FARC-ing in Costa Rica on a Discovery Channel Shoot
“Tom Hargrove’s dream life in Colombia becomes a nightmare when he is kidnapped by militant teenage rebels high in the Andes mountains and kept in captivity for nearly a year.”
farc-ing in Costa Rica
When the Discovery Channel decided to create a documentary about Tom Hargrove’s epic flight from the hands of the FARC militia in Colombia, they made the smart call and filmed the episode in peaceful Costa Rica. The FARC is a bit of a painful and recent memory for the people of Colombia, and parading a film crew and actors dressed as FARC paramilitary in the jungle would be something like dressing up like Klan members for a shoot in Alabama, simply imprudent and possibly hazardous. The production company Cineflix recreated this epic saga of kidnapping and escape, and brought all of the appropriate props, from the AK-47′s to the militant armbands and enlisted the director Roger Pike for his brilliant eye with the camera and sense of tension. They also hired me to shoot production stills during the filming.
Roger Pike, Director
Tom’s story is pretty well known. The film “Proof of Life” was loosely based on his saga, and Cineflix was to do it justice with an accurate description of what went down during a year in captivity and his eventual escape.
“In September 1994, I was kidnapped on my way to work when I drove into a roadblock manned by FARC–the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, or the “narco-guerrillas.” FARC initially demanded a $6 million ransom, and kept me in isolated camps high in the northern Andes Mountains.I spent days locked in a dark cell where I could stand, barely, but couldn`t move around. I spent 2.5 months in chains, and endless days, then months, hoarding scraps of food, building campfires to keep warm, and trying to stay sane. I always harbored an empty hope: that another hostage would be brought in, so I`d have a friend (I learned, after my release, that three other hostages were being held in other parts two of the camps). During 334 days of captivity, I never saw a road, a wheel, a window with glass. I never spoke English, and knew nothing of world events outside the FARC camps.”
Working as a stills photographer on a set is equal parts boring and amazing. The crew brought into the Costa Rican jungle a silent generator, enough lighting to ignite a house, a full kitchen, trucks of cameras and gear, a reflector that must have been 5×5 meters, and all of the actors and support crew. The director taught me the best trick for shooting in the jungle- use a polarizer. It cuts the glare off the leaves and makes everything look more lush.
You really have no idea when you watch something on television, how much manpower goes into an hour long program. Watching a kidnapping, even a staged one is eerie, and the actor (the one with the gun on the top of the page) was a brilliant and chill Tico guy that morphed into a raging psychopath as soon as the scene began.
Having hiked in the Colombian jungle for a week a couple of years ago ( another story ) I can understand completely the impossibility of survival there. It is a harsh and formidable place where creation seems unfinished and barbaric. For Tom to manage a year of the deep Colombian jungle in hostile captivity is a testament to human survival through pure will.
The shoot was a blast and I gained a lot of respect for the men and women of the film industry, they really work hard and theirs is a labor of love.
