while shooting a film in padang, bicol, a certain news team followed us around, saying that they were doing a feature on the independent film movement, and could they take footages of our shoot please and while they were at it, maybe interview us as well?
i had decided that time that that was kinda cool. i mean isn't this fun, that someone finally decided to do a documentary on indie films? and we get to have free publicity for our new film too. i was actually excited, i couldn't wait to tell everyone. turns out, i needn't have been.
first of all, when our director introduced us as his cast, the news team's segment producer didn't even bother to look at us. she then proceeded to interrogate one of my co-actors as if he were on trial for being a theater actor. it was incredible. she asked questions like, "so i guess you theater actors prefer to work in indie films because here, you get to be the stars?" it was more than twisting my co-actor friend's words to get the story that she wanted, she was putting words into his mouth that my friend never even hinted on. her entire demeanour was condescending, downright insulting, and just plain rude.
after a while, she turned on me. the stupid woman actually thought i was just someone's girlfriend, tagging along. what an idiot. to begin with, our location was at padang. you know, where an entire barangay was covered in lahar and there was nothing for miles around but big boulders and what was left of trees. oh and yeah, there were the roofs of the houses that used to be there, where the occasional survivor would take shelter from the wind and rain. yes, it was raining - hard - and definitely, mahangin sa labas.
i mean, what kind of an idiot would actually think i was just tagging along for fun. i suppose she thought i was the type who gets a kick out of walking on grounds under which there were countless bodies that were never recovered. and did i mention the wind and the rain and the constant threat of another lahar flood...? christ.
anyway, as soon as she realized that i was one of the actors, she promptly put me on the stand as well. unfortunately for her, i decided to play her game. the poor woman couldn't use her brand of questioning on me after i started giving her my best beauty-queen type of answers. hahaha i was sooo proud of myself...
later i found out that she had also interviewed our crew who, incidentally were local artists, painters and sculptors - our director's friends. she asked them more inane questions like, "does this indie thing you're doing pay the rent?" and "if i give you a camera now, would you be able to make a film?" i could see where she was going with this line of questioning, actually. unfortunately, all it did was insult these people who were into 'this indie thing' because they were true artists who portray the lives of their people through their art in the hope of raising awareness. it's really quite noble and very inspiring, and i find it really sad that the best thing this news team could do was take whatever they wanted from us, to sensationalize it so it would sell.
suddenly i wasn't so anxious anymore that our faces would be on tv with our interviews all edited to suit their purpose. i suddenly wasn't so scared that we'd look like idiots trying to be deep. i was really, seriously worried that the entire independent film movement would be taken lightly, that people would think that these indie filmmakers are just kids who don't know what to do with their parents' money, or that they would think that these 'new' (because most of them have been around for some time now) filmmakers are just pretending to be artists by being controversial. i mean admittedly, there are some out there who are like that, but to lump them all together in this light, the way that i think this news team is going to do when they come out with this - is simply unfair to those who take their craft very seriously.
it's incredible, really. to think that a lot of these guys have done so much already for philippine cinema and some of them are already known in other parts of the globe. yet our local news team decides to take the ugly side of things and broadcast that on national tv, defeating the purpose of reporting news clearly and unbiased as i thought journalism was supposed to do.
in the end, it's all about ratings, sadly. all these network wars have done nothing but distort the people's view of the world. noontime shows, telenovelas, sensationalized news - it's not even about what's right anymore, but what sells.
so much for bringing you the world at the flick of the remote. so much for 'balanced news, fearless views'. so much for truth.
