More trailers of Manila Kingpin-The Asiong Salonga Story surfaced these days…the film which took so many days, and so many overnights to finish…a film that took us longer time than usual, to make and to get paid. Ha!Ha! Ah! only a few knew the difficulties Tikoy had to go through from the writing stage, up to time he shot the last sequence [kadamay kasi kami]. And yet, his real “baby” sadly remains, shall we say, in an incubator. We have worked on so many films, but this film gave us entirely new experiences we never thought we’d encounter. Anyway, since they are on You-tube, I can now embed them right here. To edit the film, Yuka and I viewed over 200 cards — because majority of the sequences were shot using two cameras. I needed two long, yellow pads to catalogue the shots and I had to devise a way to help me in my work. Unlike when celluloid are used, or when cost and use of film materials are limited, digital filmmaking makes possible the shoot at times, of more than necessary materials. However, it had been a challenging work. Any new film is a challenge anyway. For short, I have always called the project “Kingpin Asiong”. I met some of the Asiong boys, Tikoy calls them at the CineManila opening night last Friday: Yul Servo, Ketchup Eusebio, and Ping Medina. Met Rey Ventura, fim’s script writer and La Paloma lyricist; Carlo Mendoza, cinematographer, and also met Gov. E.R. Estregan who came with John Regala. Had photo sessions with all of them–Sunshine was there, Xyrel, Yuka who came late because of traffic straight from the printer with the poster-brochure, and of course Tikoy who looked really so tired. After Asiong shoot, he had to busy himself with Cine Manila needs. Unfortunately, am so tied up with my Rizal project because of the deadline which I have to meet that I couldn’t join them as I used to.
Anyway, next week, I hope to come up with my own trailer for my project A mi Patria – my anthology or omnibus film on Rizal’s poetry. There are five of them threaded by one theme: Rizal’s nationalism from the time he was a teenager up to the time of his death. Actually this project, embarked earlier than Asiong…
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