Dayo: joyride to the underworld

Another breakthrough in the entertain-ment world will unfold on Christmas Day as the Philippine animation industry celebrates three decades of creative excellence: The first all-digital full-length animated feature Dayo Sa Mundo ng Elementalia (The Wanderer to Elementalia) by Cutting Edge Productions competes in the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF).

It has been eleven years since a full-length animated movie has participated in the MMFF. In 1997, Adarna by Gerry Garcia was released under FLT Productions and Guiding Light Productions, and featured the voices of singers Jolina Magdangal, Martin Nievera and Regine Velasquez.

Dayo is a heartwarming story about Bubuy (voiced by Nash Aguas), an 11-year-old boy from Antipolo, who takes on a journey to save his beloved grandparents abducted into Elementalia, a fantasy land thriving with strange flora and fauna and home to several enchanted creatures of Philippine mythology.

Bubuy then meets Anna (voiced by Katrina Legaspi), a young and energetic manananggal (a winged creature that can separate her torso from her lower body) with a special fondness for all things human except to eat them. The two live out an adventure of wild, will-testing and comical experiences all over Elementalia – from an enormous lake heaving with gravity-defying merfolk to the breathtaking crystal cave dwelled by colorful alitubi (a cross between a firefly and dragonfly) to a magnificent old tree that is home to a motherly kapre (an ogre who lives in trees and smokes cigars) and finally to a majestic mountain protected by a big pack of hungry aswangs (shape-shifting creatures)

Bubuy’s adventure begins Friday after school and ends on Sunday midnight. The journey of Dayo’s creative team isn’t as short and fast-paced as Bubuy’s. It took them six months to brainstorm and re-conceptualize the story, and write the script, from an existing story drafted by James Ladioray and Eric Cabahug.

Later, they contacted writer Artemio “Temi” Abad Jr. to help out in developing the material. After the first reading and discussion, they came up with a completely new storyline – about an unlikely friendship between a human boy and a girl manananggal.

“It is both a physical and emotional journey for Bubuy,” states Eric. “Since Bubuy is usually being bullied in school, his self-confidence is rather low. Bubuy’s attempt to rescue his grandparents from Elementalia makes up his physical journey and gives him the courage he never had in school, while the challenges that Bubuy will encounter along the way will boost his self-esteem and form part of his emotional journey.”

As the story deals with Philippine mythological characters and is targeted towards children, Temi and Eric had to present a more exciting and contemporary story by providing a different take on the underworld. Instead of the usual scary and dark place, they created a friendlier and more colorful environment for the children.

“Some of our colleagues tell us that we might create a generation of kids who think that manananggals are loveable creatures,” Temi laughingly shares. It has been said that the elemental creatures are the guardians of nature and the portals to the underworld.

“Hence, instead of portraying them as villains,” Temi asserts, “we took the inputs from our producer and director, and transformed the scary manananggal into the friendly manananggol (defender) who acts as the guardian of Elementalia, and we made Anna’s father the head of the guardians.

”However, just like the real world, the underworld should have a balance between good and evil. “We called our anti-hero Hal-lan,” Eric explains. “It’s an elemental creature that we just invented.

It’s a multi-dimensional character that is not totally evil and neither totally good. Just like in real life, one can never be too good or too bad.” Much of the research for Dayo centered on character development.

While the creative team consulted the book of Maximo Ramos entitled Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology (1994) as its main reference, a great deal of creative license was used in fleshing out the characters.

The creative team also conducted a focus group discussion (FGD) in order to get into the minds of their target audience. They sat down with several kids across various socio-economic classes whose age group is similar to that of the lead characters: ages 10-13 or grade levels 4 to 6 for the boys, and ages 12-15 or high school level for the girls.

Their primary concern during these sessions was to know what would make these kids stick it out with a manananggal, and what would make them trust or agree to go with a manananggal on a journey.

“The children’s common replies were ‘as long as the manananggal would not eat or hurt me,’” Eric discloses. “Assigning these creatures with human-like traits is our attempt to make these creatures ‘relatable,’ sympathetic, empathetic, and even inspirational to the audience,” Temi continues.

“Hence, we also considered two points of view in the story writing process – how the humans perceive these elemental creatures and what the underworld dwellers think of people.” Dayo’s research team also asked the youngsters about the physical look and color/styling of the characters that would be visually appealing versus those that they would find scary and terrifying.The results affirmed the creative direction that the team was taking.

Anna remained kikay or perky, with a sprightly demeanor that’s not bratty or obnoxious – typical of young female teens nowadays. Narsi, the reliable sidekick, remained a twenty-something cool rocker dude to cater to the young adult market. “Mang Nano, the nuno (gnome), has a grandfatherly appeal as he portrays Anna’s surrogate parent,” Temi describes. “On the other hand, Carpio, Anna’s dad, is the overly strict single parent who overcompensates for his lack of parenting skills – the dilemma of a lot of parents these days. Meanwhile, Toti, Vicky and Jo, Anna’s bodyguards and yaya (nanny), serve as comic relief as they do a bantay-salakay (become traitors) to their ward, much to the exacerbation of Anna’s dad.”

Dayo hopes to revolutionize and make a mark in the Philippine animation scene. It is set to prove that Filipinos can do a grand project that’s uniquely Filipino – from the characters to the background environment and even the injected humor.

Audiences can expect a good combination of content and form. People from the animation industry say that Dayo is long overdue. For 30 years, the Philippines has been doing outsourcing work for different countries, and yet we have only produced about five full-length animated features of original Filipino content.

There’s the very first 48-minute cell animation (using cellulose nitrate or acetate) of Nonoy Marcelo entitled Tadhana (Destiny) aired on national television in 1978.

 There’s also the Panday TV series that was first telecast in 1986. Other full-length features include Isko: Adventures in Animasia (1995), Adarna (1997), and the very recent Urduja (2008). The Animation Council of the Philippines considers Dayo as the key in transforming the local animation scene into a more promising and progressive industry.

Dayo is likewise being endorsed by the Department of Education as part of its continuous campaign in promoting Philippine history, arts and culture.

For more information about the movie, visit www.dayomovie.com.