My visit to içerde set (English)

Exactly one year ago, i visited the set of the turkish serie " Içerde", where i spend time with some of the actors. wonderful experience.

special thanks to Camila, Baris Kiralioglu, and to all the nice people of the set.

The team stayed in this warehouse in Florya for 3-4 days. In the picture is the director Uluç Bayraktar and his assistant Sibel Öztürk.

After I sent my first photo on the set, a lot of messages and requests came to my prehistoric phone, which literally almost exploded! Many girls wanted to know how the actors were like, how i reached the place, or just to say hello. Well, there was also bad vibes from other people... that discouraged me a bit, but I stay with the people who did send good energy. Thank you very much for all your messages and greetings!

At that time, I didn't have time to write anything nice, I was traveling, and trying to survive in the big Istanbul. Today, after I saw the season finale of Çukur, (series performed by almost the same team) i felt very nostalgic, so i decided to write something to all of you, also because now I have the time.

“I offered my help to translate from English to Spanish, and we joined as a group: Abril, Connie, Marce and me. LatinSub was born. We used to talk every day, each from their respective countries: Spain, Mexico, Argentina and me from Chile. And everything started."

(Maybe this will be my first and last post i will make here...😅 So here we go!)

First, a bit of context

Honestly, i am not the biggest fan of the turkish series or its actors. The series i watched, can't even complete the fingers in one of my hands.

My first turkish love was the series Muhtesem Yüzyıl, Magnificent Century, or Suleiman the great sultan etc. I was so in love with its photography, landscapes, architecture, costumes, jewelry, palaces and stories that I could easily watch about 3-4 chapters in a marathon. I really wanted to visit #Topkapi Palace: (When i went to the palace, i spent 5 hours inside listening its story and taking pictures!)

Then I watched #Medcezir (also on open TV), where I met the turkish actor that everyone loves! ​​No one can refuse that Yaman is an idol and a prince, that hardly exist anymore!

I am a designer, and in this series I enjoyed what i saw about turkish fashion, (I researched designers that I still follow), aaaand, of course the love story and family troubles.

After that, I casually catch a chapter of #Içerde on a Facebook page, where a girl was translating by herself. I offered my help to translate from English to Spanish, and we joined as a group April, Connie, Marce and me. LatinSub was born. We used to talk every day, each from their respective countries: Spain, Mexico, Argentina and me from Chile. And everything started. I love traveling, and through this translation hobby I started to meet turkish people, to discover the turkish culture, turkish words, and cities; all the above increased my wish to travel to Turkey, more and more. I really wanted to know the country and traditions, its beautiful beaches, and a little bit of its extraordinary film productions. And of course I wanted to meet the actors: with the time, I started (and also other translators) to have affection for some of the actors/actresses. A kind of interesting sensation, they don't know you, but you do! And when you finally meet them is a new experience haha funny and nice.

Those are some of the graphics that i designed to announce the translated chapters on social networks:

And other graphics i made for the videos.

The social networks

Together, Abril & I communicated with people who worked in the series, (through social networks) in order to post photos of the set for the spanish group of followers. And suddenly I was chatting on #whatsapp with one of the actors, Baris Kiralioglu. Very nice person, kind, friendly and who helped me to enter in the set and introduced everyone in there. We were in contact before i travel, we met in person in Istanbul, we still in contact, and hopefully one day i will have the chance to show a bit if my country and food! 🙂

Istanbul & the Trip

When it comes to travel, i consider myself a brave person, (I lived and visited several countries since young age ) but traveling to Turkey alone, took me a couple of months to decide it. Specially because of what we see in the news, and the almost unknown language.

I only knew about 10 words in Turkish. (müdürüm, anne, babam, merhaba, gunaydin and a couple more, haha) I learned and research everything I could from Chile, I booked a hostel, I looked maps, times, buses, prices*, addresses, etc and I jumped to the aventure!

Unfortunately nothing that I carefully researched warned me of how evil turkish taxi drivers could be. (I ended up crying, lost, alone, scared, questioning everything) Be careful if you go!! But that's another story. It seems that I am exceeding... haha so we better move forward.

*Compared to Chile, everything is cheaper specially food. The most expensive item is the fly ticket. Good option is go directly to Madrid, and then take a cheap airline to Istanbul.

The set search

I think I knocked all the doors I could in Istanbul, (population of all Chile😅) to obtain a filming location, Abril is my witness, haha. I didn't waste time going to the production company, they hardly reveal locations, because the set would be filled with people and they wouldn't shoot. To the manager's office of Çagatay Ulusoy, yes, i went with low expectation. But since I was on holidays, in the last case, it would be good to know a new neighborhood! Clearly I didn't get anything, just a digitally signed actor's photo, like the ones they give to all the crazy girls that go there hahaha. The manager is friendly and nice in person, but then by whatsapp not so much. :( And she spoke very little English, unusual!

Days passed, making tourism, trying new food, meeting people and places. Also making my own bloopers trying to speak turkish and discovering the city. Days passed while i was writing my history, having new experiences, and just living, maybe something to tell my grandchildren, or grandchildren nephews, as i see today!

A week after arriving in Istanbul, one of our many contacts from the film crew told me a possible location for the next day. The place looked horrible in google! Faraway, near the airport, a deserted place, and more over the forecast was rain in almost summer. Well, I had to give it a try, but not alone, at that point I already had a chilean friend and she accepted to go to the adventure with me, (Camila).

June 13. 2017

I thought that with my turkish Bip card!, (public transport card name in Chile) everything would be a piece of cake, (super easy) but nooo. Even taking the metro or metrobus is complicated if you don't speak turkish. NOBODY speaks english in Turkey.😰 Well only the young people from the middle-high social class, and the people in the bazaar ➡ who wants to cheat you. I managed to get to the place where I would meet my friend, and we continued by taxi. I it took me like 1 1/2 hr to get to Florya.

We arrived at the set at 10:30 AM aprox, well, to the horrible warehouse full of mud and rain! There were about 30 people in the yard, who immediately stared at us. A turkish man approached to us with the air of a leader, and Camila spoke something in turkish. 5 seconds later we saw Baris' hair at the distance, and we said we were friends of him, of course! haha Baris came, they spoke in turkish and we entered in the mud!

He invited us to drink çay (tea) and he told me that Damla Colbay with Ugur Yildiray were around. We went to one of the motorhome and I met them! Ugur is very, but very nice, I explain him the whole story about the translations, he is an expert speaking English. He adored me for dedicating my time to subtitling (no money involved). Damla is very sweet, natural, and super high as you can see in the photo.⬇ They chose the background in this picture, in order to not give any indication of the location, otherwise it would be filled with fans. I was super nervous, it was super weird having the people I subtitled for 6 months live with me!

Up↗, our tea refuge, I wish it had been like the last picture, haha that picture is just to compare. We had no glamour, but it gives the "we are all human and equal" quota, that I liked very much and enjoyed. The people on the set are like a family, (united) and "aperrada", and I loved it. (aperrada: from the chilean perro means dog : brave, courageous, warriors etc.)

Then we went back to the tea fellow, and Baris explain us that was not a very good moment to meet the other actors, so we told him that there was no hurry. And Cami and I sat next to the tea corner and talked with the tea fellow, and whoever was walking around. (I was only listening, as music! Cami also translated me some topics) During the afternoon she also talked with some relatives of the extras, one was a police and we hold his massive fake gun!

Later came Nihal Koldas, Nebil Sayin, Sibel Öztürk, Sinasi Serce, and other producer who knew Juan Ignacio Vicente (chilean manager of turkish series in one of the channels) because he talked me about him. I was introduced to all by Baris, very good vibes! Nihal is incredibly kind and loving, I kept in touch with her, and also with Sinasi. Then Baris asked us if we wanted to go to lunch. My friend was fasting, but I immediately accepted. We walked through the grass and arrived to another inhospitable warehouse, but I was very happy. I set my plate, I sat down in a long table, and Duygu Sarisin greeted me and sat next to me. In front of me sat müdürüm Levent Can, and other actors and stylists that I can no longer remember. In there I spoke with Duygu a bit, i told her about me. She was very nice and friendly, educated, lowkey, she has very beautiful facial outlines, and she is extremely thin. She took just a lentil soup, few vegetables, and a fruit, super healthy!

I was lucky to catch almost all actors together in that location and scene. I went to the place without knowing what or who I would find. Fortunately I found the most of them! The only actors that were not there and that I regretted a lot were Yildiray Sahinler, Yusuf Kaya and Bensu Soral. (Well, some of them were already dead!)

The one I saw and greet super quickly was Aras Bulut Iynemli. With him it was different dinamic, because while I was walking around the set, I noticed that some girls were making a line outside his motorhome. Cami and I went to make the line, we were the last. Each girl was taking a picture with Aras, and the next passed, and again and again, very funny! They were like 10 people. When we were the next in line, Sibel came and told Aras -super loudly- that he had to go quick onstage! She really looks like she has a -very loudly- commanding voice and I'm glad she's a woman! She is also super friendly. Aras told her that we were the only missing and she agreed. So, since it was so fast, I couldn't tell him who I was, from where I came from, and the whole story of our latin-american translation project. Chan! But was super cool the fact that he took his time and asked to finish the photos. Like for Aras. 👍🏻

The afternoon was moving forward, also the scenes and also me taking more confidence... little by little I went closer to the main warehouse until I entered. Carefully, discreet like a cat. There were plenty of people working, extras, friends from... etc. I heard thousand times the scene of Sarp screaming when Celal is handcuffed. They repeat them a lot.

I am very shy and didn't wanted to be rude or very insistent, also I didn't wanted to be kicked out haha, so that's why I don't have many pictures. As well, supposedly actors are not allowed to take pictures with their costumes, eg. Ilber Uygar told me he couldn't do it.

Later I greeted Çetin Tekindor from far, and spoke few words with Riza Kocaoglu, in the middle of the motorhomes. Both are more "stars" so they don't walk much around the set, they stay more in their motorhomes. Well, in this aspect, those you see almost never are Çagatay and Aras; when they leave their motorhomes everybody keep silent and watching them. No fly flies, and they walk with assistants next to them. Also they don't eat with the rest of the actors, and they have personal cars to take them to the set every day.

All a rock star. ⭐️

While I was waiting, I was short time drinking tea and sharing with Damla, an actress friend of her, Baris, and other people of the set. All very friendly.

Later they made scenes in the patio where we could easily see Çagatay and Çetin repeating a scene again and again. The scene when they arrive at the warehouse, Sarp with hands tied. We couldn't get too close because we could appear at the back of the scene! haha.

Shortly after, I saw Aras and Çagatay going to their motorhomes, and also I saw a stylist with Aras outfit hanging and going to the costumes truck. I had to hurry! Well, Aras went out very quickly 😔. So I went with Baris to Çagatay's motorhome. Baris spoke to him in turkish, God knows what he said! But I felt it took a while to talk to him, I don't know if he was more complicated or what. The thing is that I went inside after couple seconds!, Baris stayed in the door down watching, and there he was, "Tay" (as we named him in our group) with street clothes, sunglasses and almost ready to go. He was not alone, there was a girl with him.💃🏻 Well, I said hello I told him my story, also that there were many girls in South America who admired him and that soon Içerde would be seen on open TV in Chile. He was very nice! Then I told him I had a gift for him, and I showed him "la roja" (the red one)! The chilean soccer t-shirt. He looked at it, he liked it very much, the logo caught his attention, and he asked me how my country was pronounced. At the end I asked him if we could take a picture together, and he asked me back if I wanted it with the t-shirt on. I replied that it didn't matter, as he wanted, and then he took off his glasses, his green t-shirt and put on the red! 🇨🇱 Got it! 🙌🏼

I was very nervous, i spoke without letting empty spaces! haha and it felt all like 30 sec' of my life. And.. for the many who asked for his smell 😂🙄 he was not wearing perfume.

Impressions: When I saw him in person, I found him much more child than what I perceived before through his social networks or interviews. His voice, and his way of expressing is very low key. Simple, but you can feel that he knows very well his importance. Physically, he looks much smaller and skinny, but still very handsome. His english is very good, not perfect but above average. It was super little what we shared so I can't describe him much more, but he was very nice and friendly, as well as considered and cool to wear our red shirt! Happy face and like for Tay. 🙂👍🏻

The last scenes of the day were with Riza and Gozde Kansu involving police cars.

I saw Gozde from far away, her hair attracts a lot of attention! At that time I was more relax and confidant, so I went alone to talk to her, and for my surprise she was super nice! She doesn't speak much English, but she understands and she listens to you with a smile from ear to ear. She grabbed my phone and started taking a thousand selfies and asked Sinasi who was there to take more pictures. hahaha. Diva!!

Well after that, it was already late, there was almost nobody on the set, it was getting dark, so i went back home! On the way back I got lost and went to the other side haha.. but I arrived at my destination safe.

I was suuuuuuuuuper happy to have been on the set that day, I loved watching how a TV series is done, the atmosphere, the camaraderie, and the result is incredible, very aesthetic.

I loved having shared with people that I watched and translated 6 months from my house in the countryside, in the center of Chile. They were so close and kind. God gave me much more than I imagined. The language and fear, were not limiting to get a challenge that flowed little by little.

I had other stories, like the coincidence of meeting Yusuf Kaya in the middle of the street!! in Sisli, very close to my hostel and Taksim square. That was a cue-va-zo! (very good luck) He was very nice!!

Also the gala of the last chapter with its VIP cocktail, was another beautiful story!

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if you are on the phone...keep going down..

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Photos of the içerde gala & cocktail

June 13. 2018

In Total, my trip in Turkey lasted 8 months approx. (In between I visited my family in Budapest, Hungary) It was a great experience, many lessons, ups and downs, it was tremendously difficult to live and work there, (with limited connections) but I saw it as a challenge. I have many beautiful memories and friendships, that will always be in my mind and heart, like this little piece that I shared with you all.

I think that after this trip, there is nothing that I can't do or not dare. The only need is motivation. There is ALWAYS as road, you only have to look for it.

I hope you liked it, I wrote it with lots of love! Görüsürüz!

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