Just shoot it: Youth urged to join MMFF tilt

Francis Tolentino, chair of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Students are very much welcome to join the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), through the Student Short Film Competition, which started last year.

And to attract more young people, the MMFF has cooked up an additional tilt—the first Cine-Phone Film Festival. Organizers are challenging high school and college students to make three-minute movies using cell phone cameras.

Francis Tolentino, chair of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA, which spearheads the fest), said it was important to hear the youth’s ideas.

“They are the future of cinema,” Tolentino said.

Mobile and digital technologies will be the youth’s allies in this endeavor.

Ramon Isberto, head of public affairs of Smart, one of the tilt sponsors, related that the telecommunications giant mounted a similar contest seven years ago.

“Since then, technology has vastly improved,” Isberto noted. “Today, you can shoot high-definition videos with high-end cell phones.”

One obstacle

Technology is ripe for a contest like Cine-Phone, he said. The only obstacle he sees is sound engineering.

“You can solve this by editing on a separate computer using Final Cut or Premiere,” said filmmaker Paul Soriano, head of the Student sections.

Soriano said the youth are lucky because competitions like this allow them to hone their filmmaking talents at an early age. “How I wish there had been contests like this when I was in high school,” he said.

Students from around Metro Manila attended the recent launch of the Student sections at the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde.

Soriano said he was set to fly to Cebu and Davao to meet with students there.

“I still consider myself a student,” he said. “I learn from the veterans I interact with, and I am excited to learn from the student-filmmakers, too.”

Soriano is eyeing 20 finalists each from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The list will then be narrowed down to 10 high school and 10 college students.

The Cine-Phone section has “Road Courtesy” as theme. The Shorts tilt gives participants free rein in terms of subject matter. Maximum running time for the shorts is 20 minutes.

The six winners in the Cine-Phone section will get P25,000 each—along with camera phones, Internet broadband kits and cell phone load (from Smart), digital cameras (from Sony) and postproduction packages (from TEN 17P and Abracadabra).

The best film in the Shorts section will receive P50,000; the jury prize winner, P25,000. Also at stake are camera phones, digital cameras and postproduction packages, one-year paid internship with Viva Entertainment and a filmmaking workshop from Mowelfund.

“This will be their stepping stone to becoming full-fledged members of the film industry,” said Soriano.