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That man talking to Sir Raz is Josef de Guzman. He suffers from psoriasis for how many years now. He experienced hardships and downfalls, but above all, he still has hope and determination, not just for himself, but for his fellow psoriasis warriors.

MMK featured his story.

Day 1 of the shoot came, and for me, this is so far the best shooting day in the set. It’s because my friends from 144 and 128 were also there. We learned new stuff and shared new insights about production together.

The first thing that amazed us was the production design. The story was set in the 60s or 70s. And the PD effectively depicted the oldie feels.

We were also able to observe how Sir Raz directs in the OB (Outside Broadcast) van. From what I understood, it is where the signals from the camera and microphone come into for processing and recording. Inside the OB van, there is a monitor divided into four screens, and a video switcher, just like what we have in the TV studio in the college. And like how it’s done in live productions in the college, the technical director or TD mans the switcher and is responsible for switching video sources, and performing transitions, which, in the case of MMK, are just usually cuts. And since MMK is a pre-recorded material, using the video switcher in the OB van seems like the material is already being edited while it is being shot. The cuts made in the OB van will be used by the editor as a guide. And usually, the cuts done are being utilized; they just needed to be cleaned and refined.

And also, like how it’s done in the CMC TV studio for the live productions, Sir Raz gives cues to the AD via the headphones/feed in the comp on what the actors should do, and other relevant actions to be done in the set. This is while Sir Raz cues the TD on when to cut which video source in the OB van. I seldom see him actually operate the production equipment, probably to allow him to coordinate the production and make rapid decisions without worrying about how to mechanically execute the effect or camera move being called for by the script.

The best part of the day was when my friends were told that they were going to a part of the production. They became talents for the episode. They were really excited and extremely happy.

Apart from that, I was also observing how the AD trainees Russel, Abi and Mj block the talents. I was listening to Sir Froy when he gave them the basic principles of blocking. What I distinctly remember is that, the frame should never be empty. When a talent, whose role is a passerby, already is out of the frame, another one or two talents should walk now into the frame, replacing the first talent. This is while the main actors are having their dialogues and actions.

Also, though I already mentioned this part in my previous blog, I cannot help it but be amazed by the day effect. I will forever find it awesome how lights can make it appear that a scene happened during the day, even though in reality, it was shot during night.

I wasn’t able to make it to Day 2 of the shoot because of PCRC duties, but made sure I would make it to Day 3. That day for me has the most number of locations, which I think made the shoot much longer. From what I have observed, in comparison to the “Pantalan” episode, the actors in “Salamin” were much easier to direct and much better in acting. Most of the scenes are just one take, which would make one think that the shoot would not take too long. But this episode required a lot of locations, and a lot of “baklas”, (not to mention the application of prosthetics also took a lot of time). Those factors took the shoot as long as that of the “Pantalan” episode.

I remember asking Abi, “Bakit kailangang tanggal-tanggalin yung prosthetics kung pwede namang i-shoot yung scenes na nagre-require nun nang magkakasunod?” when the crew had to do a “backpack”, thus calling for the prosthetics to be removed. After that the crew had to go back to its former location/house, and have the prosthetics applied again. During that time, I thought it was hassle to apply, remove and re-apply the prosthetics.

But Abi answered that in shooting, there is a hierarchy of considerations that you should take into account. The top in the hierarchy is the location. Next to it is if is exterior or interior. Third is if it a day effect. Fourth is the availability of the actors. Last is the special requirements, which in this case, is the prosthetics. It can be easily remembered through the acronym LEDAS. Location, Exterior/Interior, Day Effect, Actors, Special Requirements.

Anyway, the first location is in a school. The Central Colleges of the Philippines was used as the loc for his high school and college life. And again, the production design effectively depicted the setting. The costumes by the actors and the talents, plus the car made it seem like it was really shot in the 60s or 70s.

Another location was the Camelot Hotel. I just used to pass by this hotel, and it was my first time to actually see its interiors. The hotel is consistent, remaining true to its theme which is about King Arthur’s Camelot. Despite the consistency of the interiors, the location was still utilized for different sequences and their respective setting.

How and why? Again, it’s through the production design. The art department provided materials that could be possibly used to decorate the location for it to fit to the setting asked for by the script.

The wallpaper was used to divide an area, which was the bar, into two areas for the team to be able to utilize it for two different sequences.

The stage was used for the last sequence, when Josef was talking to his fellow psoriasis patients as the president of the Psoriasis Philippines. The logo of PsorPhil was just attached there; beneath it was the logo of the Camelot Hotel.

They were also able to make the last location appear like a travel agency by attaching these to the walls:

I was also able to meet new people. I learned that “units” are rotational, and in every unit, there is a different set of PAs, make up artist, wardrobe, etc.

Overall, my immersion in the production process for this specific episode gave me a whole lot new insights that I have never encountered before.

My Maalala Mo Kaya experience was with Class Card, which aired on March 21. It’s such a common thing, I think, to just be amazed at how television shows are being shot. There are literally a hundred things one learns from just getting a feel of “real world television.”

When we got to the venue, I immediately felt the need to check the set up out. The usual stuff were there: Craft service, “Artista tents”, Production vans with the network’s logo written across them, enormous lights, scaffolds, generator, and about 3 kilometers of cable (or maybe more).  This was as legit as you could get.

I met the EP, AD and PAs over breakfast and the LD during set up. Everybody was clearly in kayod mode. We met up at around 7am and after breakfast, we were moving from sequence to sequence without incident.

Going in, I had these preconceived notions that PAs served as utusans who fetched actors’ water bottles and ran around with masking tapes for bracelets. It wasn’t the case on the MMK set. If anything, PAs commanded as much respect as the artistas, with taga-payongs and taga-dala ng monoblocs to boot.

Granted PA work isn’t at all a breeze and one aspect of the job, having to herd a somewhat large group of talents from location to location did prove to be a challenge so being able to command attention is important. I learned this from the veteran PAs working for MMK. Crowd control is another thing to think about, especially when shooting in public spaces.

La Concordia College in Paco, Manila

One location for Class Card was the La Concordia campus in Paco, Manila. Because the actors were what you could call tween stars, their target audience consisted of elementary to high school students. Because of this, fans would swarm the actors between takes and even try to sneak a peek inside the production vans. An easy crowd to deal with for sure, but something that any production has to keep in mind.

Lights being set up for one of the sequences

In any production, it is important to be able to draw emotion from the actors. This is crucial especially on a program like MMK, which is very heavy on drama. I think the most important thing I learned from the set was how important it was to understand the actors’ processes. From what I’ve observed on MMK and other productions, it seems that every actor draws from different places.

I can never really grasp how much talent or hardwork goes into being able to really get into who a character is. What I can understand, though, is the need for others to just step back and let an artist go through what he/she needs to go through in order to portray a character well.

For some, it comes easily. I’ve heard stories of actors being able to cry on command and being able to command which eye sheds a tear. For some, it comes with feeding off the energy of others and for others, it takes much more than that.

Through these observations, I’ve come to appreciate the process of creating even more. Whether it is performing, directing or simply assisting in whatever is needed, the process of coming together to create seems to me like such a great accomplishment. No matter how long the hours, no matter how exhausted, this experience has helped me see how incredible it is when people work hard towards a common goal.

I have always been reluctant when holding a camera, which is kind of ironic for a Broadcasting production student.

I was never eager to take a photo, never really excited to experiment with lighting. I was that rare breed of a production student, the ones who chose management over videography and took anthropology electives instead of editing. Although I absolutely love production work, the creative aspect honestly scared me to death.

I have ideas, sure. But I have never actually gotten the courage to really go out and create something.

It is, I guess, a symptom of my fear of a blank piece of paper. I didn’t want to fail, and so up until last semester, I set myself up not to.

But then I figured, if I kept on avoiding failure and feedback, then where am I going to get honest and constructive criticism? When I finally apply for work and I don’t get the job because I lack training?

So, reluctantly, I enrolled in a Documentary class under Sir Raz de la Torre last semester. I have wanted to take the class since freshman year but I was just really, extremely stupidly afraid. Prior to that, I had only taken the mandatory basic TV class and an editing class—nothing yet that tested my skills (or lack thereof) with the camera. And so on that first day in the room, I had felt like I was feeding myself to the sharks. I felt unequipped, but I went to class anyway.

It was a different flow from any of my other classes. We followed a series of worksheets, challenging us in terms of how we would be able to tell a story. I remember one of my favorite assignments was being asked to look for any random person and get them to talk about the things inside their bags. We’d driven to Fine Arts because we wanted to get someone with an interesting set of things and sure enough, we found this pretty freshman working on a guitar crate. Inside her bag was a can of paint, some sandpaper, a bunch of different pens, and some random doodles. We went about it pretty straightforwardly asking her to explain each item to us and by the end of it we were so satisfied that we got an interesting subject to shoot.

We later learned, during our discussions, that having an interesting subject wasn’t enough. The exercise wasn’t about finding the most interesting looking person, but finding the most interesting stories that person had to tell.

After that, I knew I was in for a ride.

I learned a lot of things in Documentary class, most of which I felt I could apply to life in general.

Documentary class taught me to always dig deeper. This you could achieve by earning people’s trust and asking the right questions. It taught me how to deal with people. It taught me that structure was important and that being driven by a purpose makes things better.

It taught me that nothing was boring. That if you could just scratch the surface, everything’s bound to get interesting.

And that’s what happened with the way I started to view production work. It wasn’t about creating the most brilliant documentary ever (although it wouldn’t hurt), but about being able to effectively and truthfully tell your subject’s story. Everything else would just follow suit.

Editing our documentary. Figuring out how to tell the story was a huge challenge.

It was just the right pace and the right content for that class. There we learned the value of stories and how extremely challenging it is to tell the truth (I swear it absolutely is). Finding a trusting subject and asking the right questions is just as challenging as shooting and crafting a structure for the story at the end of the day.

It was, however, a lack of oversight on my part that I took 132: Documentary before 144: Videography. While 132: Documentary taught us the importance of effectively telling a story, 144: Videography emphasized the significance of technique. Though there wasn’t anything on the curriculum that required you to take 144 before 132, I figure it would be a better approach to taking up production electives. While I am proud of what we’ve accomplished in our final documentary, I concede that had we been equipped with better technique, we would have been able to tell our subject’s story better.

Documentary class encouraged me to make mistakes. It challenged me to at least try and be better. And so when the second semester rolled in, I signed up for Videography class under Sir Raz without even blinking. It was another exciting semester, I was sure of it. With almost twice the amount of students in class from 132, I was beyond nervous. I was in class with people who were two batches younger than me and I felt they were all so fearless.

Videography class would focus on technique, sir said. While content was still important, technique was the main concentration of the course. Technique—that was my weakness.

To be fair, it wasn’t a breeze for anyone in class. In our mandatory TV production class, we were using these huge film cameras in the studio. They would be in these enormous dollies, planted in strategic areas across the room. Studio lights were on the ceiling and so we didn’t deal with any of that either, not really. The only time we had the chance to shoot outside (and manipulate framing and lighting on our own) was during our final productions and that was hardly enough training.

Lighting in class? nakaka-first world! (Photo from my own instagram)

Experimenting with our own cameras and adjusting every little bit in order to get that perfect shot, it was exciting. Frustrating, too, at times but that was to be expected. We got into the science of it, optics and physics and whatnot. Aperture adjustment was a challenge and lighting was an absolute pain but we survived. I won’t go into the details of it; you’d have to take the class yourself! ☺

A production still from one of our worksheet assignments 🙂

For our final production, we had the opportunity of producing something based on a published piece. After the screening, I think we all came out of the class feeling pretty good about ourselves. Workshop in a classroom setting really is the best! I got the most constructive and encouraging feedback from sir and from my peers. I don’t know about the others but, coming from it, I just felt really inspired to go out and shoot something even just for the heck of it! Of course, lighting would still be a pain and framing would still remain a challenge but it isn’t as scary for me as it was before. And I think that is what is most important about this class—at least to me.

Last day of class! Photo from Sir Raz’s instagram.

Taking these two classes taught me not to be afraid to fail miserably. To be fair, I don’t think I did, but still. Even if I had failed, it would be because I at least tried to create something. Suddenly, I find myself embracing challenges and just, really, appreciating what people have to say about my work and me.

The past two semesters, taking up documentary and videography, were two of the most challenging semesters of my college life. It wasn’t because class was difficult (although at times they were) but because it pushed me to really strive and do well. It’s an impossible task trying to compare the two classes: one was about telling a story, the other was about telling it beautifully.

Beautiful and effective visual storytelling, that’s what those two classes taught me. As a student, I’ve still got a long way to go but I at least found the confidence to really try and challenge myself. At the end of the day, I think that’s what I would remember.