Moi, my Baba and my bro (Patrick).
Doing the revision of EnvironMakati infomercial
at X1 Studio
Patrick still looking busy.
Moi sleepyass, hehe.
Moi and my Baba making funny faces.
STARBUCKS Glendale ako ngayon.
LABOR DAY (stateside)
Nakakainip…
naghihintay ng ala-syete
(or hinihintay ang tawag ni Tita Letty)
Talagang nami-miss
ko na ang Pinas!!!
Pamilya…
mga kaibigan…
mga gimik…
LAHAT!!!
Me mga Armenians…
(nasa likod ko sila..
mukang magbabarkada)
Nagkukuwentuhan…
Hindi ko maintindihan
Ang pinagsasabi nila!!!
Me biglang iyak ng sanggol
ako naririnig na dala-dala ng tatay.
Nakakatawa… nakaka-amaze…
Kahit ano’ng lahi ng sanggol,
Basta umiyak… pare-pareho…
Walang ‘slang’ or ‘british’ accent.
(Kahit saan talaga nakikita mo sila)
Di na sila bago sa akin.
Kasi marami ding ganyan sa Pinas!
Hayan! Umalis na rin
ang mga teenagers na Armenians.
Medyo Tahimik na…
ang humaharurot!
Nag-lips to lips ba naman.
Natawa pa sila.
Kasi nakita sila ng friend nilang girl.
Oh well… lumayas na rin sila.
na kakapaasok lang.
Yung nanay e naka-tie die
Na shirt and
The son is quite fashionable,
Naka-sleeveless shirt na black
and torn denim jeans… karakter!
at pagkatapos e umupo
(waiting now for their orders)
At last! Tinawag na rin sila.
Green Tea Frapuccino
ang order nila…“To go”…
kaya “go” na rin sila.
(or madalas),
Napapaisip ako
kung ano’ng klaseng buhay
meron sila…
Kasi pag nakikita ko sila,
They seem ok.
pag-uwi ng bahay?
Malungkot? Masaya? Magulo?
Sila rin kaya e
iniisip nila ang naiisip ko?
Observant din kaya sila
katulad ko?
yung pagpunta or pagpasyal sa mall
ay “scapegoat” din?
Na gustong makalimutang
malungkot din sila? O kaya’y maglibang?
(magastos na paglibang na ‘to ha!)
Or wala lang talaga?
Me mga bagong lahi
na naman pumasok dito…
Mukang Asians… Pinoys?
Di ko alam.
Kailangan ko muna silang marinig
para malaman…
A ewan! Bahala sila!
(sa me left corner ng kuwartong ito)
Wait lang ha… singit ko lang ‘to…
Pinoy nga yung mga dumating!
Ok, balik tayo dun sa me sulok…
Feeling busy rin (na parang ako).
Nagsusulat din siya.
Katulad din kaya
ng ginagawa ko?
Mukang serious
‘yung ginagawa niya…
Kasi sa long pad paper
siya sumusulat.
Starbucks Glendale…
United Colors of Benetton
ang mga tao.
(Kungsabagay ditto sa “Tate” mismo
makikita karamihan ang mga lahi
sa buong mundo).
Kasi pagod na rin akong
Magtingin-tingin at mag-usi sa mga tao.
Next time na lang ulit! Saan naman kaya?
Di ko alam! We’ll find out
sa pagsulat ko ulit dito.
(Ang tagal naman ng alas-syete)
- ended at
Good Morning Class!
Now a famous film-maker a while back said something about 'Everything you need to know about film you can learn in a week.' He was being generous. You can learn it in 10 minutes.
Set your watches we will be out of here in ten kids.
Okay, so you wanna be a film-maker?
(Class choruses 'YES')
Wrong! You ARE a film-maker. The moment you think about that you want to be a fillm-maker you're that. Make yourself a business card that says you're a film-maker, pass them out to your friends, soon as you get that over with and you've got it in your mind that you're one you'll be one, you'll start thinking like one. Don't dream about being a film-maker, you are a film-maker. Now let's get down to business.
Let's Play!!
What you need to learn is that being creative is not enough in this business. You have to become techinical. Creative people are born creative - you're lucky. Technical people however can never be creative. Its something they'll never get. You can't buy it, find it, study it - you're born with it. Too many creative people don't want to learn how to be technical, so what happens? they become dependent on technical people. Become technical, you can learn that. If you're creative and technical, you're unstoppable.
Experience - Do you have experience in movies? You do, right - you WATCH movies. Now you need to have movie experience - you're not going to learn from just watching movies, you're learn some things, you'll learn more picking up a camera, making your own films, your own mistakes - mistakes don't have to be mistakes, everything is subjective - a mistake to one person is actually a piece of art to someone else. Hide behind that, tell everyone its art, you can get away a lot.
Start with a screenplay. Does anybody here know how to write? No - good. Everyone else writes the same way. Start writing your way. That makes you unique. You can take writing classes, that's good, but don't bother to go to film school or you'll be making films like everybody else. We want to see your film.
How do you write a script? Well, you obviously don't have a lot of money or you wouldn't be in my class. So you wanna make a movie but you don't want to spend a lot. You're gonna come up with problems everyday on your set. You can get rid of the problem one of two ways - you can do it creatively or you can wash it away with the money hose. You got no money, you got no hose. So let's make a screenplay for a movie you can actually make without having to make your parents poor. Let's make a cheap movie.
How do you make a cheap movie? - Look around you, what do you have around you? Take stock in what you have. Your father owns a liquor store - make a movie about a liquor store. Do you have a dog? Make a movie about your dog. Your mom works in a nursing home, make a movie about a nursing home. When I did El Mariachi I had a turtle, I had a guitar case, I had a small town and I said I'll make a movie around that.
How do you visualise a movie? With storyboards, you can do that. You can previsualise your movie and draw them out, but what you should really do is make a blank screen for yourself and watch your movie. Close your eyes and stare at this. Imagine a screen, imagine your movie. Shot for shot, cut for cut. Sit there, close your eyes and get rid of everybody, get rid of all your thoughts in your head except your movie and watch your movie. Is it too slow? Is it too fast? Is it funny? Does it make sense? Watch it and then write down what you see. Write down the shots that you see. And then just go get those shots.
Equipment. OK let's go over the equipment. The worse the better. You don't want anything too fancy, remember this is your first movie - you're not Spielberg yet. I used this one for El Mariachi, almost the same one, I used a 16M this is a 16S, this is exactly what I had. It helped me move fast because it was light, it was very noisy so I could do the sound in a wacky way, but this thing here would cost you about $2000. Don't spend that kind of money, find some monkey that own's one. I found somone who had one of these sitting around, he wasn't using it. I borrowed it from him, I shot my movie.
(Points at what look's like a damn heavy tripod) Look at it, this is a nice stand, its a very solid stand, y'know what's gonna happen? The camera is gonna stay on the stand, you're just gonna keep it there, 'cos its so nice, meaning your movie's gonna look...stiff. Take it off of there, sit in a wheelchair, push yourself around, get some energy in your film. That's the great thing about first films is that they have so much life and so much energy. Big productions can't even duplicate that energy, because they've got too good a stand and too much crew and everything is really smooth and polished and its lifeless. Add life to your film by getting rid of the fancy stuff. (Points at the tripods) Too good, too heavy, too good - just use your hands.
Here's a lightmeter, this isn't the write one, I broke my other one. This is a spotmeter, that's OK but it's too fancy. You just need one with a little white dome on it, point it to your subject, read the light, look at the number on your lightmeter - remember your lightmeter is your friend - feed that into lens and the iris, and then you're set. Start shooting.
Don't overlight. On Mariachi I had two lights, regular lightbulbs, they were balanced for indoor film, so look fine. In fact everyone said the lighting looked moody because there was very little light . Your mistakes, your shortcomings suddenly becomes artistic expression.
Finally, postproduction. When you've finished shooting your movie what do you do? (Picks up video mixer) These are your friends my friends. Video editing systems, computer editing systems, anything like that, its immediate, its easy, its cheap. Do not cut on film. Film is your enemy. You may be shooting on film but don't cut on film. If any of you want to cut on film get out of my class right now. Go spend $20,000 on a real film school and do that. You'll never get a job though - believe me.
Everything is on computers or video these days. Film is slow, film is expensive, film is not creative - film take's too long. Cut on tape that's what I do. I shot Mariachi for nothing. I edited on video. I had a three-quarter inch master that looked beautiful because the negative was transferred right to tape. There was no middleman so it looked like 35mm - clean, pristine. I made VHS copies of this, sent them out all over Hollywood. I never made a film print. (Picks up film strip) Waste of money. You have to string them up, they get worn out. They're expensive. They're copies of your negative. You don't want that, you don't want copies of your negative, you want your negative...on tape. Where people can duplicate it and watch it and get you work.
OK so you've made your movie, you've cut it, you've got it out, people want you. What do you do? The first thing you want to do is get an agent - right away. Hollywood is full of sharks, you need a shark working for you. These guys go and get you the best deals, they get you the best prices, they get you the best movies.
What you've learnt is what no one else has. How to make a movie dirt cheap. No one else in Hollywwod knows how to do that. You guys can make them cheap, you guys can make them better, don't get swallowed in the system, take advantage of your position.
Now I make movies that are still low budget but they look like big budget movies because I learnt the techniques that I just showed you today.
All right I've got to go back and do my own films so I hope you guys learnt something today, I hope you grab some of these cameras and go shoot something of your own, I hope you write down the ideas that you have, the dreams that you have.
Stop aspiring, start doing.
See you in Hollywood - be scary!



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A ferry filled with crewmen from the USS Nimitz and their families was blown up in New Orleans on Mardi Gras. BATF Doug Carlin is brought in to assist in the massive investigation, and gets attached to an experimental FBI surveillance unit, one that uses spacefolding technology to directly look back a little over four days into the past. While tracking down the bomber, Carlin gets an idea in his head: could they use the device to actually travel back in time and not only prevent the bombing but also the murder of a local woman whose truck was used in the bombing? "If you think it’s just a feeling… go back and look again"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453467/
Based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, "300" concerns the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae, where the King of Sparta led his army against the advancing Persians; the battle is said to have inspired all of Greece to band together against the Persians, and helped usher in the world's first democracy.Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. Persian King Xerxes lead a Army of well over 1 000 000 (Persian king Xerxes before war has about 1 700 000 army) men to Greece and was confronted by 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians and other Slave soldiers. Xerxes waited for 10 days for King Leonidas to surrender or withdraw left with no options he moved. The battle lasted for about 3 days and after which all 300 Spartans were killed. The Spartan defeat was not the one expected as a local shepherd named Ephialtes defected to the Persians and informed Xerxes of a separate path through Thermopylae, which the Persians could use to outflank the Greeks.
PRODUCER: Mark Canton
DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder
STARRING: Gerard Butler
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/


It was an opening night at UP Film Center (or Cine Adarna) of Human Rights Film Festival. Cocktails started at 6pm and followed up by the performance of Carol Bello Banderitas.
The opening film was Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) by Amir Muahmmad and was preceded by the World Premiere of Martyn See's short documentary, Speakers Cornered

Synopsis
This is a hybrid documentary, not because it combines fact and fiction, but because it combines testimony with song. Chin Peng (real name: Ong Boon Hua) was born in 1924 and is the last leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaya. He now lives in Thailand because the Malaysian government does not allow him to return, despite his repeated attempts to go through the courts.
The Communist Party of Malaya was set up in 1930 (in a ceremony attended by Ho Chi Minh) and recruited from the working class (mainly ethnic Chinese) exploited by colonial British economic interests. The CPM played an active role in the anti-Japanese resistance movement during World War Two, and cooperated with the British. But once the Japanese surrendered, the communists wanted to take over the country for themselves. This is when they and the British became enemies once again. 1948-60 is the era known as the Emergency, the longest and bloodiest undeclared war in Commonwealth history. Driven to operate from secret jungle hideouts, the communists carried out several attacks against British economic and security targets. While still in his 20s, Chin Peng became the most wanted man in the British empire.
The British curtailed the communist influence by keeping the public in heavily-guarded, racially segregated villages, so that the people could no longer supply food and medicine to the guerillas. The propaganda war was stepped up too. Many of the documentaries of that era (made by the propaganda arm of the British Army in Malaya) featured songs to keep the target audience entertained. “The Last Communist” pays ironic tribute to this root of Malaysian documentary by also inserting specially-composed songs.
After Malaya achieved independence in 1957, the new government kept to the British model of governance and priorities. In the Cold War, Malaysia was firmly allied with the West, and Communism became the ultimate bogey right up to the 1980s. No positive mention of the communists’ role in history would ever be allowed.
“The Last Communist” uses this historical data as backdrop, but is more interested in seeing how the country has changed (or not) from the time of Chin Peng’s youth to now. The director and his crew travel to the towns Chin Peng lived in from birth to national independence. Most of these towns are still not very developed as the modern highways bypass them.
Interviews with various people in these towns are sought. They will talk about their jobs and their beliefs in various languages, reflecting the multilingual and polymorphous reality of contemporary Malaysia. Some of these have a direct connection to some aspect of Chin Peng’s life. (For example, a bicycle seller, after we find out Chin Peng’s family was in the bicycle trade). In other instances, the interviews are meant to form a telling view of how present-day Malaysians view themselves in the economic, social and political order.
The longest sequence takes place in Betong, Thailand, home of many exiled members of the Communist Party of Malaya. They too will take about their jobs and beliefs, and the audience is meant to reflect on how similar or different they are from the Malaysians we had met earlier. For starters, they too enjoy singing.








