Cinemalaya 18 Festival of Winners: Attending a Film Workshop

This Wednesday, another event was added to this year's highlights that I will always love to look back years from now. It was breathtaking, superb, and a thrilling experience to attend a National film workshop organized by Cinemalaya, A Film Independent Festival that happened to campaign in our regional for its 18th edition.

The Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival is a film festival in the Philippines held annually during the month August at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex and various cinemas. Its aim is the development and promotion of Filipino independent films. It aims to encourage the creation of new cinematic works by Filipino filmmakers—works that boldly articulate and freely interpret the Filipino experience with fresh insight and artistic integrity. It also aims to invigorate the Philippine filmmaking by developing a new breed of Filipino filmmakers.

It was God's plan for aspirants like me who dream and wish to learn but are limited with resources and opportunities, and nothing else more. Because living in Mindanao (a southern part of the Philippines) means lesser national opportunities (in many sorts), more especially living in a Region (Region IX) that is not discovered by many, and being in a province that was nationally acknowledged as one of the poorest province in the country.

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Opportunities like this in our Shrine City, Dapitan City is once in a blue moon only. Thus, my first instinct was to really go for it and convince my one "strict-of-a-mother" to let me join this once in a lifetime event.

She knew me well, after all. They knew how much I love writing creatively, to stories, scripts, screenplays, and to anything I could think of writing. They knew how much of a movie critic and enthusiast I am. So eventually she and dad said yes.

The film workshop lasted for half a day, however I know that the things I have learned and my now ignited passion for filmmaking will last long for years.

Elements of Film

We were taught first with the film basics and its elements. The first element tackled immediately caught my interest as it was all about the Story and Script of a film: What is your story?

The one who gave us our lecture was one of the award winning directors of Cinemalaya itself, Direk Elvert Banares. He was clearly the most serious man with an outstanding sense of humor I had the chance to know. He was professional, and impatient which I thought was because of his habit to be straightforwarded as directors always value time.

In stories and script, everyone who wants to be in the writing field needs to know that a film is a mirror of life. He said that to have a remarkable script, you need to have an interesting mind, and should go out of your comfort zone or genre. Research is needed, research with the environment, behaviours, people, old or new to generate new learnings.

And if one wants to be a great screenplay writer you need to be different, and tell your story differently. He told us that to come up with an interesting film we need to be unique and don't pressure ourselves and don't think about comparing and competing others. We need to create something that is one of a kind. A storyline that people haven't yet seen and at the very same time, people knew and are familiar with (examples are cultures and folklores).

Moreover, he explained the rest of the Basics and Elements of Film. Second was the importance of Visual Design in a film. Third were the Editing and Post-production of the film were editing the footages, transitions, editing & mixing sound, adding musical score and narration take place.

The notable things that he added as well were the value of the Sound Design, Musical Score were the effectivity and the impact of the film (through hearing) are found. Next was the Acting which is the main key to open the hearts of the viewers, the efficacy of the film varies as well in the performance of the actors and actresses by how they portray, express, and could make those who will relate to them. Most importantly is the Director which is the captain of the whole filming crew who navigates, rules, and who is the one who is responsible in general.

I was introduced also with a new french term, Mise-en-scene: putting into the scene, staging an event for the camera
controlling elements in the frame.This mise-en-scene should not be evaluated based on realism, rather on its functionality—how the director uses it to create style.

Lastly, Direk then shared to us the four key areas when creating design

• Location and set design: with interior or exterior locations
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• Character design: casting
  types of acting; stage acting, cinematic acting, typecasting, casting, voice acting.ㅤ
  This in this state, the director may also choose to blend or blend costume & make-up with the setting
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• Lighting design:
  realistic, modernist, post-modernist
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• Framing + composition:

Actually, there were a lot of things Direk discussed to us most 500 participants, but the aforementioned things were the few things that I wrote in my notebooks.

By the end of the series of questions and clarifications, we were allowed to go in front. We were not only able to greet the production team alongside with Direk but also got the chance to take pictures together, and had the moment to talk briefly with him. HE WAS TALKATIVE, we felt like a group of VIP teenagers for having a casual talk to an award winning director.
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(I am that cute lady whose boots are black, wearing a black dress and a beige jacket.)

The most exciting part was:

receiving Direk's blessings, congratulatory message, and appreciation for us youths who are compassionate and determined that aspire to be filmmakers. He said to keep up our creativity. I burned through that phrase, it ignited the courage and passion within me.

We were given free tickets to watch the premier in the Theatres, and were invited as a VIP for the upcoming red carpet premiere night together with local and national artists, filmmakers, producers, photographers, and other public officials.

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