Lucy Quinto: A life in broadcast

If there is anyone who can claim to have dedicated her life to the broadcast industry, it would have to be Lucy Quinto. We have known her from the heady days of the movies from the late ’70s to the ’90s, when movies started getting buried under the ground had it not been for a lively independent movement of young writer/director/producers who decided otherwise.

We challenge anyone to claim that the indies did not change the course of Philippine movies! With the indies being sent all over to festivals abroad, it did more than any government campaign could have done to banner the name Filipino all over the world.

Soon enough active producers of movies, television shows and series, smelling a market in a country that loved movies began sending over their productions. Until slowly, surreptitiously, the best of them entered our broadcast industry, no longer through cable, but through free TV. It has certainly not always been like this. For that matter, anyone interested in watching the series and cartoons from America, India, Spain, Germany, Italy and Japan would need to tune in to cable television dedicated to foreign films with English subtitles.

Today, most followers of free TV have automatically accepted the dominance of Korean teleseryes that have invaded our air lanes speaking in Tagalog, and doing it so well that we are still occasionally jolted by a kid who would ask, “Tita, what is the nationality of these people in costume? Why do they speak our language?”

After bumping into dubbing supervisor, Lucy, at the Himala Christmas party thrown at Ricky Lee’s digs, we decided to investigate deeper into how her life had changed. ABS-CBN had commissioned Ricky to write a Himala book that would detail the film’s history, together with the release of the newly-restored film by ABS-CBN archives. It was heartwarming to find old faces in the crowd still active at their craft, albeit in new forms. There was Bing Caballero; art director to production designer Raquel Villavicencio; Pen Medina, today still a much-revered actor, who came with his son Alex Medina whom he claims is more famous than him after winning Best Actor in Cinema One Originals; Chanda Romero who has returned to acting after living a colorful life; National Artist Bien Lumbera holding court to a group of vivid listeners, etc.

We got in touch with Lucy, went to her house in Violago where she had added two more floors to serve as dubbing studios called DIGI-8 Studios. Lucy told us she had always been in broadcasting, with radio as a child from age six to 1983 where she worked with Mario and Edwin O’Hara.

She says that in 1982 when Himala was made, the director himself (Ishmael Bernal) was the dubbing supervisor, his assistant director (Warlito Teodoro) was dubbing assistant, and Lucy was a dubber, plus dubbing coordinator for crowd scenes. She reminisced on the studio dubbing of Himala where Ishmael asked for 120 dubbers, gave them specific characters, distances from the microphone, crying scenes inside a hut, praying scenes in Ilocano, all happening at the same time. This was way before the digital era, says Lucy. Now, it’s so much easier. But, we have a feeling that there was more art involved in those days, than technology.  

Then, Lucy graduated to supervisor and when the movies declined in the ’90s, went to television. Today, the studios ABS-CBN, GMA 7 and TV5 have or hire their own studios. She still has some movie-dubbing assignments, the latest being Best Picture in the 2012 Metro Manila Film Festival, One More Try.

Today, Lucy’s days are filled with dubbing supervision for Korean telenovelas and cartoons, The Princess’ Man, Coffee Prince, Temptation of Wife, and the Inuyasha cartoons all for GMA. “I hardly leave the house,” Lucy says. DIGI-8 Studios is the kingdom where she reigns supreme, where dubbers report when needed, and where she has slowly acquired the latest in technological equipment.

Many dubbers came from studios in the past which have closed like Sampaguita and LVN. Some are newcomers who like to experiment like AJ Constantino, a lawyer who is proud to have landed the lead role of Kim Seung Yoo in The Princess’ Man. And best of all, Lucy tells us proudly, “I never went to school for that. I did it all by reading and observing others from childhood.”

(E-mail the author at bibsymcar@yahoo.com.)