During the Christmas Seasons here in the Philippines, Metro Manila always hold what you may call a Film Festival. Well, as you might have guessed, it's called the Metro Manila Film Festival or MMFF. This is where great and talented Moviemakers show their stuff and compete with each other to know who's the best of the best in the local movie industry. During this season also, foreign films are not allowed to be shown on the cinemas (that is until January 1 I think). What a bummer. That's one of the reasons why The Lord of the Rings Trilogy were always set for a January playdate... hehehe.
Anyway, that's not the reason why I'm upset. During these couple of months, we've been doing some CG work on one of the entries in the MMFF. It's called "Lastikman: Unang Banat". Lastikman is the Philippine version of (you guessed it...) Plastic Man. Unang Banat means First Stretch, meaning it's supposed to be a prequel... of something (There were 2 previous movies of Lastikman before it and none of them have any connection to the other. So I wish they should've removed that "unang banat" thing since, it's not a prequel of anything. Sheesh... ). Back to my story... Well, we did the CG work for the said film, and I must say that we were all impressed with ourselves when we were doing it. For the first time in Philippine Cinema History, our film is supposed to be the film with the most number of CG effects; from the OBB (Opening BillBoard), to the main sequences. Though Lastikman is the local version of Plastic Man, the director made it look like a local version of Spiderman (the movie version that is). Lastikman goes swinging about using his elongated arms. Aaaanyway, when we were doing it on the computer, it was great! It was animated, lighted and composited. It was really great. We were patting ourselves on the back.
Then Why So Upset?
Maybe you're asking, why I'm that upset. Well, earlier, I decided to watch the movie in the cinemas (Yeah, yeah... we were not invited to the movie premiere,which was a complete bummer by the way). While I was watching it, let's just say it's not what I expected it to be. When the lights went off, I was hanging to the edge of my seat. Excited on what I'm about to see. The opening sequence apperead. All is where it's supposed to be. Lastikman saves the day, doing his "Lastik" things. It was great. Then came the OBB... hmmm... it was kinda funny. When we were viewing the OBB that we made in the Studio, it was kinda different. It was alot faster in the film. Believe me, I know about the Frames Per Second Ratio and they told us it was the same as it was in the film. Somehow, when they were in the final edit, they made it go faster so it looked very awkward. But I was still impressed. Especially after hearing the kids laughing and cheering. hehehe.... ^_^ Then the actual movie starts. I get to see the CG animation that I did and I 'm happy that I did.
I'm happy of the CG work. Though the story... the story was kinda lame. First, they tried to rip off the story from the Spiderman Movie. Second, the placement of each scene was not right. What do I mean, you ask? Well, let me explain. There was this scene where the Villain is causing havoc in a rural town, then a newspaper comes flying into the screen showing not the incident but of sightings of Lastikman. Then the next scene continues where Lastikman's alterego didn't know anything about the incident and continued on with his life trying to woo the leading lady. Pretty lame, huh? Oh! Plus, in the story, they killed atleast 3 children which I think was a total No-No for a film made for Kids. It was so violent. They should've gave it a R rating. I texted my CG supervisor (who happens to be a friend of mine) and told him how disappointed I was.
Well, I shouldn't have been surprised by that because when we first jumped on board, we were given the script and read it. The first time we read it, we were like... HUH? WHAT WAS THAT? A POOR EXCUSE FOR A SPIDERMAN RIPOFF. We still took the job though, because, as they say, it was a first in Philippine Cinema History. Doing dozens and dozens of CG work all in a matter of 2 and a half months? It's a miracle that we finished it. hehehe...
This Blog is getting long. So to sum it all up. I'm upset at the story and whoever wrote it. I'm upset at the director for not having a clear vision of what he was doing and should've stayed doing Soft-porn films. And lastly, I'm upset at the VFX Supervisor (different from the CG supervisor), for not knowing his job and still proceeded with his gut instincts an ruined everything.
Bounce!
