By AJ Siytangco
As I mentioned before in a previous article, I spent a few days towards the end of last year in Cebu with my Mom, my sister and her family. The trip was originally intended for different reasons, but when those plans changed we pushed through anyway as all the arrangements had been made. We enjoyed ourselves, despite the rain that precluded us from swimming at one of Cebu’s many fine beaches.
I left my laptop in Manila during those days in Cebu, and my hands got a much-needed rest from all the typing and mouse clicking.
Cebu is a deceptive city in the sense that at first glance you might say that it is decidedly low-tech. If you go around Lapu-Lapu or Mandaue City, you don’t see as many neon lights, electronic stores or computer shops as you do pharmacies or Korean restaurants.
And yet their hotels have flat-screen monitors and pipe their music from a central server with their selection of MP3s. They have a large techno-park and a call center inside it.
And they have
Bigfoot Entertainment.
Set-up in 2004, the studio-campus of Bigfoot Entertainment is tucked away unobtrusively on the road headed for Shangri-La Mactan. I had the pleasure of going around and seeing the facilities while I was there, and I can tell you now, there is nothing low-tech about it.
It was nearly seven in the evening when we pulled up to the large building with a big blue stylized foot in front. It was raining heavily and the winds were howling, I was wondering if they could still accommodate us given the weather.
We were greeted by a friendly fellow named Wendel, from their sales department. We toured the facilities, looking first into the sound section of the building where several suites were available for sound mixing and foley work. Foley, for those who may not know, is part of sound design where you re-create sounds needed for a television show or movie. In Star Wars, for example, there were several shots where the floor the actors walked on were made to look metallic, but were actually something else, maybe plastic or wood. Of course their footsteps sounded wrong, or there was no sound at all. It is then the foley artist’s job to recreate that "foot-stomping-on-metal" sound so the sound editors can replace the wrong "foot-on-wood" sound.
The video-editing suites were no less high-tech than the sound editing rooms. Being a predominantly Mac-based facility the software of choice for video editing was of course, Final Cut Pro.
Bigfoot also has a group of people handling visual effects and animation, running Autodesk MAYA and Shake.
Unfortunately by that time it was already half-past seven in the evening on a Saturday, so Wendel could only show us so much. The two sound stages were closed for the day, and so we could not have a look-see. I was told they were huge, and at 370 and 1,200 square meters respectively, I’d have to agree.
The production side of Bigfoot is responsible for several independent films, many of which have won awards and have attracted recognizable Hollywood faces such as Lucy Liu (Charlie’s Angels) and Shawn Ashmore (Iceman of the X-MEN).
It is also the local headquarters for Fashion TV, where the shows on that channel are edited and put together. That explains the Fashion Café, which is the first thing you notice when you walk into the Bigfoot lobby.
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