Camilo Vega Palpito Director
Regardless of the great expectation, the young Colombian director Camilo Vega was not is nervous about the premiere of the second season of Pálpito (10×60’) – The Marked Heart -, a CMO series for Netflix that hit the screen on Wednesday the 19th.
He knows that, as they say in his country, “the bar is high” compared to the previous season, in which they were number one in the world ranking of the platform and had more than 68 million hours of viewing in their first week. However, he is confident that it is a winning product: “The series has already shown what a great production it is, people are expecting this and fortunately these new chapters have a lot of power. The story is going to have an impressive turning point.”
This second season was also written by Leonardo Padrón and was executive produced by Clara María Ochoa and Ana Piñeres (RIP). Vega explained that the series continues to mix genres, including drama, thriller, and even, and on occasion, there are touches of comedy “so that the characters feel a little fresher in this dark universe where everything moves.”
This season, above all, will be more charged with action. “Towards the middle of the series there is a rather long action sequence, with special effects and stunts. The main crew, around 100 people, was joined by another 40 just for those scenes. All of these additional difficult action items take time to execute and make them look believable. We recorded this sequence for about six days, which goes on for an entire chapter,” explained Vega.
The first season ended when Zacarías Cienfuegos (Sebastián Martínez) discovers that his wife, Camila (Ana Lucía Domínguez), faked her death to disappear from his life, so now in these new chapters his goal is to bring her back and take revenge. Simón (Michel Brown), the man whose wife was murdered to give Camila a heart and with whom she fell in love.
PRODUCTION CROSSED BORDERS
“The story begins in Turkey and filming these episodes of the second season was an incredible experience. Our production team was totally Turkish, even my assistant director there was Turkish. We communicated with each other mostly in English, but we also had a translator when required. It was very gratifying to find out that everyone there was a fan of the series. We teamed up very well and contributed to us,” said the director about the production that took place between September and November 2022, and also had locations in Mexico and Colombia.
For Vega, making a second season in many ways is like starting a new project because there are new locations, characters, and universes: “Although there is already a groundwork, you still have to build and develop the product again.”
The main cast continues to be Ana Lucía Domínguez, Michel Brown, Sebastián Martínez, Juan Fernando Sánchez, Julian Cerati or Valeria Emiliani; with the addition of actors such as Laura Londoño, Julián Arango, Ernesto Calzadilla, Marcela Carvajal, to mention a few.
Vega pointed out that the challenge is to ensure that this main cast can achieve the tone quickly and that the new actor can easily adapt to the rhythm. “It’s like an orchestra, like a symphony, where no instrument can go out of tune. So it’s a question of how you adapt all these new characters so that they fit into playing within the same beat. The characters were incredible and they are going to contribute a lot to the story.”
This year, the Colombian director is also preparing to release his debut film, El Rey de la Montaña: “It is a film that will move people in our country and hopefully throughout the world.” He is also in the pre-production stage of the second season of La Venganza de Analía, a CMO series for Caracol Televisión.
