MANILA – Writer-director Jun Robles Lana and producer-director Perci Intalan has teamed up to open The IdeaFirst Company (IdeaFirst), a new content creation and creative consultancy company.
Producing movies to TV shows to digital entertainment to live events and even commercials, IdeaFirst hit the ground running with a couple of notable projects. It started with Intalan’s movie, Dementia, which was co-produced by TV5, promptly followed by the Walt Disney Company Southeast Asia to produce segments of its Disney Channel 2014 on-air repackaging.
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This year, the company was hired by TAPE, Inc. to produce the trade event for the Philippines’ longest running noontime show, Eat, Bulaga! and was commissioned by TV5 to develop content for the network and its platforms — the first projects of which are the upcoming TV shows LolaBasyang.com and #ParangNormalActivity that will air in July.
Supporting the duo is a fresh team of writers/filmmakers that IdeaFirst tapped via a 10-week screenwriting workshop it conducted in January. IdeaFirst’s team is currently made up of seven budding creative talents:
Prime Cruz and Jenilee Chuaunsu – accomplished film and TV writers are now directing and producing, respectively, a film for the QC Film Festival this year.
Ivan Payawal – behind the film project The Comeback was selected in this year’s Cinema One Originals.
Dominic Lim – won a film grant from the Film Development Council of the Philippines and directed a film in the second Sineng Pambansa National Film Festival.
Miko Livelo – behind the film Blue Bustamante was a finalist at the Cinema One Originals and CinePilipino Film Festival.
Ash Malanum – who won Best Screenplay at Lana’s Cine Panulat Screenwriting Workshop and also won Best Director at the Short Film Festival of the Asia Pacific College of Advanced Studies
Petersen Vargas – behind short film LisyunQngGeografia was just selected for the 2015 Cinemalaya Film Festival.
The IdeaFirst Company tapped Palanca Award-winning writer Elmer Gatchalian to help guide the young creative team and be head writer of both LolaBasyang.com and #ParangNormalActivity.
“It is definitely an advantage that both Jun (Lana) and I have experienced working on movies, TV shows, events, stage plays… you name it. Both of us even started out our careers in advertising and marketing so that’s a huge plus also,” Intalan said.
Intalan is a former TV executive who worked as an executive producer at the Walt Disney Company and was the first VP for Entertainment at TV5, winning awards for everything from an Asian TV Awards as a show producer, to a Palanca Award as a playwright, to a London International Advertising Awards as an editor, to a New York Film and TV Festivals award as a promo producer.
Last year, Intalan directed his first feature film, Dementia, which won Best Foreign Language Film and (for lead actress Nora Aunor) Best Actress in Foreign Language Film at the St. Tropez International Film Festival.
“This is an exciting time to be creative because there are so many platforms available to audiences and they are looking for entertainment content in various forms,” says Lana, who was the youngest Hall of Famer inducted into the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2006. He won numerous screenwriting awards for films like Jose Rizal, Muro Ami and Sa Pusod ng Dagat, which won Best Screenplay at the Brussels International Film Festival.
Formerly the creative director for drama at GMA Network, Lana moved from writing to directing and has been reaping acclaim for the Philippines almost every year for his films such as Bwakaw, which screened at film festivals in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Honolulu, London and Vesoul, France; Barber’s Tales, which screened in Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, Udine and won for him Best Director in Madrid.
“This is the time to broaden horizons and think out of the box. There are so many opportunities out there because of new technology and changing audience behavior,” adds Intalan. To which Lana adds, “But whatever the platform is, the bottom line is you have to have a good idea that you develop into a good story or concept and execute into a good show.”
