Director and producer Paul Soriano describes what it's like to make a film during a global pandemic
Paul Soriano has dedicated his career to filmmaking. As well as being a director, the Filipino is co-founder of production house Ten17P and assists at his wife Toni Gonzaga's production house, Tincan.
As the Philippines continues one of the world’s longest lockdown, Soriano and his team have had to turn to unconventional methods to make movies. “Since the pandemic last year, Ten17P and Tincan locked down from March until around June, since that was around the time that the safety protocols for the film industry were created. It took the producers, the company and the team a good month to study these protocols to adapt to the new normal, and we are still up to this day learning,” he says.
He's since worked on four films during the pandemic. He directed and wrote Real Life Fiction and produced The ExorSIS, Arisaka and My Sassy Girl. Here, Soriano shares what he's learnt along the way.
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How do you make a movie in a pandemic?
Making a movie with or without pandemic is already extremely challenging. Now it's much more challenging, especially when every little detail and move is scrutinised by a medical safety officer on set. But we push on, we adapt and move forward. I don’t want to accept the fact that a pandemic will stop our creativity or capacity to produce—that is not an option for us.
To be honest with you, if there was a silver lining it would be that we were able to do what I always wanted to do, which was to keep the production team to a minimum; to create a great small team. When the pandemic happened, we had to be very specific in choosing our team. We needed people who could multitask.
What were the film set bubbles like?
The idea of being literally locked in these so-called bubbles is how filmmaking should be to begin with, if you ask me. Being able to check in together in order to execute the story, from the actors to the crew, then check out once its done, and only then let go of the story, is really the best way to shoot a film for me.
It’s almost like method filmmaking, if that’s what you want to call it.
Was Covid-19 testing mandatory?
The testing was mandatory and something we had to budget for. If there was anything that was frustrating it was that a lot of the budget now goes to Covid testing, protocol implementation, accommodation and so on. I mean, we don't have a huge budget to begin with and now we have to set aside quite a bit for that.
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