Hugo “The Boss” Centeno
Hugo is a professional boxer managed by Al Haymen’s management group, the firm which also represents Floyd Mayweather. Hugo’s brand situation was what I would call a “disconnect”. He’s a talented fighter with over 20 wins, fighting on national television at the highest levels in boxing, yet his management company didn’t take the time to help him develop his content infrastructure. While living in LA, I ended up being able to train at the Wild Card gym that boxing fans would recognize as Freddy Roach’s gym. Boxing fans might also recognize “Sugar” Shane Mosely who makes a cameo appearance in this film. As a lifelong boxing fan, but someone who never put on gloves it was exciting to experience boxing in an entirely new way by being in the gym with the best fighters in the world every day. When the opportunity to work for Hugo came about, I had already been training for a few years, and knew the firsthand experience had given me a new perspective and would allow me to film something from a different viewpoint than anything else I had seen before.
The main thing I wanted to do was to film the action shots in the ring closeup, and to try as much as possible not to move the camera in order to force the viewer to use their eyes to follow the action around the frame and also to shoot with prime (fixed focal point lenses) in order to really draw the viewers eyes towards the action, the opposite of what you would see from any other boxing documentary style film. Fortunately, I had a great DP who was able to pull this off singlehandedly. We did this whole shoot with just myself and the camera operator and it was the absence of a crew that allowed us to be able to get in and out of the gym, do what we had to do and get out.
The secondary objective was the “reality show interview shot” to tie the video together which we were able to do in the same studio as the photos. Being LA, I wanted it to really feel like a cutaway episode of the Kardashians, in order to bring Hugo that pop celebrity look to contrast with the shots in the gym. I remember when we were editing I told the DP that I wanted that backdrop “Kardashian white” and we sat in the studio, turned on an episode of the show and tweaked the colors until we got it just right. All white backdrops are not created equally.
Thirdly, Hugo wanted photos that highlighted his style as and personality as kind of a modern day throwback with an edge and I think we accomplished all three. In the final edit, I wanted to make sure that Hugo’s personality came across while also highlighting his tremendous athleticism and work ethic. There’s also a cool moment at the end where I used the sound of the jumprope to punctuate the conversation with his trainer and to symbolize the ticking of the clock. For me, I don’t ever like making something that’s only about “the thing that we are making”. When trying to film or photograph anything, I truly believe that the more thought put into how it’s shot translates into the thought that will go into watching it and that’s the difference between shooting content that connects to people as opposed to simply shooting it.
