Mark Meily: The director as teacher and student
By Pablo A. Tariman, VERA Files
The director who won top honors for “Crying Ladies,” “La Visa Loca” and “Baler,” among others, opines the basics of filmmaking can be learned but its essence cannot be totally taught.
“You can introduce the subject, you can guide the students but from there, it’s up to the beginner to explore the world of filmmaking,” director Mark Meily adds.
Meily has been both an assiduous student and teacher of filmmaking he can now share what it was like to be a student and what he now enjoys as a teacher.
“I love teaching. I got many insights teaching in the film school of Marilou Diaz Abaya and at La Salle and I tell you it is in school where you are guided. But everything else will depend on what you get outside the school. I always remind my students, ‘When you want to tell a story, don’t verbalize it. Simply visualize it,’” he says.
What the students don’t realize is that teachers learn from them as well. “You get many inputs from them when you interact in the classroom. In the same manner that I learned a lot from Direk Abaya by just listening to her in our daily conversation. Truth is you learn a lot not just in the classroom but by listening to people outside the classroom.”
For this reason, Meily can relate a lot to his latest film, “Aba, Nakakabasa Ka Na Pala” based on Bob Ong’s bestseller of the same title. It is about school life and it is about how it is to be a student inside and outside the school.
“This film is a big challenge for any director because it is based on a book which has a wide fan base,” he confides. “In this business, book readers are the most critical and if they see the film and don’t find anything closely associated with the book, you will be in big trouble. The book is made up of vignettes of a student’s life and what we did was to make the narrator the central character. So we reveal his student life from high school to college up to the time he started teaching himself. In the middle of schooling, he falls in love or merely has a crush. We had to make extra scenes outside the book to make for a smooth transition.”
The central character is Roberto played by actor Jericho Rosales who also admits the film is like a replay of his student life.
Needless to say, Meily can also relate to the film inside and out. “I was a student too and what Roberto goes through is almost a slice of what I went through myself. He is a student from the 70s to the 80s and I have to make sure I get the landmarks and the cultural figures of those decades. Those were the years they were hooked on The Menudo, they were into song hits and Jingle Magazine and familiar with the Nutribun snacks. I am just a few years older than the character so I know what his generation is all about.”
Meily has logged some 10 years in showbiz and he considers them his fruitful decade. “I think my advertising background helped a lot in my foray into filmmaking. The thing is I just don’t accept any project. I only do films that I personally want to do and I always want to start with a totally new perspective.”
He thinks a good cast is almost half of the film almost done. “Even if your production design and cinematography are not that outstanding, you get things done well with good actors. On the whole, I always look for intelligent actors and I do believe Jericho (Rosales) is one of them. In general, I usually talk to them before a shoot; I give them references to give them an idea of what I want to project in the film. I like actors who prepare ahead of time. But even if some you’d find wanting, I am still a reasonable director. I don’t believe in throwing tantrums to get what I want.”
From his experience, it only takes a few good things to make a mark as a director.
“You have to be grounded on psychology. You should have the power to observe people closely, how they smoke, how gays behave and talk, what goes on in the mind of a kidnapper. I think I got a lot from watching ‘Dead Poets Society.’ Sometimes people have the same stories to tell but your own point of view will make a lot of difference. It is the only way you come up with something totally different.”
Mark Meily’s “Aba, Nakakabasa Ka Na Pala” starring Jericho Rosales and Andi Eigenmann opens on February 19.
(VERA Files is put out by veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues. Vera is Latin for “true.”)
