Jack & Bill

We were taught how to use the program "Adobe Premier" in our film making class. This program helps the user edit shots and sequences of a movie to his/her liking. Then we were grouped accordingly to create our very own short films. Movie making is not as easy as it looks, we had a hard time thinking of a plot and how would the story end. But after a hard time brainstorming, we were finally ready to shoot the flick. We were given the plot of Jack & Jill to work on, and the good thing was we could modify it to our ideas. We modified it by not using the traditional guy & gal theme, but we used the 2 guys theme and in the present times. Our story starts of in a building, where a guy (played by Ryann Juaton) was loitering in a corridor eating a banana. As a lot of people would do he just threw the banana peel on the floor. Then we cut to the ground floor of the building where our two guys (Jack & Bill as I named them) was going to there class after playing a round of basketball. After a few moments of climbing a flight of stairs, Bill (played by Christoferd Alvarez) slipped on the banana peel that was thrown earlier and hit Jack (played by Errl VIllapando). Thus the two of them fell down the stairs in a horrific sight.

Our production team consisted of The Directors (Niño Mogato & Edmund Baños), The Actors (Ryann Juaton, Christoferd Alvarez & Errl Villapando), and The Storyboard Editors (Joanne Atilano, Jojie Vildosola & Vanli Oliveros). I learned that as a co-director it is essential to capture the right light for the scene, the movement of the actors and camera and the camera angles. I also realized that if everyone would pitch in when creating the film, then it would most likely have shorted takes and better output than working alone or by pair.

Basic Directing Workshop

We were told that we would attend a two day seminar in which it would provide us and other students and faculty members the basics of film making and movie directing. This seminar was held in the Ateneo AVC room (Audio Visual Center). The seminar was given by documentary filmmaker Gutierez Mangansakan II. On the first day of the seminar he explained to us how hard it was to create a film back then because of the small resources that they would be given. He said that when he was still in college, the 10 minute roll of film would cost around 10,000 php. And that they would not use all of the 10 minutes, but only 3 minutes! So basically if you would do a 30 minute film back then (30 x 10,000= 300,000). Its just like buying a car for the first time. And he also spoke about what kind of shots would be best for a sequence, what angles would bring out the emotion of the scene and more.

Then on the second day of the seminar he taught us the essential things for a great film like cinematography, music, audio and the like. He also taught us how to create storyboards and how to utilize our new found knowledge by creating a sequence of shots from a short part of the story "The flight of Icarus". Our story was the second best out of the five groups because of the shot selections and the camera angles. I am very happy that this seminar taught me very useful bits of information about directing and film making. I hope that I would have the opportunity to enhance my knowledge and increase it further. Thank you Mr. Mangansakan!