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What was it like trying to sneak a camera into a prison in the Philippines?
The decision to bring the camera into the prison we didn't take lightly. If we got
caught obviously there would be consequences for us, but more importantly for Paco we didn't
know what they would do to him if they found out. But he himself said he was desperate
-- he was on death row, his execution could be scheduled at any time. He said this is
my last hope, we have to do this. It was a little bit ironic that our film was criticizing
we kind of use that to our advantage because we did find a way to have the camera snuck
into the prison. We had it brought in separately, in pieces and once inside we had to keep it
hidden. We had a system in place where when we would do the interviews we had people on the outside that were able
to tell us if guards were coming. We would know about 6 minutes in advance if a guard
was coming so we'd have time to hide the camera. We were fortunate enough that there
were no negative consequences for Paco when the video actually came out. One of the first
things he asked us to do was to bring a short message to Spain and he knew that was his
last hope. We recorded a message where he was just reaching out to the Spanish government
and to the whole European Union, and said please help me I'm on death row here and
there is nothing else that I can do. When we released that message we were afraid something
else would happen to Paco because they would realize there was a camera in the prison but
luckily nothing ever did.