Carlo Ledesma gets more than a haircut

In searching for brilliant wunderkinds for Supreme, one must be prepared to look right, left, up and down the city to discover them. Little did I know that I would have to travail down deep south in Australia to meet Carlo Ledesma, one of the next big filipino filmmakers. His 5 minute quirky comedy The Haircut, about a bald man who gets a barbershop trim, won in the short film contest for Cannes. This young visual visionary says that the idea for the film came from his producer Mel Lozano. He fell in love with plot because the barbershop setting reminded him of his snipping memories with Pinoy barberos and its unmistakeable smell.

He further adds that the message of film is how two people meet for a brief moment and change each other’s lives but never to meet again. As he says this, we talk about our loyalty to Yabang Pinoy and how working in a creative field is about pushing yourself from one project to the next. I realized that this is one of those rare Haircut moments. As briefly as we chatted in Hyde Park cafe, I wanted to prolong that afternoon by sharing you what we can learn from Carlo as a filmmaker and anyone who wants to evolve into a supreme state.

Carlo’s Evolution: Jumping Off Your Comfort Cliff

Four years ago, Carlo’s quest to direct films began as he jumped off the cliff from the T.V hosting job in the sports show Gameplan. Free-falling seemed to lose its thrill and he decided that it was time to follow his motto, to always move on and evolve. So, he jumped off a bigger cliff, the comforts of Manila and moved to Sydney and study his childhood passion which was film. Carlo says that he never experienced doubt about his decision to leave the country because working on movies was total package of his obsessions. These were writing, drawing, photography and he quips even bossing people around. He discovered this talent as an older kuya who would direct his sisters and later on in high school to film a gory slasher story for his English class. Thus, he says “I never had an identity crisis. I always knew that film was for me.”

In the University of Sydney, this fervor grew as he met more movie nerds. His first ten minute film, about a locksmith who has the curiosity of a voyeur, even got the highest marks in class. Yet, I must point out that Carlo is not another Dawson Leery from Dawson’s Creek who focuses on his sappy relationships or past glory. The trajectory of his motion pictures is all about evolution. As a director, his eyes sharpen towards finding projects that help him grow in his craft at the right methodical pace. This is why he didn’t jump in feature filmmaking at the first go. For example, the Haircut was a progression towards his first direction with real film. Thus, he chose a story that was short and in one location to both cut costs and minimize technical difficulties. His next soon to be released film called the Last One is 30 minutes and about a man who has to reach home and save his girlfriend. It transcends his previous story because it is all about tension and works with capturing cars and gunshots at night. In the grand plot of things, this is all in preparation for his first feature that will be an animated horror flick.

With all these growing pains happening so fast, Carlo admits that he actually cringes at seeing his previous work because it reminds him seeing a primordial part of himself in a petri-dish that he wouldn’t dare show to anyone.

The Last Ones

As he matures into a feature length filmmaker, Carlo is currently shedding away bits and pieces of traits that belong to amateur directors. We can call this a list of Last Ones. First to soon be scratched of this list is his last short film which is aptly punned The Last One with his cinematographer Shing Fung Cheung and editor Enzo Pedeski. Next on the list is to pay everyone fairly on set because he understands how tough it is to ask for a person’s time for a day or two. After that, he hopefully can stop writing scripts as a necessity and hire his own writer. He also wishes with tears of joy to quit directing corporate videos. As much as he has gratitude for his day job at Vitacorp advertising firm, he clearly sees himself only wearing the hat of film director in the future.

With this in mind, Carlo desires to grow into a directing all sorts of stories and include camera shots that harken back to the ’70s genre in which the film just rolls. He cites to earn this type of credit like the Coen Brothers who know that they are that good. Yet, if you see his films online at his website, you already know that Carlo can be that great. He is reaching his supreme state faster than celluloid film can capture. The afternoon I spent with him and you are reading now was simply a snapshot of his evolution. It is not because he is living the Filipino dream or the Aussie dream for that matter. It is because he is living his dream and directing it where it ought to be.

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Carlo Ledesma’s films are at http://www.allorangefilms.com

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