Childhood friends Pablo
Levinas and Cielo are two-thirds of the multimedia collective called
“Deep Root Productions”. They have been collaborating
as filmmakers for the past five years and have been seriously filming
for the past two. The San Miguel-based production company works
with various musical bands and shoots their own short films and
documentaries. Pablo is currently helming a documentary for the
Mexican alt-rock band Kinky, while Cielo runs our most beloved pulque
hall, En Agua. Deep Root and Kinky recently reunited in San Miguel
de Allende to film the band’s latest video “Minotauro”,
off their new album “Atlas”.
 Argentine-born
Pablo met the Kinky’s three years ago at a beach party in
Ixtapa that was organized by his former employers at MTV. “I
got to the show, I wasn’t even working at the time. I just
went to go and enjoy it,” says Pablo. “But when I saw
Kinky on stage I got up there and started filming them—I had
never even heard of them—and from that point on we became
friends. And from there I saw them in New York, then in Miami, and
then they invited me to go to Bali, and then California. MTV would
send me to go cover a show. And the friendship has remained even
though I don’t work with MTV anymore. Now I just cut out the
middle-man and work directly with the artists.”
 They
decided to shoot the video in San Miguel instead of Kinky’s
home base of Monterrey, because Deep Root is partially based here
and there are obvious advantages to having all their resources nearby.
Given the relative high quality but low-budget nature of the production,
Deep Root can thankfully count on the support of their good friends,
who believe in their projects and can volunteer their time and energy.
The piece they were to film involved a short fantasy sequence, which
would act as a bridge between two halves of the “Minotauro”
video.
The entire video and fantasy sequence was dreamed up by Kinky lead
vocalist and front man Gilberto Cerezo and was realized with the
help of the Deep Root crew. “Gil had the basic idea of what
he wanted to get on a small storyboard,” says Pablo, “and
we just made that happen—got it off the paper and onto video.”
They shot the short piece inside a barn on a ranch outside San Miguel.
The idea was to film the creation of a mural, from its inception
to completion, from a birds-eye-view perspective. And since there
would be painting involved there was an opportunity for Cielo and
his close friend Paul Rodriguez, two veteran muralists and full-finish
painters who have collaborated locally in the past, to participate
on-camera as they painted the mural alongside Gilberto.
 Once
the two thirty-foot scaffoldings were erected, a large heavy wooden
beam was precariously placed on top, to act as a catwalk above the
set. Although this makeshift Mexican-rigged design worked very well,
it was definitely not up to OSHA standards. The camera was framed
and the lights were mounted upon the beam and Pablo, acting as director,
pressed record and promptly descended from the scaffolding. [Editor’s
note: Ran Scot, a seasoned production grunt, gladly pitched in with
“your basic 2x2 Orson Welles lighting set-up”] After
a brief pause for harmonic meditation, the painters were ready to
begin. Over the next hour the trio would paint a mural from start
to finish, with little communication between them—completely
automatic. Each painter knew his role, and they rarely crossed one
another’s path, often complimenting each other’s work.
In less than an hour’s time the mural was done, they had achieved
simplistic beauty—the idyllic scene of a child’s fantasy.
 “Between
Paul, Cielo, Gil and I, we made the first part of the video,”
says Pablo. “The second half of the video will be shot in
the apartment we live in Monterrey, with me and Gil. So it was really
nice to be able to collaborate with some friends of mine in San
Miguel. The part we shot in San Miguel will take up 15 seconds of
the video, and the rest will be shot in Monterrey, where the editing
will be done. Hopefully you’ll see it on MTV soon.”
“The most powerful thing that Kinky has is their live performance,”
commented Pablo. “There is no other band that I’ve seen
lately that comes close to the live performance that these guys
put on. It’s an hour and a half of pure funk and party and
dancing and jumping. The music is really happy music, so the band
gets into it as well as the audience. The reason I’m with
them now is because they’re so incredible live.”
 “They’re
really good kids,” Pablo continues, “I wouldn’t
say they’re clean-cut, they party, but they’re pretty
focused on their work. With a lot of the other bands I’ve
worked with, they were too into the rock star life. I never really
wanted to put my time into something that the actual band members
didn’t care about. But with Kinky, they’re all really
level-headed and they’ve got their vision of where they want
to go, and they work to get there. It was nice to work with kids
that were basically my age that are making it in the music industry
and have a good head on their shoulders. That’s why I chose
to work with them.”
Kinky is a five-piece group that has been together for four years
and is based in Monterrey, Mexico. Over the last year they’ve
played over 200 shows and had the opportunity to open for such acts
as The Flaming Lips and Cake. On “Atlas” they collaborated
with Cake lead singer John McCrea on the single “The Headphonist”.
The group was recently asked to remake the Tito Puente classic “Oye
Como Va”, which will play prominently in the upcoming Denzel
Washington film, “Man on Fire”. Kinky will continue
headlining their own tour throughout Mexico as well as play upcoming
dates at: London’s Royal Festival Hall; the Coachella Festival
in Indio, California; Malaysia; the House of Blues tour in the USA;
and will be touring Italy extensively in June.
 Pablo
says they are in the process of shooting the video for another song
off the Atlas album called “Do You Like It?” The video
will be based on live footage from the ongoing Kinky tour. This
summer Deep Root will be producing “Regina”, a short
film based in San Miguel that was written by Cielo and will be co-directed
by Cielo and Pablo.
Pablo has worked as a reporter, photographer and documentary director
for musicians such as Alejandro Sanz, Korn, Papa Roach, Nelly, Eli
Guerra, Control Machete, Juanes, The Cranberries, among many others.
For the past three years Pablo has been shooting a documentary about
hip-hop in Cuba, which he will be completing in six months when
he returns to that country.
The Kinky documentary, chronicling the current Atlas tour, will
eventually be released on DVD by their label, Sonic360, and will
include behind-the-scenes and live footage from their most recent
shows around the world.
For more information about Kinky, please visit: www.kinkytheband.com
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