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!
Tag Archives: sagada
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.
bana’s cafe and resto
although the yoghurt house might be the more famous cafe in sagada, the smaller bana’s cafe would take the prize for best coffee AND best yoghurt. found along the same road where yoghurt house is located, bana’s cafe has a small entrance that leads to an interior room with the counter and an outdoor balcony dining space overlooking the mountains.
bana’s yoghurt with bananas and wild honey
i ordered their pasta with tomatoes. like in yoghurt house, they serve the pastas with grated cheddar cheese. the alamid (civet) coffee was good!
brad ordered the omelette with mushrooms and peppers. lami kaayu
carlo got the BLT 😉 winner
the nice spanish couple who ooh’d and aah’d with us with every dish coming out of the kitchen had pansit that afternoon
landian na naman tong dalawa. brad and bianca at bana’s coffee
their home chili was also good but they ran out and wouldnt sell us their last bottle. brought home some coffee though for tita tems, which she loved. and there’s another cute puppy at the entrance of bana’s coffee 😉 after all the dogs we met in sagada i forgot her name. the only name i do remember is tinkerbell, the pitbull we met in on of the shops. will post a photo 😉 all photos were taken using a samsung galaxy note 2 (set to HDR to compensate for exposures). if the other cafes become too crowded for you in sagada, try bana’s cafe, also listed in tripadvisor’s website.
shooting just below the clouds 2
the second leg of shooting above the clouds brought us to sagada, a quiet little town in the mountain province. we’ve spent about a week here shooting exterior scenes of the forest, burial sites, and caves. after having stayed for about a week in baguio, we eventually got used to 17 deg centigrade weather, thank God! i did come prepared with multiple layers of thermal wear and bubble jackets as i freeze easily even in the malls in manila. pleasantly surprised how my body adjusted to the cold weather so i can say, i may just be able to survive the temperate countries.
on set a chilly morning, ms tonee acejo had the gall to be in short shorts while we were all covered up.
pepe smith on his guitar in-between setups.
closeup of the pine trees covered with moss in sagada
sketching the location
me with pepe smith against the beautiful lake danum (danum means lake so that means it’s “lake lake”)
carlo and i hit the backwoods while a shot was taking place in another part of the forest
showing the immense cavern of sumaging cave, an ancient and protected burial site to the residents of the area. we had to build mockup coffins for the shoot so we wouldnt disturb the actual coffins on location.
the crew raises hands for a photo
shooting late in the night and deep in the cave to finish this scene with ruru madrid
the yoghurt house
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.
the room temp yoghurt with their ginger and lemongrass pandan teas make an interesting combination
the mushroom and cheese pasta 😉 awesome!
the interiors on the ground floor. you can see nanay on the lower left making yoghurt early that morning.
the interiors at the 2nd floor at night
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 😉
benjamin padero 