Learning to make horses & kids fly

It has often been said to actors never to appear with either a child or an animal on the screen. Each will steal the thunder from you and you’ll never win, no matter how brilliant an actor you may be. How much more when child and animal work together as it happens on ABS-CBN’s Little Champ? And even more when the animal begins to exhibit special powers?

This afternoon series that we had been watching was beginning to affect our schedule as we found ourselves adjusting to its screening time. Indeed, that is the power of this fantaserye featuring JB Agustin Malatamban as the child Caloy and Chalk as the sickly horse.

We hunt down its director Richard Arellano whom we knew from way back as assistant director on Oka2kat, the paranormal series Nginiig and Nora Aunor’s Bituin. Over a decade has elapsed since then, with Richard now a director, a childhood dream he had nourished. For certain, he tells us now, this ambition was influenced by his years as a kid actor of 10 to 12 years in the movies of Ishmael Bernal, Al Quinn, Joel Lamangan, Argel Joseph, etc.

Richard then went full swing into perfecting his craft, doing everything that presented itself from Mano Mano: Celebrity Boxing Challenge, Kungfu Kids, Dyosa to Bud Brothers and Kristine (from the Precious Hearts Romance books series), Somewhere In My Heart, Nasaan Ka Elisa? and now Little Champ. He recalls also having done a tribute indie film Umaaraw, Umuulan for a director-friend, Luigi Santiago, who passed away in 2006 and which starred Ryan Agoncillo.

We ask him what projects are special to him and he quickly picks Nasaan Ka Elisa? (co-directed with Jerome Pobocan), a Philippine crime-drama adaptation of a popular Chilean series Donde Esta Elisa?. It starred Melissa Ricks, Albert Martinez and Agot Isidro, and direk Richard shares happily that it got a really high rating. Another favorite was Kungfu Kids, his first live-action fantasy soap (co-directed with Malou Sevilla) about seven kids with differing personalities and which talks of friendship, love for family and courage. They are trained by a village idiot, who in reality is a Kung Fu master from China, to develop abilities for them to fight the forces of evil.

Little Champ (co-directed with Mervyn Brondial), meanwhile, presented multiple problems that took a year and a half before it was aired, due to visual effects already apparent, which will be heightened as the series continues. The directorial challenge, Richard finds to be in maintaining the believability of every scene. He notes, for instance, that each of the horses is shot with handlers holding and guiding them during the shoot. In post-production, these handlers are erased and we can imagine how this could lead to re-shooting to make them perfect. We murmur quietly, not without envy, what an interesting on-the-job training direk Richard has been getting that we would love to have been exposed to.

With the multifarious genres he has dealt with, it is no wonder Richard dreams of line-producing films of various types when given the chance. “I like being versatile. I hope to direct and co-write my own stories in the future. I’d like to do an epic, comedy, horror, action,” he affirms.

For now, direk’s mornings, noons and nights belong to Chalk and Caloy; Caloy’s parents (Jhong Hilario and Precious Lara Quigaman); the kind barangay captain (Lito Lapid) who takes in Caloy; the villainous haciendero (Jake Roxas) out to redeem his dead son; with the special participation of Jolo Revilla, Bong’s son, as Gio Suarez, Caloy’s friend who dies in an accident.

 The all-important voice cast includes Maliksi Morales as Chalk, Eddie Garcia, Jeffrey Tam, Joonie Gamboa, John Regala and Rico J. Puno as Kurimaw.

Others in the cast are Renz Fernandez, Rudy and Lorna Tolentino’s youngest, Mickey Ferriols, Coleen Garcia, Alex Calleja, Paolo Serrano, Katya Santos, Ruben Gonzaga, Sofia Millares and Pen Medina.

We don’t know much about soothsaying, but our gut feel about Little Champ is that it will make JB the next big child star, bring Lito back into the movies, make Chalk even more popular than Bwakaw and bring direk Richard closer to his ultimate dream.

(E-mail your comments to [email protected].)