If you've been following my blog you probably already know about what happened the first time we went to the riverside. I had a nightmare the night it happened. In my dream I woke up with an unbearable hunger and when I went to the kitchen the crazy person was washing the dishes and creepily smiled at me. The lights were off. But the moon beamed through the window so I could see it very clearly. And it was there! It was just standing there smiling at me. Scary shit! I also dreamed about a twisted version of the river people and you don't wanna know about it. But I'm saving that concept for a potential film.

I also mentioned how much I feel at peace when I'm in the river and I still do. Allow me to focus on that because on our second walk to the river we made something so rushed, river-rushed and yet so personal. It was an entry to a nationwide short film competition called Cinephone. Our entry was entitled "Suba" which is the Cebuano translation for "River". This is the first time that I'll share my screen writings but forgive us (me especially) if we didn't made justice on the 3 minute short or the theme for the competition which is "Peace" btw.



We didn't have much time because we decided to join two days before the deadline and we couldn't schedule a good time for shoot and we didn't have bikes. We also don't have real actors so it was kind of a struggle for everyone. Lastly, 3 minutes was just too short for what I wrote. Hahaha

Logline:

On a hot summer day a kid wanders around their neighborhood to seek peace from their home.

Story

FIRST DRAFT - We focus on a kid drawing something on the ground. We hear his parents argue in the background. It enrages him and he quickly gets his bike. We follow him bike from around the neighborhood. He passes by a gate where a girl gets out with her bike. He paddles with rage. She follows. He dumps his bike, gets on a cliff, finds rocks and throws them on the river. He screams. He holds his tears. He sees a huge rock and tries to bring it down but he couldn't. The girl arrives. He stops. She starts to ask some question. He shares a bit. The girl thought of something. They both threw something on the river. Something important to them. And they biked all the way home.

But after realizing how cliche that was! My god summer films with kids and bikes in them. So revise! revise! revise! Then I shifted from writing a story to writing the dialogue. By the way I just used a notepad in writing this. But I normally use Celtx on my other works. Anyway . . .

Dialogue
Show/hide


But the final cut was this! Actually we didn't have any other cut so this is the final output. What you see is what you get I suppose.



Yeah, it's kinda vague but I hope you get it somehow. We used my Samsung Galaxy S4 and if you noticed we used the instagram ratio to our film and we didn't get to edit the sound though. But I think that's kind of a good thing because it kinda feels raw.

Anyway, today is the last day of voting so if you like the video! Please help us get to the finals by clicking the link below:

http://mmda.gov.ph/index.php/cinephone/40-cinephone/1680-suba

To vote you must be logged on to your facebook account and just hit the Facebook like button on the website! Lastly, this is the Part 2 of my river series on this blog and there's a part 3 which involves a boat ride across the river so watch out! 

Probably the only time I'm outside the house is when I run errands for my Mom or when I come up with project proposals to my unemployed friends. The proposals are mostly film-related so yeah I'm still serious about pursuing a career in filmmaking. Anyway, for most of the time I'm either in bed ready for an ephemeral slumber or still on my bed facing the laptop or my phone and mindlessly scrolling my social media feeds. On productive days I open Photoshop and Blogger.

Image credit: Netmarble Games

Recently, I got myself to play this game called "Marvel Future Fight". It's an interesting game I downloaded after a marathon of all Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. It came to a point where I realized everyday is just like the other and I thought I needed something different in my life. My mom's been hinting that I go find work because duh? I've been a bed burrito for months. So I started thinking about the future, my future. And I never thought saving storage space to play Future Fight would be that or at least a part of it.

I'm not really the gamer type but I'm a sucker for really good graphics and that's mainly the reason why I downloaded Marvel Future Fight. Upon browsing Google Play for Marvel themed android applications I thought the Future Fight characters closely resembled the characters we've seen fight on MCU. The game is developed by Netmarble who are mostly known for their Korean android applications so I like to think it's tailor-made for Samsung devices. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S4 by the way and so far I've had no problem running the application.

Marvel Future Fight is a role-playing game where you assemble your own team with a maximum of 3 heroes and go on missions and do 3v3 Battles. There are four types of mission in the Single Player Campaign which are the Normal Missions, Elite Missions, Daily Missions and the Villain Siege. It will take time to unlock the last three so I suggest you explore the normal mission first. The Normal mission is where you get items you need to upgrade your armors by the way. The moment you unlock the other three, make it your target to play via the Elite in search for Character biometrics, Norm stones and even clearance tickets.

My team!

All the other Marvel characters on this game are unlocked except for your first three characters and you need these character biometrics to unlock and 'recruit' them. So keep on collecting biometrics as they're also used to rank up your heroes. As for the Daily Missions and Villag Siege, both are quite hard if you're level is under 30 but you can try the first few missions in search for ISO-8, EXP Chips and Villain Biometrics. ISO-8 is also an important stuff, if you followed the storyline it's an enhanced material that will increase all of your stats. It's quite expensive combining and enhancing ISO-8 but they're a big help during battles.

I'm not quite sure on this but I think the default characters are Captain America, Ironman and Black Widow. But don't worry! During the practice gameplay you can use Thor or any hero you like. What a tease! The most exciting part of this game is actually collecting the characters and going against the boss as you near the end of a mission. Once you get used to doing the missions, especially when you've already unlocked the 3-star autoplay option the game kind of wears on you. It's not boring. It still kind of gives you some adrenaline but we really could use a change of environment and more accessible characters.

So far I have 12 characters namely Captain America, Ironman, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Blade, Daredevil, War Machine, Falcon, Vision, Winter Soldier, the Hulkbuster and unfortunately M.O.D.O.K. I hate that guy!

Perhaps the most tedious part of playing this game is repeating the missions you've already accomplished just to get more materials, biometrics and above all, leveling up your newly unlocked heroes. But what the hell, if you got a hero like Spiderman, Hulk or Thor or Captain Marvel or the inhuman Black Bolt you just can't help but want to level or rank them up. I still don't know how to unlock characters from Guardians of the Galaxy on this game but it was announced that Netmarble has already released them. Maybe on a special event called "Dimension Rift"?

Anyway before this sort of Marvel Future Fight Review gets long let me just say that of all the games I've downloaded this game will hold a space in my storage. I mean despite all the repetitive and long adventures it does give some adrenaline keeps you on the edge during fight with the bosses. The strongest opponents I've had so far are Ironman, Cap, Spidey and Goblin but who knows when I'll get to Chapter 8 entitled "The Apocalpyse" where the multiverse is expected to collide. For the meantime, I'll enjoy the free time I have in playing this game because so far it's better than other android games out there and there's nothing Marvel a Marvel fan wouldn't enjoy. Well, except maybe for the first Daredevil movie and in my opinion, Ghost Rider. Let's forget those two ever happened, shall we?

Rating: 3.5/5

98/365. River rush. #vscocam #davao #rio

A photo posted by 真希 / Maki C. (@immarkable) on Apr 8, 2015 at 4:01am PDT

Everything was going okay until on our way home we ran into some trouble. It was already getting dark and we realized it might take us longer if we trace our way back home. So we took a detour and got ourselves... lost! There were a few people passing by so we were still okay by then. A few turns and we saw a jeepney at the end of a street. We thought it was the highway so we continued with our steps.

99/365. Drought. There might as well be cactuses, hawks, tumbleweeds and chameleon. Summer is extra hot lately! ☔🌞🌵 #vscocam #vscogood #vsco #vscophile #vscoph #drought #lookupdavao #sky #summer

A photo posted by 真希 / Maki C. (@immarkable) on Apr 9, 2015 at 3:55am PDT

But suddenly a figure from a distance emerged which gradually made our paces slower until we stopped. I stood frozen in there trying to reason with the kids that it's not what it looks like. "Kuya, buang na?" (Older brother, is that a crazy person?). "I don't know", I said. "Just act normal. Like you didn't see it." But I guess it was already too late for that.

The stranger noticed us. You see, we wouldn't have stopped if the person looked normal at all.The stranger had a red complexion. I don't know if the person was a he or a she because I didn't bring my glasses. And it was hard to take a closer look when your heart starts beating fast and all you could ever think about are the kids. I mean they're my responsibility! If anything bad happens I don't know what I'm gonna do. I ought to protect them. Anyway, the stranger was wearing a red tattered shirt and he was carrying a sack ala Tom Sawyer. I thought he was just one of those hippies who collects garbage. But then he stood up revealing a bottle of beer on his right and then he screamed "Dili ko buaaaaaangggg!". (I'm not crazy!!!)



"Then my heart go shalalala!"




So we ran. The crazy person ran. While running I told my sister to take a look if it's still following us and it was! I was not prepared for this at all. It doesn't think. It doesn't feel. It doesn't give up. It follows!

I've never felt so bad in a longest time and that kind of bad is gonna haunt me on my sleep. I know I can handle myself and but what about the kids? We ended up back to the riverside but this time I think we've gone to the Muslim area and we had no choice but to ask someone for another way out. I was just glad that the people there are very friendly and they seem concerned about us. Unfortunately, there was no other way so we braved our way back to the street where the crazy person was and it was still there! Damn it. The stranger was just standing in the middle of the street looking at the sky.

Looking at the sky!

Who looks at the freakin sky?

Well, everyone does apparently.

We were on a junction. On the left is the street where the buang (crazy person) was. So with extreme caution we did a power walk turn to the right! Altogether! Without looking back. But of course, I just had to. I just had to take a peek. Why? I don't know. It doesn't make sense but I guess...Huhuhu. I just had to.

And then it noticed us.

Ohhmmaaaygahd...what...the..fuck!

He saw us! He saw us! Luckily a truck passed by which served as the distraction. We used that to our advantage so we ran as fast as we could, even faster than the last time and we lost him again. And the next thing we know we were at home saying we're never going back there ever again! Or so I thought!

To be continued . . . 

I'm sorry if I can't stray away from my usual overthinking and canker induced rants on this blog. You're probably as tired as I am going on in circles. And doing it again isn't gonna help but here I am again! So, I'm going to talk about a certain population whose idea of success is infuriating.

Why? Because it is a stigma and people should talk about it than just conform to this kind of thinking everyday. These people are mostly from the marginalized sector to the traditional working class and even (lower) middle class in a third world setting. I don't have the statistics to where you may think I based that from -- this is just an empirical observation.

I don't know what it's called but this type of thinking is specious and is the "Schrodinger's Cat" on self-awareness. It's like someone binge-watched a rags-to-riches revenge-laden romantic tragedy backed by three generations of romance and that person along with his family members lived to be the characters of the said show. Every trope, every cliche, every character stereotype were latched onto them. From there, we can probably call it "Embracing the Teleserye culture".

So What's The Problem?

The problem is their idea of success. How can that be such a bad thing? Everyone wants to be successful I get that but their idea of success requires stepping on other people to get ahead and taking things along the way. These people however emerges to be well-developed and three dimensional characters but their idea of equality is ego-centric and like I've said revenge-laden. They make up for what they don't have or never had by going antagonistic on everyone.

What Should Be Done?

I can't just talk about something that most people think isn't there but needs to be addressed and not do anything about it. Talking about the problem is just one of the many ways in battling a social stigma because it raises awareness. If there's anything that can be done to diminish this way of thinking maybe, just maybe, mainstream media would have to play a big role and totally get rid of the typical teleserye formula. It just saddens me that we are living in a generation where people associate scripted drama into their daily lives.

Ugh!!!

Image credit: Abs-Cbn.com