Red is the first film I’m doing that I wrote myself. But after writing it for 5 years, we brought it a professional writer, Dwight Gaston. Red was written in English and was to be shot in Ilonggo. But by the time Dwight came in, it was clear that I had wanted Echo to play Red, Mercedes Cabral to play Mai, Mylene Dizon as Bianca and JM Rodriguez to play Art. Those were cast members I was certain of. So Dwight already wrote it in Tagalog. When I approached Dwight, I gave him blanket freedom to do with it as he pleased… if he wanted to take out scenes I wrote, he could. He had total freedom.
Of-course, in fairness to Dwight, so many other rewrites were made to the 192-sequence script. Most of it was to scale it down because it was just too long, too expensive. And then we scaled down some more during the shoot. A very painful but sadly a very necessary process in indie filmmaking.
My last narrative film was in back in 2008 (Namets). I’ve worked as a Cinematographer for a number of films since then. And they were great experiences. I learned from every film I was a part of. And so I missed directing a narrative film. It is fun and exciting to create scenes born out of words written down on a piece of paper. Collaborating with people is the best part. You come in with an idea and some descriptions of how you will execute that idea and your team just makes it better and more complete. There’s always magic there and I find that to be such a trip.
