Tag Archives: benjamin padero

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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art & design, filmmaking, movies, set design

ABOVE THE CLOUDS Production Diary #2

the next installment to the behind the scenes videos for ABOVE THE CLOUDS was released a few days ago. here it is:


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the 1st video is posted here.

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art & design, filmmaking, movies, musings

ABOVE THE CLOUDS Production Diary #1

here’s a behind the scenes video produced to promote the film we are currently working on. we’ve already done about 80% of the movie and we’re down to the last 8 days of shoot by may 2013. here’s the first video released on the making of ABOVE THE CLOUDS.

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musings, travel

wherein we temple run the temples

we ran through the temples at siem reap in cambodia. here’s proof

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the first day of touring the temples in siem reap cambodia was spent on exploring angkor wat, perhaps the most famous of the temples in the area, this despite the bigger temple is angkor thom. buying our tickets the day before the tour allowed us to visit the site for free that afternoon and catch the sun set.

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im glad we took this trip. it’s the first time my mother’s been out of the country for a very long time and one where we family were almost complete.

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we came back early the next day to catch the sun rise over the temple. a lot of people came while it was dark.

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ive blogged about what the trip to siem reap meant to me here.

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almost game over?

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art & design, filmmaking, movies, set design

shooting just below the clouds

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it’s day 9 for our shoot of pepe diokno’s above the clouds with protegé’s ruru madrid and philippine rock legend pepe smith. we started with about 5 days of shoot in baguio before moving to sagada, also in the mountain province. altitude in baguio is about 1600 meters and attitude is ubber cool. temperature during the day is about 22 deg celsius and evenings drop to 14 although it felt more like 10 degrees.

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One thing i love about pd work with locations is that we get to go ahead of the team and sometimes make stops when we like, like taking a photo at the famous Lion head along the highway. With carlo and me is ramon recana, art director.

One of our main sets in baguio was pepe smith’s character’s house. It had to look rundown and textured and his emotions are boxed up in storage for a later reveal. It was challenging not to go overboard with the clutter and it was fun shooting in that location in camp allen, not to mention it wasnt as cold as shooting the exterior scenes at night.

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Photos from home used as a prop. At the upper left corner is a photo of my sister, tina, when she was about 3 years old.

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Me standing in so i could have this shot

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Director Pepe Diokno takes a break on our set

first time for us to work with Pepe Diokno, who directed his first film Enkwentro that got him the Lion of the future award in 2009 at the venice film festival. This would only be his second film and we’re thrilled to be a part of it. Producer bianca balbuena was the one who brought us into the project along with the motley crew from jerrold tarog’s other films: ben tolentino (script con), nicholas varela (sound recordist), cris aquino (ad), and on-set mascot oniel parker (pm). First time to also work with dop carlo mendoza, tonee acejo (lp), mark locsin (sound recordist and engineer), and a slew of others.

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This man is a revelation. Pepe Smith on his guitar between takes.

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Me doing a pepe smith while playing the chords to a nirvana song (the only two guitar chords i know how to play)

currently we are now in sagada prior to climbing mt pulag. really enjoying the shoot. I thought id freeze to death in the mountains but i slowly adjusted to the weather and im enjoying the company of friends. It’s true you’ll never have to work a day in your life if you enjoy what you’re doing, like art directing the forest and designing for a film about a boy orphaned and finding where his home now lies above the clouds.

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art & design, filmmaking, movies, musings

i would like to thank the academy…

the oscars show is fast approaching. and on the eve that we arrived in cambodia, i learned that my friend, jerrold tarog, was nominated for his musical score and editing work in chito rono’s the healing. as i was about to congratulate him, i decided to see who was nominated for best production design this year. i expected el presidente and thy womb in the category but i was pleasantly surprised to find my name in the list.

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id like to thank the academy for this. it’s such an honor to be nominated amongst this awesome pool of talents in both indie and mainstream movie categories for production design (as to why there should be a divide in categories, i guess there’s just more love to share –such an optimistic remark).

practice lang sa thank you speech ko sa oscars. chos! hahaha 😉

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cheers to films and friends nominated and recognized: the guys behind tiktik: the aswang chronicles– direk erik matti, co-nominee peter collias, producers dondon monteverde and dingdong dantes, artdep adrian espanola and dunn ledesma, kitch napigkit and cherry fortes, buboy crauz and his team. dop dix buhay, janice de belen; to thy womb with direk brillante mendoza, larry, tanya, tito odie flores, ms nora, sir katz; alagwa with bianca balbuena, bwakaw with ferdie lapuz and tonee acejo, adolf alix jr and ben tolentino in mater dolorosa, my friend coco martin for sta nina (chos!), slumber party with rk bagatsing, harley alcasid, carlo mendoza for bwakaw and el presidente, shayne sarte for a mother’s story. and jerrold tarog of course 😉 congrats sa lahat and thank you pmpc

full list of nominees at starmometer.com

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sketch

the sequel

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we shot a sequel to a rather successful ad by pldt on location in laguna around july this year. it was a pretty, american style subdivision showroom with shingles, gables and was painted a quaint “Far-Away blue” color. it had a porch swing and an attic. i had to change most of the furniture as it was too “shabby-chic” for the tvc.

i did this sketch a little after breakfast and only got to coloring it yesterday. i do remember direk henry was wearing an orange jacket that morning although now im not exactly sure if that were so.

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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, costume design, musings, set design

expert lagundi

this is a super delayed blog post, especially since the tvc has almost stopped airing.

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worked with direk lyle sacris and cinematographer j.a. tadena on this tvc for ritemed lagundi (production house abracadabra, agency mccann worldwide). the requirement was to setup for 4 different period vignettes for a 1-day shoot. 2 of the vignettes were aided with CG backgrounds but i still had to setup a forest floor for my china set and some elements for the UP manila part. the thailand and europe vignettes were full studio dressups, the latter being the most challenging in terms of proppings.

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sketched this forest scene (above) to give clients an idea of what i would be setting up (below).

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here, our chinese actor (below) is putting a lagundi plant into one of tita tem’s old baskets i pulled out from our living room.

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

gawin mong light

shot the new emperador light tv ad with erik matti as director and featuring celebrity endorser ryan agoncillo and singer johnoy danao.  gawin mong light, goes this lovely ditty penned by johnoy. previously, my less than 6 degrees of separation from him is due to jerrold tarog’s high school fare, senior year, where johnoy’s music is featured.  thrilled to have worked with him, albeit now up close.

the set design was relatively easy to accomplish as i had my showroom favorites i wanted to feature in this tvc.  my pegs and design werent far off from what i eventually got for the shoot  🙂  here’s the location (below) in tagaytay.  apparently, manny pacquiao shot scenes for his wapakman movie here previously.

presented these pegs (below) to agency.  we were trying to make an eclectic mix of modern and pinoy furniture, like a butaka, but i later thought it didnt gel with the rest. what we retained though was the round synthetic abaca daybed, which i decided to put in another area of the room.

 

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