Category Archives: interior design

art & design, interior design, set design

happy enervon users

this series of tv ads just came out featuring celebrities michael v., carmina villaroel, and anne curtis. i had the pleasure of working with gian mawo, under straight shooters, and legendary producer dante nora with the over the moon ad agency on this campaign. the brief was originally a talking head against some chroma limbo background. the director, however, wanted to situate the tv personalities in their private spaces, some sort of comfort zone where they can easily take us on a journey to their past by way of pictures on walls or on albums, etc.  their personalities are reflected in that room, complementing the “interview” and the take aways of the photos. i especially loved bitoy’s set only because im partial to interiors with bare cement walls and i wouldnt mind living in that space.

these were the set pegs and the initial designs i prepared. we had to scale down bitoy’s set, making it more intimate.

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set design for bitoy

set design for bitoy

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set design for carmina

set design for carmina

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set design for anne curtis

set design for anne curtis

i eventually reworked my sets into google sketchup nearing the construction phase. while the sets were all of the same dimensions, the sketchup output also served as a guide for my set decorator once we got to dressing up the rooms in the studio. btw, it was our first time shooting at the shooting gallery and wow, awesome studio.

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proj spread carmina with door panel

proj spread anne copy

the director and the creative team of the ad agency were generally happy with the sets so i was thrilled. it was tricky setting up bitoy’s photos as well as i had to configure the sizes of all photos prior to printing them on cintra boards. here is a screencap of the layout i made on a 10 feet x 20 feet wall. i had to eventually take out the photos that showed bitoy’s family as there were ad rules prohibiting us from doing so, i forgot what rule basta ayun.

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and here are the full ads. woot woot!

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art & design, costume design, filmmaking, interior design, movies, musings, set design, sketch

shooting heneral luna part 1

HENERAL LUNA is in the last stretch of school tours and promotions prior to the movie’s release on september 9, 2015 and artikulo uno has already released a series of behind the scenes featurettes, including a production design video featuring carlo and myself. however, let me take you further behind the scenes and the design process for one of the sets featured in the current trailer, including trying to meet requirements for our first day of shoot.

a lot of the movie’s intense scenes was staged in this convent room where president aguinaldo’s cabinet staff would meet to discuss (argue) plans for the impending conflict against the americans.

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we’ve started reading and studying the heneral luna script august of 2013.  the script called for the cabinet meeting to happen in a convent. historically, the philippine government often had to move around and meet where it would be convenient and church convents would be akin to board rooms/conference rooms in our modern life setting. by this time, our govt had been driven out of manila and aguinaldo held office in the provinces. i started researching on visual pegs with photos of convents in the 1890s and any local government meetings i could find.

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art & design, costume design, filmmaking, interior design, movies, musings, set design

ABOVE THE CLOUDS BEHIND THE SCENES: Production Design

during the shoot of pepe diokno’s 2nd full length feature, ABOVE THE CLOUDS, last year, bradley liew, a malaysian filmmaker, was tasked to create short featurettes for the film’s behind the scenes. bradley and pepe were able to release the first two featurettes that discussed the director’s vision and our 2 lead actors even before we finished shooting the whole thing. the 4th episode in this series, released just a few weeks ago, was about the production design and featured us 😉 as much as the requirements on paper seemed simple enough, it is not. whether you are designing for 2 actors on screen or 500, all film projects require careful planning and attention to detail. watch this vid and see if we actually made sense. the shoot of ABOVE THE CLOUDS took almost a year to do so my hair also went into different lengths and feels haha. cheers!

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art & design, costume design, filmmaking, interior design, movies, musings, set design

HENERAL LUNA: 8 days done. 17 to go

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we finally finished the first 8 days of shoot for HENERAL LUNA that has brought us to tanay, taal (batangas), bulacan, and all the way to ilocos (vigan and laoag). forgive me but i did plan to write a full blog article about HENERAL LUNA but the holy week has shut my mind down into rest mode. hence i wont be writing anything except this hi and hello. hi and hello! hopefully be back in full mode after this weekend. or after the end of this shoot in june. haha cheers!

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dop pong ignacio silhouetted against the 18k sun

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shooting a dining scene in the gorgeous villavicencio house

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dressing up a vigan street early in the morning for a 1-shot scene at the break of dawn.

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meta mode pointing my camera at the mobile monitor showing me pointing my camera at the mobile monitor showing me pointing…

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my props and set boys. if rocks made up a mountain, i have a big mountain to lean on to. happy people make a happy set. keep smiling, boys!

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food trip, interior design, travel

the yoghurt house

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one of the charming places we’ve gone to in sagada is the yoghurt house. famous for the quaint interiors and their home-made yoghurt, this resto is included in trip advisory’s roster of go-to places in the area. the banana strawberry jam and granola yoghurt is a winner but their pasta selections were also worth the trip. they do use ordinary cheese instead of parmesan, something that is very hard to have in the area so generally it’s forgivable. also try the beef dishes and their open-faced sandwiches.

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the room temp yoghurt with their ginger and lemongrass pandan teas make an interesting combination

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the mushroom and cheese pasta 😉 awesome!

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the interiors on the ground floor. you can see nanay on the lower left making yoghurt early that morning.

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the interiors at the 2nd floor at night

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a lot of foreign tourists were dining and drinking at yoghurt on the few times we were there. definitely one of our favorites in sagada. and the dogs there are gorgeous 😉

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art & design, costume design, filmmaking, interior design, set design

walk like an egyptian

havent blogged anything in a long time so whatevs, i always say that haha

anyway, we shot this eq diapers commercial last year following the story of cleopatra and two of her visitors, an arabian prince and a lowly hebrew woman. loved this shoot. the costumed dramas for eq diapers have become a series of some sort, starting with sonia two years ago, a mix of grecian, elizabethan and gothic influences. the next ad, solomon, i wasnt able to work on because i think i was doing a film then. the third ad in the series would be this one, shot in december last year but only aired in february of this year. posting pics from concept to final output.

SET DESIGN

drew inspiration from classical paintings of cleopatra and egypt.

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also looked into the set design of elizabeth taylor’s cleopatra, (1963) directed by joseph l. mankiewicz, production design by john de cuir (source imdb.com) and martin curtiz’s the egyptian (1954). 

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some of these pegs came from the director, mike alcazaren, and im not familiar with what television series they came from.

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original set design

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revised set design. the raised platform with pool would be too expensive to construct so i created two separate pool units instead. always wanted to do a set with water again. it’s been a long time haha

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construction plans in chamba perspective (to produce a drawn perspective without use of rulers and no actual measurements of vanishing points) with measurements for my builders (called setmen). in architecture school, we learned to work in the metric system. when i started working on film, i had to adjust when the setmen told me they worked in feet because materials in the philippines were cut in feet and inches. it actually makes sense. why measure out 2.4384 meters for a panel when you can just say 8 feet?

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art & design, filmmaking, interior design, musings, set design

production designer job description

taken in 2005 on the set of kaleldo, the 2nd feature length film dante mendoza directed and i designed for. here actress cherry pie picache is fixing her lapel while we look on. crazy times.

stumbled upon setdesign’s tweet about skillset’s article on the responsibilities of a production designer. although i took up architecture and interior design (once upon a time) and eventually got a degree in fine arts, i never really studied production design. there is no course on production design here in the Philippines, just a 3-unit subject offered under the film program, which i never took. in high school, i yearned to direct movies but never to design for film.  i counted on cesar hernando as a mentor in college but my training came from cannes winner brillante mendoza, when he was still known as dante mendoza, the production designer.   a friend of a friend recommended me to mendoza back in 2004 when i really didn’t have an idea what i would be getting into except the fact that i’d be involved in a shoot.  you may call me an accidental production designer, like most designers i know.

production design in the philippines is a tricky sort, one that hasn’t been formalized and standardized.  there are expectations but the working styles, commitment and the art department designations vary per designer. more often than not, here in the Philippines the production designer is a designer, art director, set decorator, wardrobe and props buyer in one.  when i was an apprentice for dante mendoza, i learned to juggle different requirements for various tv commercial projects all happening at the same time. our team ranged from 3-6 people per project with overlapping responsibilities. i later learned other tvc designers, like butch garcia and adelina leung, would have a different art department team for each project.  practices in production design also adjust slightly when working on film (independent and mainstream), print media, tv shows and music videos.

was offered to work as art director for an international ad recently. i immediately said yes, not only because i was excited to work with the celebrity talent but more because i would be working with an international production designer (and production staff).  the prospect of learning something new and hopefully improving my work as a designer and that of my team thrilled me.  add to this the fact that the director used to be a production designer as well raised the stakes but i was stoked and was more than eager to get the work started.

the skillset article breaks down what would be the ideal setup for the art department, something we local designers can hope to have and given the budget of most productions in the Philippines, we can only dream of. im reposting the whole article below

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art & design, interior design, musings

masinag

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i kinda like the design of the interior of this starbucks coffee shop at sm masinag. love the exposed hardiflex and the bare steel with the wood flooring used on the wall #walalang

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carlo met up with his college friends late tonight at this cafe and i decided to tag along. i like the modern take of the vintage wood paneling and the mix of industrial chairs in this shop.

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