Baseco

look no further for Cidade de Jesus. This is it right here.

Direk Rica, me, Riza the LP and some photographers went to Baseco to shoot a Pinoy pride advocacy infomercial.

Pull out was 5:30 am. Went to Roadrunner office to meet Riza and a PA. Days before that was brushing up with making sequence breakdown and shotlists. Refreshing. It's been years since my last AD work. And today I doubled into continuity and production designer.

OK, although Im quite well-versed with the concept of poverty...grittiness...and the dirt and grime of MANILA...because simply the subject interests me and the concept of poverty is simply something we have to get and understand as most Filipinos live in this condition....Even our location for the first film I've been involved with was the tenements in Smokey Mountain...
BUT admit it, it was my first time to set my feet on Baseco. And OHMYLORD. Though it's reputation precedes it I was taken by surprise. My God. I can't believe it. I will not be judgmental. My eyes are opened widely.

It's hard to recount...but at the same time, it looks like I FOUND MY STORY. And looks like I will be back in Baseco come December.

There are lowly fishermen out there who still catch fish in Manila Bay which are drenched with garbage and human wastes. These fishermen still hope to get something out of the water and they still do...but with the poverty and garbage is there something they can do? Are they holding on to the promise that the bay and nature and entripy won't deprive them their fish? their livelihood? their hope and their lives?

I just had to put them into paper now.