Right around the time that we were finalizing the mixing process of my new album “Keep On Movin”, it was time to start choosing our first single for the launch. Even though I was leaning more towards “Freedom (of Love)” or “You Got me Running” as the first single, “Going Down to the Border” / actually felt more compelling. It was during Christmas break 2009 and the time felt so right to shoot this video. I was determined to shoot this video just as the song lyrics explained, “Puro PARTY”! In all reality the whole concept of this song was to tell a story based upon my high school party days. Growing up in El Paso and being exposed to under-age sex and booze was no problem at all! All you had to do was cross over the mexican border to Juarez and Whalaa!!! Go get’em cowboy!! Boy, let me tell you mexican chic’s love American boys with dollar bills! I will never forget that taxi driver who stood on the street corner asking guys if they were looking for chicas and a good times! aha He would persuade you into thinking you were about to hookup with Salma Hayek! Turned out to be more like Ugly Betty if you ask me, but hey after several Tecates anything goes...
So, I boarded the bus in LA and headed to El Paso. Upon arriving in El Paso, I started to work. Lucky for me, my Father was able to borrow a Canon XL2 video camera which helped since we had zero budget for this video. One of the first shots I envisioned was a shot of a bus driving into the city to set the tone and show my arrival. With that in mind, I headed to Trans Mountain, pulled my car on the side road, set up my tripod and waited for that bus to come. After waiting and failing on several attempts to get a clean shot of ANY bus, the same bus line and bus that I actually rode on, drove thru and I was lucky enough to get a clear shot! El Paso Texas is a city worlds apart from any city in Texas. Being a border town, you can clearly see and feel the Mexican culture of the city and people which is something I wanted to capture on film. So I headed to downtown El Paso in the middle of the day and just started shooting everything that caught my eye... One of my favorite places in El Paso must have to be Armijo Park and the huge painting on the wall of the Boy’s and Girl’s club, which showed 3 faces, one of a black, a white and a Mexican boy all coming together as one culture. I can remember those faces since I’ve been able to walk.
My father who really had no previous experience operating a professional video camera, quickly took on the ‘Video Photographer” role and captured me singing in the streets of El Paso. He was awesome and really understood the shots and angles that I wanted to shoot. For the club scene, our good friend Manny Cisneros was kind enough and allowed us to shoot in his bar “Tequila Garage”. From the moment I walked in the bar, it had exactly the look I was looking for. It reminded me of another bar in Cd. Juarez the famous “Tequila Derby”. So we called a couple of friends along and ordered our first round of shots. Lucky for us as soon as we started playing people from the pool hall next door heard the music and came right over to participate. Even though it was supposed to be a video shoot, we played live all night long and I let Jaime (our camera man) know to keep the camera rolling. One of the funniest shots we captured that night was one where I had my ex-girlfriend pretend like she was getting ready to go out. We shot that in the club’s bathroom stall and by that point we were all pretty smashed, she was trying really hard to keep her balance as she was pulling up her panty hose and try to act sexy. We must’ve shot that at least 10 times. It’s amazing how much laughter you get when you’re trying to be serious and sensual! She was great though, we had a blast.
So now I had over 20hrs.of footage and it was time to put it all together. I knew the editing wasn’t going to be easy since we had so much awesome footage. It would be impossible to display all of El Paso’s unique and beautiful history in a 4min. video. I was very fortunate to have Antonio Perez on board for this project as editor and colorist. He, being of Mexican descent himself, really understood the message of the song and could relate to the same visions we both wanted to portray. His work was phenomenal and all the hours of shooting really paid off. I was so grateful to have so many people come together for this video. Another person I would like to thank is Juan Calceran, an independent film maker from El Paso. He came up with many cool ideas and his camera work was great. I would also like to acknowledge Jaime Blanco, Manny Mendoza, Juan Calceran, Eddie Tarin, David Hamilton, Larry Diaz, all the extras but especially my father Tommy Mora Sr. for all the hard work and effort. I know this was an experience that I will never forget and I hope people in El Paso are able to see this video which really plays homage to our beautiful city of El Paso.
Thanks for reading...
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