Three sound design students of Sagay National High School have brought “Tubod” The Best Sound Design of Sine Siklab 2020. Tubod is a film directed by John Kent Desemperado. He is also one of the sound designers and editors of the film. The sound design team along with John Kent includes Bea Molo, who is also the cinematographer of the film, and Vincent Apostol, who is an amazing songwriter.
The three are part of their school’s film organization, Anggulo Films, an organization that brings out the creativity, skills, and talent of their students through filmmaking. The three still have their own unique skills even if they all worked together in sound designing. It almost sounds way too impossible to imagine how they created music together during this quarantine that we call the new normal. The main goal of the team was to build a connection between the audience through sounds. They used rock as their music genre to emphasize the film’s plot twist, which is quite unusual but remarkable to hear from local short films. But their main obstacle was budgeting, casting, crew limit, and location scouting, or almost everything that is difficult to face especially during this pandemic. This is a life-changing experience for anyone to step in the first place, getting to personally learn and manage harder situations while trying to work things together all at once and at a distance? That’s tough work for a team. After the success of Anggulo Films in Sine Siklab 2020, John Kent, Bea, and Vincent did not stop what they were doing. They continued to explore more of what filmmaking can do, they were never afraid to unfold the unknown capabilities that they did not know they own. They express themselves through their original pieces instead of treating them as a hindrance in their lives.
John Kent continues to create more films for this year, gaining inspiration from the people he worked with from Anggulo Films and has a strong faith in God. On the other hand, Bea doubted her own skills until her mentor trusted her, now, her great passion pushes her to improve her skills, and she is able to tell herself that she can do things that others can’t. Last but not the least, Vincent writes music to share his perspective in meaningful words that people would feel related to. Altogether, with their excellent dedication, they have managed and created the most extraordinary sound design last Sine Siklab 2020. As they all continue to meet their goals and burn brighter in different ways, they believe that there is always a challenge to every part that we take in our lives, even if filmmaking requires a lot of face-to-face interactions, there will always be a way if you are very passionate about what you are doing. Overall, this reminds us that we shall support our artists in any way possible, most especially in this time of the pandemic.
Regin De Guzman is a media student from Eugenio Lopez Jr. Center for Media Arts Senior High School. She started to take interest in film when she entered senior high-school. She pursued it because of the influence, the thrill, and the excitement she received from her friend, her co-director, Bradley. Though the start of her journey was rough. Due to a lack of confidence, she did not take any of the opportunities to join different film contests. But then, when she was introduced to a small film-fest by her former teachers in junior high, she started to love competing and producing films because, for the first time, she was able to bring the best film award and best director award home. After that, many of her Facebook friends and family members kept on mentioning her at different film festivals and that is when she finally gained the confidence to keep on trying.
She said that she usually writes and directs films and plays but here in the Sine Siklab 2020 entry, For Cecille “A Letter for a Thousand Lifetime”, she is the production designer and the co-director of Bradley [Director & Writer of the film]. She stated that it was one of her hardest films produced and of course the most challenging one because of the pandemic, which forced them to shoot this film indoors with little to no knowledge about lights and production design. It was all through faith, hard work, dedication, and trust that they finished this film.
Regin proudly holds the Best Student Short Film trophy from the 2019 Metro Manila Film Festival.
Sine Siklab 2020 wasn’t her first short film festival. Her sheer determination on voicing out her heart and advocacies in hoping for a changed nation, she has already produced and achieved awards such as;
Best Film & Best Director in Rodriguez First Film Festival;
Best Film and Best Director in CineMandirigma 2018
Best Director in CineMandirigma 2019
Top 8 Finalist in Sine Kabataan 3 that featured in cinemas nationwide with the PPP entry entitled Open;
Top 10 Finalist in C1 Minute Original;
Best Film CineGinhawa 2019;
Best Film 2019 in Metro Manila Film Festival Shorts that featured in cinemas nationwide with the MMFF award-winning Mindanao
Top 3 Finalist in C1 Spoken Word Poetry at PETA Lingap Singing with Words Anonymous
Top 19 Finalist in Video Home Festival [current competition]
She has come so far from where she was before, receiving awards along the way, but the real award for her is the knowledge, passion, and compassion imparted to the audience. She has learned that every film has its own voice and has its own uniqueness. Her favorite reminder to herself in making a film is, your talent won’t betray you and to keep the fire burning.
Acting might be something you want to consider taking in college. Yes, there is a course from Polytechnic University called Theatre Arts where an actor, Nathaniel Molina performed as a supporting role in the short film directed by Jermaine Tulbo, Pinakanakapagpapabagabag-Damdamin. Nathaniel began his journey in performing arts from elementary to his highschool stage. He dug deeper into the acting role when he stepped into college, it was in his belief that acting was the path he wanted to take.
Nathaniel Molina smiling for the camera as he holds their Jury Prize trophy for the film, “Wa, Nan” in the Singkuwento International Film Festival 2019.
As he became more fascinated and involved in acting, he decided to start freelancing full time and do professional acting projects such as theatre productions, short films, and digital ads, until it reached to where he is now. He never felt pure comfort performing in theatre arts and it inspired him to pursue it.
During the film production of Pinakanakapagpapabagabag-damdamin, he stated that there will always be an issue in every set, nevertheless, those things will always be manageable when you enjoy what you are doing. At one point during filming, the sun hit his skin so hard that it gave him a sunburn, and when they were filming a scene at the beach, he had a wound on his foot, just to name a few. Despite all of that, he enjoyed the shoot he had with the people he worked with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZn7N661_mI
It must have been a fun shoot for the production, the amount of effort they had to put out and the lengths they had to go through for their underwater shoots was all worth it at the end. As a result, Keso Productions won several awards from the Night of Sine Siklab, while he won as the Best Supporting Role nominee from Nakakapagpabagabag-damdamin.
Nathaniel Molina will always ride on the acting role and soon, he will shine on our TV screens and shine under the lights of a theater play. Without further ado, check out and follow Nathaniel (@nathandmolina) to see what he will be planning to perform next!
Kacy Nathaniel C. Salve, a student from CIIT senior high school was behind the post-productions of Tropeo ng Kalayaan. He arranged the clips, sound design, CGI, and color grading with the help of Bradley Gonazales, a CGI artist, who modeled the CGI version of the trophy in Tropeo ng Kalayaan.
His source of inspiration is from the continuous support of his friends and family, compelling him to learn how to execute his ideas and create more concepts of his own.
Kacy is an only child, he grew up spending most of his time alone and exploring video editing software. His interest grew in video editing when he discovered Windows Live Movie Maker, creating a montage of pictures with music playing in the background. He started uploading those videos on his YouTube channel, “KacySalve”, to showcase how much he improves whenever he created videos.
He and his friends wanted to strive and do their best to win at the MMFF, Cinemalaya, Cinejuana, and Sine Siklab but lost the opportunity. Instead, Polaris Production, a production he was part of, was nominated as the best cinematography in a mini music video competition from his school.
Another would be in Cinejuana, KMBT Production, a production he was in, won 1st place and best picture in the competition. He stated that the only thing he learned in every competition, is that you always have to give 100 percent in your work, there will come a phase in filming where everything will fall apart, but don’t let that stop you and make you feel discouraged, be patient. Let that passion fuel your creativity and desire to make films.
Kacy working on a video edit.
Kacy Salve is open to do commission for motion graphics and video editing. Contact him through Facebook, Kacy Nathaniel C. Salve, and Instagram, @kacysalve. To see more of his works, he has projects on YouTube channels called Variety Filmsand Content Complicated. Watch their films for more content ideas.
“Today, I am still learning and striving to be a better artist than I was yesterday”.
“Support local artists and just keep moving forward.”
On June 2020, 24 Frames of CIIT College of Arts and Technology hosted a virtual Sine Siklab film festival, going beyond by bringing the spark out of every aspiring high school and college student filmmaker nationwide.
Director Jermaine Tulbo of “Pinakanakakapagpapabagabag-damdamin” a college student of Meridian International College. He is the mastermind behind the film; a writer, production designer, colorist, with the help of Millaine Matinong in producing and screenwriting the short film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZn7N661_mI
The film Pinakanakapagpapabagabag-damdamin was an old concept written by Jermaine. He had revised the story countless times, however, the concept of death and nature that surrounds us has remained. He wanted to show people the importance of protecting the world that we live in and how much it would help to throw away a piece of garbage into its rightful bin. He said that it took about 3 days and 2 nights to shoot the film. During those days of filming, instead of getting a good amount of sleep, he would rather feel and smell the nature around him just to imagine how he wanted his film to look like. Coming up with the script was not a hassle for him. In fact, he did not have a full script, a proper scouting location for the film, and everything was merely in bullet form. He and his team planned things right on the spot, because they believed in him, and he believed that he could just do it.
Source: Facebook
Despite out of all those things mentioned, Jermaine won as the Best Director and Best in Editing from Sine Siklab 2020, and because of his directing, his team won Best in Cinematography by Elyandre Dagil and Best in Supporting Role by Nathaniel Molina as “Miguel”.
Jermaine has nothing else to promote, however, he wants us to be aware of our surroundings for a sustainable living. He wants to share his learnings and let the youth understand and see the importance of having a connection with our surroundings. He lives by a quote “Believe in what you pray for” and hopes for a better future.
