Problem areas in local films

We are way past the second half of the year, but so far, I can only see two local films competing for Best Picture in next year’s awards race: Maryo J. de los Reyes’ Magnifico and Joel Lamangan’s Huling Birhen (Our only hope is for the December Metro Filmfest to have a fruitful harvest).

But what is wrong with Filipino movies that we seem to be stuck with low-quality films today?

Maybe we can look at all the cinematic aspects and find out where the problem lies.

Sound – There has been a tremendous improvement in this area over the years – especially with the arrival of companies like Roadrunner and Audio Media. Bong Revilla’s Imus Productions, in particular, has been paying attention to this technical aspect with the help of Audio Media. However, there are still film outfits that don’t give a hoot about sound. Only a few months ago, I watched a film released by a major movie company, and the sound was uneven from beginning to end.

Music – This area had never been that much of a problem in Filipino films because we really have music in our hearts. In recent years, scoring in films had not been mushy – at least compared to those Sampaguita and LVN melodramas. The only problem is that some of our musical scorers have a tendency to overscore. Yes, even a top quality film like Magnifico suffered from that.

Editing – In my opinion, this is the least problematic among the technical aspects in local films because we have very good people in this department – some of whom even become directors themselves.

Production design – Until about 30 years ago, producers never really paid attention to this area of filmmaking. Back then, this department was simply referred to as art direction. Today, production design still has to be perfected in most local films. Most of our production designers, in fact, always have difficulty every time they have to work on period films. To begin with, they have to work around budget constraints. But what I find unforgivable is the lack of research from their end.

Cinematography – Given the fact that they are paid more than screenwriters, it’s not surprising that we see a lot of fine works among our new breed of cinematographers. Of course, we still see out-of-focus shots in some of our local films today. My suspicion is that these are the works of cinematographers who got a raw deal from their producers.

Acting – There are so many good actors today, but very few roles for them. The one good thing about having so many actors being discovered today is that there are so many to choose from, the hams are immediately eliminated. And then, it also helps that they are subjected to workshops before they start in a film project. Finding acting talents is the least of the problems of the film industry today.

Story and Screenplay – Without doubt, this is the biggest and most problematic area of today’s filmmaking business. No, the screenwriters shouldn’t be blamed. While it’s true that some of them cannot cure loopholes in their scripts, the really talented ones get frustrated with all the alterations done to their works. Aside from the fact that most of them are not paid well (maybe except for Ricky Lee and Lualhati Bautista) they are not given the liberty to do the kind of stories they want to translate on the big screen. Since producers today want to stick to formula (because that is the safest at the box-office), the growth of most of our screenwriters are stunted, and that’s sad because the story and screenplay are the basic framework of films.

Direction – Although we have a new breed of reliable directors, we still have to find somebody to take the place of Bernal and Brocka. And it’s sad that our young directors are only concerned with style and not with substance, which is the first thing we should always look for in a film.