THE PHILIPPINES, JANUARY 4, 2012: “What started as just another project became one of our most memorable not to mention our proudest work for 2011.”
This is how Pedring Lopez, managing director of welovepost, would sum up their involvement in the winningest movie in the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), “Manila Kingpin: The Asiong Salonga Story”. The film swept 11 awards out of its 13 nominations. welovepost, in particular, won Best Editing through Jason Cahapay and Ryan Orduna.
“We were tasked to be the lead house for post-production, including the producers’ re-edit offline, online assembly of the movie, digital color grading, as well as visual effects,” shared Lopez. Scenema Concepts International, the film’s producer, initially approached welovepost to cut the trailers, which were directed by Rico Gutierrez, but the offer evolved to become the official post facility of “Manila Kingpin”.
The two-year-old post-production house has under its belt a slew of TV commercials, including works for Asia Brewery, Shakey’s, Mang Inasal, Cignal, Smart Communications, Nestle, Johnson and Johnson, and Splash. welovepost also worked on the music video of “Hari ng Tondo” by rapper Gloc-9, part of the original soundtrack of “Manila Kingpin”.
welovepost took charge of technical details of the film, including re-digitizing all reels for color-grading, full digital intermediate post, offline and online editing, and visual effects. The team also worked with Wildsound and Cutting Edge Post for sound and music production.
And while working on a full-length feature film is quite difficult, their main challenge was beating the clock. welovepost was tapped late in the game, with only five working weeks before the official screening date of December 25. “I think the keyword was collaboration,” said Lopez. “We had a good team that worked tirelessly to make the movie.” Cahapay and Orduna headed the editing team, which included Maia Yambao-Lopez, welovepost’s main supervising post-producer.
The subtlety of the added visual effects also amp up welovepost’s pride in working on “Manila Kingpin”. Additions such as matte paintings; clean-ups like erasing modern elements out of the scenes and sky replacements; and even tracking and replacing the knives with “3D knives”. Lopez said that they are especially proud that these additions are not obvious, which means that welovepost did a good job of incorporating these elements.
welovepost sees no signs of slowing down, as they are already working on their second full-length film, Cesar Montano’s “Hitman”, as the lead house for the whole technical post-process. Another action movie for Gov. ER Ejercito and a full-length film by Rico Gutierrez are also booked in their calendar for 2012. “ We are hopeful that this dragon year for welovepost will be a good one,” said Lopez.
And after only two years of operations and already with an award-winning film under their belt, welovepost is definitely poised for more.
