DAGSIN's Commercial Run 2019

Atom in front of Dagsin's Standees at the Rockwell Cinema Lobby

DAGSIN finally got its Commercial Cinema showings nationwide during Holyweek. Anne and I decided to show it during this particular week since the Catholic themed holiday coincided with our movie's timeline-- which starts the day before Palm Sunday and ends exactly on Easter morning. Like everything else, this decision had its merits as well as its problems. But none-the-less, we were thankful for the chance to show our first feature to as many Filipinos as was possible.

Despite our limited budget for the nationwide release, we were able to get a handful of media partners by giving them tickets in exchange for airtime. DAGSIN's trailer was aired twice a day on RJ's cable channel, while DAGSIN's two theme songs, "Harana Ni Justino" and "Corazon's Theme" were played over and over on a couple of Radio stations two weeks before the opening. Anne and I were also interviewed on "air" by each media partner.

Anne and I during one of our live interviews, taped and played with DAGSIN's theme songs.

The physical hard-drives containing the DCP files of the movie.

With the help of our post-house and partner in DAGSIN, Black Maria, we released our DCP's nationwide by renting their hard-drives and having them manage projection access to our locked files. Our local distributor, Silverline Media, took care of booking our showing dates, sending our trailer files, DCP hard-drives and our printed posters to each individual  theatre. 

Anne beside our poster in Rockwell.

Anne managed to get DAGSIN a Special Screening from Rockwell Cinemas, effectively making the movie available to the general public for exactly one week-- from Wednesday to the following Tuesday. The Special Screening, which we treated as our Commercial Premiere, was sold out a week in advance. As a special treat Ms. Lotlot De Leon, who played Mercy in DAGSIN, was present for the Q & A at the end of the screening. We ended up having dinner with a couple of our close-friends and colleagues who were there to support us.

Anne and I learned a lot from our experience in commercially releasing our movie for the very first time. All in all, we are happy with the general reception we got publicly and we are now ready for our next movie project!

Atom in the Glorietta Cinema lobby beside DAGSIN's poster.

Atom in the Greenhills Promenade Cinema lobby beside DAGSIN's poster.

Aria prominently displayed on the Rockwell Cinema lobby.

Ari displayed on the Rockwell Cinema lobby with Ben and Janine.

For my part, it was amusing to see something I have been involved with for years finally displayed in public. I was just trilled to see DAGSIN's poster lined up with other movies, particularly from Hollywood. My biggest kick was to watch my kids over and over, show up on the huge screen in the Rockwell Cinema lobby. It was an unforeseen bonus, but it certainly made all the hardships and the trials we had to endure in making and getting the movie shown well worth the effort!

-All the Photos are the exclusive property of Atom & Anne Mediaworks.

DAGSIN Opening Nationwide Today

DAGSIN is opening NATIONWIDE today, APRIL 20 (Sat.) in the Philippines.

 

 

Here is a behind the scenes interview of DAGSIN's main cast, talking about their roles in the movie.

 

 

--The video is the exclusive property of Atom & Anne Mediaworks. Any reproduction must have the explicit permission of the owner.

The Education Of A Photographer

"The Education of A Photographer" is a great read for any photographer, whether pro or amateur.  The book is a collection of articles by some (and on some) of greatest practitioners of the Art:  like Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Irving Penn, Aaron Siskind, Garry Winogrand and many others.

Compiled by Charles Traub (photographer and Chair, School of Visual Arts' MFA Photography Dept.), Adam Bell (photographer) and Steven Heller (art director and Co-chair, School of Visual Arts' MFA Designer Prog.), the book offers an eclectic collection of articles on the Art and practice of Photography -- highlighting perspectives from all the photographic disciplines as well as from the related fields of design, graphics, typography, illustration and commercial media.

Here is an excerpt from the article by Henri Cartier-Bresson:

"For each of us space begins and slants off from our own eye, and from there enlarges itself progressively toward infinity.  Space, in the present, strikes us with greater or lesser intensity and then leaves us, visually, to be closed in our memory and to modify itself there.  Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant.  We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again.  We cannot develop and print memory.  The writer has time to reflect.  He can accept and reject, accept again; before committing his thoughts to paper he is able to tie the several relevant elements together.  There is also a period when his brain "forgets," and his subconscious works on classifying his thoughts.  But for photographers, what has gone is gone forever.  From that fact stem the anxieties and strength of our profession.  We cannot do our story over again once we've got back to the hotel.  Our task is to perceive reality, almost simultaneously recording it in the sketchbook which is our camera."

--Book graphic and quote from "The Education of a Photographer," Allworth Press, 2006.

Stewart Sy's Wild World

Stewart capturing beauty underneath the waves

Stewart Sy's love affair with nature and the wild started at a very young age.  Growing up in the Philippines, he fondly recalls spending a lot of his free time pouring over the catalogued back issues of National Geographic in the Xavier School library (we were classmates), dreaming of one day visiting all those exotic places and experiencing the grandeur of the wilderness captured by the magnificent NatGeo photographers.  After graduating from college (DSLU) in 1989, Stewart migrated to Canada to follow his family.  In Vancouver, he discovered a dive shop a few blocks from their house.  He signed up for a course, and the rest is history -- he has been diving now for more than 20 years.

Stewart discovered photography pretty much the same way, by accident.  People were curious about his new diving hobby and were badgering him about it.  So he finally decided to bring a camera with him during his diving expeditions to capture some of the beautiful things he saw underwater.  This second hobby also became an obsession.  Not only did he become a diving photographer, he liked photography so much that he became a part-time freelance commercial photographer too.  Aside from this, he runs two photography related businesses:  one that offers professional digital scanning services; and the other, a dealership offering aquatic photographic equipment and accessories.

Stu and I lost contact after we graduated from High School, so I was not aware of his photography until we reconnected in Facebook last year.  Stewart would post some of his work once in a while, and I was soon impressed by the consistency of his vision and skill.  He has an unmistakable artistic 'eye.'  According to him, he drew and doodled a lot when he was younger, but he never formally studied photography or any other art form.  Amazing, is the first word  that comes to mind, whenever I think of his photographs. 

I interviewed Stewart to get a better insight into his photography, his vision and his art:

Interview: Esy Casey + "Jeepney"

Esy with "Thing With No Name" director and Co-Producer Sarah Friedland

Esy Casey is a 30 year-old Filipino-American filmmaker who has been making waves in the Indie film circle in the last 4 years.  A visual artist who also does graphics, illustration and photography, Esy loves telling stories and is genuinely interested in the lives and cultures of people from all over the world.

The daughter of a Filipina from Zambales and an Irish-American from Detroit (they met at the University of Chicago), she says that the "Jeepney" is the perfect metaphor for her (half Filipino, half American).  She was born in LA, but has lived in different cities growing up because of her parents' research work.

Esy is currently raising funds for her new film project, "Jeepney" - a feature-length documentary that chronicles the development of the Jeepney from a military relic to a "hotrod" mass transit vehicle.  The film will also contain vignettes of conversations and stories from drivers, passengers and policy makers to chart the iconic vehicle's uncertain future.

I interviewed Esy to give you a broader picture of the artist/filmmaker behind the "Jeepney" movie.

What made you become a filmmaker?

I fell into it in my mid-twenties, when my filmmaking partner Sarah asked me to shoot her film in South Africa (THING WITH NO NAME, 2008).

Did you make films when you were younger?

I've drawn since I can remember, and have been a photographer since my teens, but I'd never held a video camera before that first film.

I understand that you are also a graphic/visual artist. How has this influence your filmmaking?

Both share the same principles of composition, color theory, gesture and expression; it's all about subtle faces, emotions, visual cues that speak a thousand words, and catching them before they slip away.

Esy at work

Please discuss your photographic background.

My dad let me use his nice, heavy Nikon FE camera from the 70s since I was a teenager, and I loved understanding the mechanics of it, the winding and clicking and developing. It was a very material pleasure, something I wasn't sure would fulfill me with the moving picture. But I've always been attracted most to a sense of motion and rhythm in still photos and print design, and that was how I fell in love with cinematography. It tells a story, and can share a lifetime of someone else's experience in a matter of minutes, which is very exciting and can change your outlook on a certain area of the world, and in your own world.

What equipment do you use to shoot your films?

I use a Canon 7D, and sometimes a LitePanels Micro, but usually available light.

I read somewhere that you won an award?

I was nominated for the Wexler cinematography award for THING WITH NO NAME, and won a Book Design Gold Award with a group of fellow designers for the book SHOW ME HOW.