The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Never mind that I was an Observer instead of Participant during the two-day workshop on Film Editing under the auspices of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) FEST Film Lab at the Seda Hotel in Paranaque City recently.
The most important thing was I had the first-hand experiences of mentorship by French-Mexican editor Alex Rodriguez, the editor of foremost Hollywood director Alfonso Cuaron in “Y tu mama Tambien” (2001) which starred Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdu and “Children of Men” (2006) which topbilled Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Michael Caine.
Meanwhile, Cuaron is also famous for box-office hits like “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkatan,” “Gravity,” “Roma,” among others.
I have always wanted to learn film editing and to edit footage but there were no chances.
The only editing job I did was in 1993 when I joined the Radio Philippines Network (RPN) Channel 9’s “Action 9“with Ramon Tulfo, Dong Puno, Rey Langit and Angelique Lazo when I volunteered to edit my own news coverage for entertainment news.
That was linear editing at the time but these days, the more reliable and faster editing mode is non-linear because of digital filmmaking.
I learned a lot from Alex although on armchair teaching.
I don’t mind as long as I can follow and put to practice what he taught me and my younger classmates and professionals.
I got from Alex the fast-paced, precise and cutting-edge idea of editing as he did in his latest work, “Extraction 2” which was directed by Sam Hargrave and starred Chris Hemsworth. “Extraction 2” was a hit at Netflix when it was screened during the pandemic.
The workshop was facilitated by the partnership of FDCP Education Division through the leadership of filmmaker Rica Arevalo and FEST Film Lab of Portuguese filmmaker Filipe Perriera.
In his opening remarks, Jose Javier Reyes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of FDCP said that education is a potent force in the development of the Philippine film industry.