Saving Sally, director Avid Liongoren’s 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival official entry for Rocketsheep (starring Rhian Ramos, Enzo Marcos, TJ Trinidad, Bodgie Pascua, Carme Sanchez, Shamaine Centenera and Archie Adamos), got a Grade A from the Cinema Evaluation Board. This rating of overall excellence is extremely difficult to gain.
American sociologist Kathleen Shaputis labeled millennials as the “Peter Pan generation” for the perceived tendency of members to delay some rites of passage into adulthood for longer periods than most generations before them.
This label is also a reference to a trend toward members living with their parents for longer periods than previous generations. Demographers and researchers typically use the early-1980s as starting birth years of millennials and ending birth years ranging from the mid-1990s to early-2000s.
Delayed rites of passage? A span of a decade? Don’t let the period shock you, but the indie film Saving Sally was 10 years in the making and will finally be screened in cineplexes for the first time at the 2016 MMFF.
Saving Sally lead actress Rhian Ramos stars as high school senior Sally, a gadget inventor who puts about the people around her in types or categories. For instance, her parents are “monsters” and her boyfriend is “selfish.”
Rhian was 19 years old when she underwent rigorous go-sees to sub for the original choice, Anna Lacurea, who was no longer available to redo the role. Talk about coincidence! She is now a woman in full bloom, attending the Saving Sally media launch at Victorino’s restaurant as an undeniably voluptuous star with smoking hot platinum ash blonde hair. Whatta sight!
Enzo is Marty, who also sees people as monsters. The lead actor, who appears in the feature as a reed-thin lad with long hair parted in the middle, is now fleshier and opted to appear in the media launch as a skinhead. He is a comic-book artist in the narrative, whose romantic feelings for his best friend Sally is unrequited.
TJ is Nick (Rhymes with Dick, doesn’t it?), the seemingly only normal guy in the storyline, but not quite. He occasionally appears in the feature as a one-eyed monster. TJ came as himself, older and more staid than ever.
Here lies where their life and love encounter. In Marty’s fantasies, he conjures up ways of defending Sally from the big bad wolf.
Now see how their characters are fixated in childhood fears and fixations, all flopping to grow up on time! But they are unlike Peter Pan, who never wanted to grow up. They, on the other hand, try.
Tagged as a romantic sci-fi fantasy movie, Saving Sally mixes live action with 2D animation. The film’s official website describes it as a “typical teen film about love, monsters and gadgets,” a synopsis that remains relevant despite the decade-long wait.
You should have been there at the launch to enjoy the outputs of its creative team! They dressed up a function room of Victorino’s to project the ambiance of the set complete with original sketches, sampayan of time-correct clothes, actual props used for the shoot, monster hats including Nick the d*ck hats on the waiters, colorful cupcakes on the tables, gummy worms and cheesecurls as giveaways.
Starting as a passion project between Avid and writer Charlene Sawit-Esguerra, the movie began as a short story entitled Monster Town. The tandem decided to turn it into a movie because it felt like “it would make a fun movie.” Despite budget constraints, they finished filming with Enzo and Anna as the stars.
Avid is the funky, diehard creative, who ties his long hair neatly in a bun. He comes from a family of visual artists and started directing for television and TV commercials before he turned 20 (a prodigy!) It’s not a joke that he tried to sell his kidney on YouTube when crowd-funding flopped to complete the feature.
Good that Avid’s work impressed French film producer Alain de la Mata, who decided to come in and help with production. “We had to do a reshoot. We did the whole thing all over again,” Enzo revealed.
So cast and crew resumed shooting scenes in 2010 on a green screen, which was later replaced with a futuristic Manila and 2D animated monsters created by Avid and his team of artists at Rocketsheep. Rocketsheep, ah! Prepare for a slew of wordplays. John Lennon, are you a script consultant? Why all the word play, but no mind games?
“What we lacked in manpower, we made up for with love in every single frame. We spent countless hours checking and rechecking every detail,” shared Avid.
“Avid didn’t take any shortcuts and he made sure he poured his soul into it. Every frame, every background, every piece of art was painstakingly made. He truly deserves an audience,” emphasized Enzo.
“This was mind-boggling; we had already lived with the film for so long, and this meant that the finish line would once again descend into vanishing-point distance,” Charlene said. Yeahbah! to the point of evolving your own millennial-speak! Saving Sally, ready to take off?
Saving Sally convinces that it is for millennials, which has always been the niche market for horror films, romcoms and crossovers, but never been animation-friendly and multi-genre. Avid goes out of the box!
And by the way, Saving Sally is the first Philippine-made feature with an English title and in English dialogue yet. This is explained by the filmmakers as faithfully representing “a demographic among our Westernized youth that are beholden to a global outlook and contemporary inclinations, as well as creative pursuits.”
Want a reality-correct? Saving Sally is not for children only as is Rated Parental Guidance (PG) by the Movie and Television Ratings and Classification Board.
Read: Saving Sally is the first Filipino film with a global outlook, a bible tenet by the MMFF Selection Committee, perhaps a big factor in its pick. In other words, it is MMFF for Millennials! With the status of living the indie code to the max, you deserve to be best!
HARD ROCK CAFÉ CELEBRATES 21st ANNIVERSARY. Hard Rock Café (HRC) marks its 21st anniversary this December with a special line-up of some of the best Filipino live performers today. Come and see the show with family and friends and enjoy the music of Part 3 (Sundays and Fridays), Access All Areas (Mondays), Silk (Tuesdays), Kudos Love 80s (December 28), First Five (December 21), Verse 2 (Thursdays), and Music Network (Saturdays). Hard rockers can also party all night long at HRC’s New Year’s Eve countdown with Part 3 and Music Network as the two bands perform a sampling of today’s hottest chart-toppers, homegrown favorites, party anthems, and standard favorites. All shows start at 9:30 p.m.
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Saving Sally, MMFF for millennials
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