe.
In an interview they gave us before the release, which we have edited and condensed for ease of understanding, Gutiérrez and Sánchez talked about their glorious work and their plans for the future, at least in their case, of course, which look great.
How did you get involved in this project? It’s clear that you’ve already shown plenty of evidence of your visual and narrative talent, but this short film only involves the use of smartphones when you’re at some point interested in working with celluloid material, very old school.
Pasquale: Before we had this, Raul and I were trying things out with the same phone because we bought it when it was on the market. This is a new technology that you can try out in your own home to see what it can do.
Of course, for this short we collaborated with the director of photography, Xiaolong Liu, who had already shot some videos with the iPhone, who also worked on four or five of our music videos and who lives in Los Angeles like us. We met with him to define the visual style we were looking for.
RJ: There are many apps on the iPhone that allow you to do things directly without having to change lenses or spend too much time changing equipment. Of course, its size makes it much more comfortable than a traditional camera and it also allows you to take a visual perspective that you can’t take with larger devices.
The work process is also completely different and has allowed us to be more efficient than usual. When you use a film camera, there are many settings. With an iPhone, you can easily have three, four or five cameras in one place, you can keep shooting without making too many adjustments and you can decide which edit you want to use.
What kind of conversations have you had with Apple about what needs to be shown to take advantage of all the new features of this iPhone?
RJ: We knew from the beginning what we had to show. This device has “action mode,” “cinematic mode,” the ability to shoot in very low light, and the zoom is absolutely amazing. When we wrote the script, we tried to keep all of this in mind, so that we could write scenes that took advantage of these opportunities and didn’t feel forced or awkward. The idea was to make it all as easy as possible.
One of our biggest challenges was lighting. This film has a lot of scenes in dark environments and we have to make sure that they are visible, which we were able to achieve thanks to the amazing capabilities of the iPhone 5 in these types of situations.
Pasquale: The stabilization thing was also surprising, because the iPhone 5 has that feature and it allowed us to achieve amazing results even in the most interesting scenes we had planned. But we didn’t abandon the traditional way of making films, because we used cranes and dollies, just a different kind of camera.
This short film can inspire not only ordinary people who want to do something interesting using their phones, but also independent filmmakers who do not have the resources to buy extremely expensive equipment.
Pasquale: I hope so. When Raul and I started, we were part of a generation of filmmakers who used digital cameras that you could get at Target and Best Buy. And this is the next generation of all of this.
I truly believe that if you have an iPhone, you can do something amazing, especially with the latest model which has amazing capabilities. I am currently working on a personal project that I am also using. And as Xiaolong says, it is something you can literally carry around in your pocket.
Behind the scenes of filming.
(apple)
Let’s talk about the script. The short film follows a musical artist, played by Iván Cornejo, who suddenly enters a kind of alternative universe that is completely fictional. It’s not necessarily what you would expect from a “conventional” advertising campaign.
Pasquale: I still can’t believe they accepted what we offered them. We were competing with other directors, so we didn’t know if we would get the job. But we decided to do something crazy, even though I thought there was no way we would choose them.
RJ: It’s supposed to be an ad, but it’s actually a very effective, surreal and creative short film. And Apple supported us 100%. We wanted to do something that was an adventure, including the lottery, that used the “hero’s journey” genre and that felt very Mexican. But we went crazy, even with the concept of having a fish as a character. (laughs)
They had already used the lottery theme in “Keeping Charts”, a music video made for Cuco, in which they recreated a kind of psychedelic trip. However, in this case they had a much larger budget, which allowed them to significantly expand the concept and, for example, have someone like Luis Felipe Tovar play El Diablito.
RJ: In the Cuco video we only had money to show the Devil (laughs). But this short film is also made with purely practical effects. There may be some CGI to clean up the photo or enhance the image. The appearance of the characters depends entirely on the prosthetics and costumes. We used real water for the flood scenes. Basically, we built a hotel inside a huge studio in Mexico City.
There is a scene in the same hotel that is apparently inspired by The Shining.
RJ: Yes, we did it in miniature. We had make-up artists, choreographers and stuntmen. This was the exact opposite of the green screen techniques that are so widely used today.
What cinematic references did you have besides Stanley Kubrick? Because I read that in the case of The Weeknd, you watched a lot of horror films to fit in with the aesthetic that you like.
RJ: (The French science fiction film) ‘Delicatessen’ was a great reference.
Pasquale: And of course Guillermo del Toro, who is famous for his creations. But we didn’t want to copy him; despite what we saw in The Shape of Water, Pescado has its own twist. We’ve worked hard to develop it.
This isn’t your first story film, is it? You used to make something called Shut Up and Fish.
Pasquale: Yes, it deserves an Oscar. We will do a campaign for it. We will probably do a show here in Los Angeles.
Pasqual Gutiérrez and RJ Sánchez, members of Cliqua.
(apple)
What’s next? A two-handed feature film?
RJ: When we started, it wasn’t just about directing music videos. We did this because we didn’t have the necessary connections to get into the film world. But all of this served as practice for the future. We have a script for a feature film, but in the meantime we are working on other things. Pascual shot a feature film.
Pasquale: It’s a hybrid feature film and an experimental documentary. It stars Raul and me along with my wife and a guy who plays me. It’s very strange, very funny and very challenging. You can’t tell what’s real and what’s not, what’s scripted and what’s not. It was a slow process, but I already have my first time. And Raul made a documentary in Colombia about the brave football teams.
And then they join forces for a full-length movie.
RJ: Yes, it’s called The Golden Boy. It’s inspired by the characters from the movie The Silence and the Fish and it’s a coming-of-age story. We’re still in the process of rewriting it, but we’re hoping that will happen.
