Professor Joe

Accepted a teaching position at ol’ DLSU and did a demo lecture today. I’m teaching producing next term. I’ve always wanted to teach but also feel I’m VASTLY underqualified, but there you go, I’ll be teaching three hours a week.

For the demo I blazed through the entire production process using our two-minute film Pusong Gala (selected for the Rotterdam Film Festival in January!) as an example. Got through it fine, except that Angeli Diaz said I mumbled through the whole thing. Yep, I figured that would happen. When I get excited / am nervous / in a hurry I slur like a drunken lout. Have to work on that.

Also I had to get my very sorry transcripts from the school. For the first time in a dozen years I had to write my ID number, and it came out right away without even thinking. 9205993. That was strange. Walking the halls the school looked the same, except that the students now had iPods, were constantly on their phones, had MacBooks opened. Also they were in slippers, which ticked me off because we had that idiot dress code in the 90s. Yes, the biggest complaint I have is our inability to wear slippers.

Maite’s Abuela died this morning and we went to the wake after dinner. That’s the fourth time this year. We go as a barkada to these wakes and always do “pagpag” after, meaning we stop by somewhere, eat or get a drink, supposedly to break the spell of death and not bring it with us. Apparently, it’s not working. For us it’s No Weddings and All Funerals. Thank God Caye and DSJ are getting married next year.

No rest, no rest.

Wooh. No rest, no rest. I was really looking forward to a week in Boracay, or at least a week in Laoag with Tracy, chilling with my brother who’s raising pigs up North. But nah, the list of to-do’s is pretty long:

• fine cut, re-grade, and re-mix Baby Angelo in time for the Pusan IFF
• plan the Festival and distribution route for Baby A.
• start working on the next one.
• prepare for the long-delayed mid-year Arkeo planning session
• direct two of the company projects
• get back in f**kin shape.

Ok as it turns out it’s not that long pala. In any case. Daming kelangan gawin.

Thanks to the SONA, a typhoon, and the university break, the audience for our UP screening was: 52. Haha! And the Cineaste guys convinced us that we needn’t move the screening. No matter, Bing Lao watched and told Jeff Jeturian that it’s the best film in the Cinemalaya next to Jay. Nice!! I idolize the guy, to be honest; and so it means a lot. Still getting Jeff J and Mike de Leon to watch. Mike doesn’t want to be forced to watch anything, so Monster and I are thinking of ways to have the DVD just magically appear on his table…

In the rush of finishing the film I wasn’t able to give a proper shout-out to the post-prod staff, and so:

Who’s Who in Baby Angelo

Lawrence Ang

Lawrence Ang as Editor

On one hand, Lawrence edits for Khavn dela Cruz’s rakenrol style of filmmaking. On the other, he’s done Raya Martin’s long and slooooooooow films. I imagine my movie’s somewhere in the middle. And, those two guys are good company to be with. Lawrence was very much my partner during the last couple months of making the film. He helped pull the film out of predictability and give it its Pay Attention, Fool! quality.

Isha

Peach Abubakar/Isha as Musical Scorer

During the first few days when we got her to work on the movie, Peach’s first pass at the main theme had a creepy baby coo as its drumbeat. I told her, I like the theme a lot but the baby coo is too literal for me. She messages back, oh I don’t intend it to be there. That’s just (something like, I don’t remember her words) the take-off point. Like placenta, we can bury it in the ground. She had me at hello. She’s a true artist and was a gift to the film, especially with the seven songs I made her do for the movie. Both she and Lawrence are going to work on Arkeo’s next film, a Taiwanese/French/Filipino co-production, because they’re both just so gifted. Cheers guys!

DSJ

Corinne de San Jose as Sound Designer

DSJ! She patiently, patiently combed through the bad live recordings of not just Baby A but ALL of the Arkeo films, and she’s done so without complaint. Well not really, she’s really mataray when she works but hey, she’s hot at what she does. Also she is my ex-girlfriend. Haha.

Vives

Vives Anunciacion as Post-Production Supervisor

Vives, Vives. He’s part of the family through and through. Post-prod supervisor is just a convenient title but really he’s been there for all of us, each and every time.