Young filmmaker makes big leap to the MMFF

RANDOLPH Longjas (left) directs lead actor Vhong Navarro.

For young filmmaker Randolph Longjas, jumping from the indie scene to the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) is as nerve-wracking as directing his entry, the omnibus horror flick “Buy Now, Die Later.”

He admits to feeling the “pressure.”

“My writer Allan Habon and I really didn’t expect that our material would qualify for this year’s MMFF,” he remarks. “When we got the news, we didn’t know how to react! Of course, we were overwhelmed, but the more important question was: Were we ready to handle bigger responsibilities?”

Longjas, who turned 27 last month, admits to suffering from more than a few sleepless nights in the run-up to the MMFF.

“It felt surreal directing top stars and competing in the country’s biggest film festival,” he discloses.

The thriller topbills celebrities from the country’s major TV networks: Vhong Navarro, TJ Trinidad, Alex Gonzaga, Rayver Cruz, John Lapus, Lotlot de Leon and Janine Gutierrez.

“I’m just thankful that the cast and crew were supportive and helpful during the shoot,” he recalls. “Good thing that most members of the team were also young and came from the indie scene. That’s why we were all on the same page and handled challenges one day at a time.”

Among the indie vets in the crew are producer Alemberg Ang, editor Carlo Manatad, music scorer Jerrold Tarog and sound man Addiss Tabong.

Longjas, who made his feature film debut with the CineFilipino comedy, “Ang Turkey Man ay Pabo Rin” in 2013, acknowledges that he’s more at ease making people laugh than scaring them silly.

(“Turkey” was turned into a sitcom, “Kano Luvs Pinay,” aired on TV5.)

The fact that “Buy Now” is not “hard-core horror” helps the transition a bit. “It’s a mix of horror and comedy,” he points out. “It’s really challenging to shift from comedy to horror, which is a completely different world. To think, I get spooked easily!”

He confesses that he doesn’t relish “tapping into the audience’s deepest fears.” Making matters worse, he is a self-admitted night owl. “I work at night. I get frightened when I’m alone in the office lobby, parking lot, even in my own bedroom,” he quips. “I felt like a fool scaring myself at 3 a.m.”

He finds it “interesting” that Filipino moviegoers love watching horror flicks during the holiday season. “My theory is that people want to escape from the real world,” he says. “When you enter the movie house, you’re ready to get scared. But no matter how prepared you are, you still end up screaming or grabbing your companion’s arm. That’s the power of horror films: You kind of know what to expect, but you really don’t. When you leave the theater, you can go back to the Christmas revelry. If you watch horror films during Halloween, the effect isn’t the same.”

The shoot was quite tricky, he recounts. “Filming was held in the middle of the Apec (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) meet last month,” he relates. “We had to deal with traffic jams, apart from the usual delays caused by unpredictable weather.”

For his next film, Longjas will go back to the indie scene, with the family drama, “Van Damme Stallone,” an entry in the CineFilipino fest next year.