Baby Angelo day 101. Prayers

Lord, please send me a location.

Waaagh. The final character in this film proves the hardest to cast: the damn apartment complex. Our leading candidate has the perfect look but is damn spoiled, and shooting there will be like shooting in a prison- every move watched and approved. Plus it bumps up my budget by 10%. We’re looking at two more locations. It looks like we might move the shoot a couple days.

Meanwhile Sig my AD is confined in the hospital for allergies because over the Holy Week, she decided to clean her house, unleashing ten years worth of dust mites. Then, the hospital gave her Iterax which she turned out to be allergic to as well. Lord, send her back to us soon please.

Good news: Finally found my Mr. Noel and Mrs. Nora. In lieu of a rehearsal, I’m having coffee with them on Friday to talk about their characters. Monday and today were rehearsals for the rest of the ensemble. Nor is on board as acting coach. He’s helped us a lot before (AD for Mansyon, lead for Big Time), he’s part of the family. Anyway I’m really happy with my cast. I’m raring to go actually.

If only I can lock this @#(%& location.

That thing before the storm.

Calm. yun.

These past four days I’ve hammered out a shotlist for Baby A, as well as watched season 2 of both 30 Rock (astig!) and Heroes (not so astig). I’ve also been drinking myself silly every night. Just cause I know what’s coming next.

Holy week was a welcome break for the team, because these four days will be the last of life as we know it. Starting tomorrow it’s daily preparations, meetings, hair-pulling, breast-beating, teeth-gnashing til we get to our first day of shoot on the 31st, and finally end on the 22nd.

I fully expect to lose 15 pounds and half my mind.

But in a good way.

Good night.

Baby Angelo day 93. Combing through.

Visited our three finalists for location today, care of Eric or location manager. The first was a dorm in Manila, with a great look but unfortunately it would take too much work to transform the rooms into apartment units. The last unit we looked at was owned by a very agreeable ex-jeepney driver; however the rooms were tiny and I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down.

The second is our favorite, an apartment complex in QC, with 51 units. Genevieve Homes (the main location in the film) was written as a two-storey complex of around 20 units; some visual cheating would have to happen. And some major haggling with its somewhat picky (read: expensive) tenants.

Regardless, I remain hopeful, it’s only 13 days till the first day of shoot. At least I can visualize the shots now because I have a location. An hour after the team took a look at the location, we had our second scene-by-scene meeting. It was a ten hour meeting, which ended at 4am the next day.

Spent, excited, nervous. Each department gave its take on the scenes. By “department” I just mean one person. Some adjustments had to be made due to the logistics. Rescheduling was a bitch, thank God that Sig my AD is a master at it.

We’re doing ten or so sequences a day. Man. Let’s hope we have the energy.

The things people care about.

This week the yakking was all about Manila’s young “elite” and the sordid details of their debauchery. Earth-shattering, ground-breaking revelation: they do coke. Oookay. And (wait for it…) they’re shallow and care about no one. I sympathize with that blogger who got swindled off his money, and wish him luck and peace. But I have to say the feeding frenzy that followed left a bad taste in my mouth. Anonymity brings out the beast in people. Why throw so much hate at a bunch of people who in the end, don’t even matter? I haven’t even heard of most of these people.

I’ve also received a lot of mail about some beauty pageant winner who can’t speak English, complete with impassioned opinions. Huh. So what. All this talk about representing the country? It’s a freaking beauty pageant, not the UN. Just smile, walk in a bikini and heels, and take your top off. Job done.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has once again proved that they’re as relevant to modern society as VHS. Being obscenely rich is now one of the capital sins, ergo, Bill Gates is destined to eternity in hell. Despite giving 38 billion dollars in endowments last year to frivolous causes such as education, child vaccination and HIV research. Eradicating cancer, congenital disorders, etc are also cause for burning at the stake, as genetic modification is now a capital sin. Religion in science? Really? One would think the Catholic Church will have learned from Galileo.

Hayyy.

Baby Angelo day 88. The Paulken Moment.

Hearing the words you wrote being read back to you is a strange feeling. Suddenly you’re keenly aware of how bad you wrote it. Or how brilliant some of your lines are. Haha. Today was the table reading for Baby Angelo with 6/7ths of my main cast (Absent was my Mrs. Nora character).Before the reading I was incredibly nervous, not really sure why. I had to take two shots of Generoso, conveniently stashed on the office fridge behind the innocuous jars of sugar and instant coffee. The alcohol helped as I introduced the script to my actors. When I’m excited I tend to talk fast and mumble, the Generoso slowed me down. For all of them it’s the first time to read the script, and I needed to explain the strange structure of this film.

Most of my actors were cast using the Paulken theory. At the office that’s what we call it when we’ve found the perfect actor, based on gut feel, on first sight. Paulken is my actor for the Paraiso movie, and then my short. When we first saw him, we knew right away that he was The One. This is also how I cast Jess Evardone for my first short.

Unfortunately the Paulken Moment still hasn’t happened for the location. Hayyy. We’re shooting in 18 days. Hope We can find Genevieve Homes by then.

Baby Angelo day 84. The perfect cast

Finally decided on our ensemble cast today. Some were decided on pretty early, such as Apple the mysterious girl in the corner unit, back in December. The most difficult was deciding on who plays two of the male characters. We had it narrowed down to two actors, and it was a matter of who plays what role. There’s the role Bong, the pinaka-protagonist of the story, and MD, the likeable tough guy next door. The two actors had their strengths and can play either role with the grace and unexpectedness that makes good casting. It would be two different movies whichever way I went, ultimately the decision was based on what kind of movie I want it to be. So this morning, I finally texted Monster my producer the decision.

Now let’s see if they’d agree to the ridiculous, indie-style talent fees.

The last role we need to cast is the main character: Genevieve Homes. The dark, closed-in place that the characters will inhabit for 95% of the movie. Today we finally did a location check after weeks of hunting by at least a dozen of our staff. Thankfully we did find great locations, I’m crossing my fingers that the one location that I loved will push through.

Baby Angelo day 81. Moving along

An update since I got the grant for Baby Angelo in December:
-managed to secure the rest of my funding for the film, yay;

-am now down to draft 3 of the screenplay. I’m doing the shooting script already but am expecting a 4th draft once we see the location and heard the table reading. Again (Cinemalaya, I hope you’re listening), one month to write the screenplay is JUST TOO SHORT. And so is six months to produce a film. Suggestion to Cinemalaya: Call for entries TODAY, and give the grants the week before Cinemalaya 2008; that way you have an entire year to do the film. That’s the humane thing to do. I guess they think that since a gem like Maximo Oliveros was done in the same timeframe then everyone can do it. Instead of overpolicing the grantees they should just cut us some freaking slack. Rant over.

-Arkeo has kindly allowed me to stop working on our corporate clients beginning early February to concentrate on Baby A. Which is for their (our) own benefit since Baby A hardly moved when I was busy with the corporate projects.

-Casting! Fun, but also tedious. Especially since we’re casting for an ensemble piece. How everyone meshes together is key; that’s why I’m leaning towards character actors.

-Still trying to get my head around NINETY MINUTES of finished material. Where do you begin? Mario gave me the best advice: just know your movie and it’ll all come out.

-Procrastinating. In the months that I’m supposed to be working on the script, I’ve also finished an entire season of Lost and The Sarah Silverman Program, watched the Jimmy Kimmel- Ben Affleck video many, many times, stared into space for hours, arranged and rearranged my clothes, books, and DVD collection.

Freeze

Astig.

This inspired “freezes” around the world.

Posters!

Posters are done! Thanks to Corinne de San Jose for the photography and Jenni Lapira for the designs.

 

click on the thumbnails to see the posters in their full glory.