On The Job is an HBO Asia original film series from the Philippines. It’s now aired and starting to be watched episode by episode every week.
For those who have seen the first episode, of course, will remember the scene at the beginning of the scene, which describes the genre of this film for the next episode. Loud, brutal and to the point is given by Erik Matti with all the heart.
This time, Cinemags (represented by Nuty Laraswaty) had the opportunity to ask questions related to On The Job. Here is a summary.
Q: Can you explain the process of this film
A: This film was made for two films, but then there was a pandemic, so I thought it would be better if this film was screened sequentially, especially the ending of the first one is directly connected to the storyline of the second film. And because of this long production process, there are scenes that were originally meant to be abolished, but have been brought back up.
Then there is also the duration of up to three hours. Of course, if it is shown in theaters, this is not appropriate. There was a discussion between me and the producer about cutting and splitting this film into two parts or removing some of the scenes. But in the end the film was well received by HBO, and became a series.
Q : Which scene was the most difficult to shoot?
A : There is one big scene we want to shoot with one shot for example during the party scene when Sisoy to meet with the Major. We had to do that twice, because during the first shoot, one of the actors had to go home early and it turned out that the shooting wasn’t good.
If here, the average actor is also involved in the shooting schedule on TV, so for the big screen shooting process, it depends on the schedule of TV shooting.
And then I noticed that there were too few people in the scene, I wanted more people to appear in the picture. But this is also a problem, because all the actors are busy with their tv shoots. So for the process of shooting large scenes, many factors must be considered.
Then also the scene at the end of the story in prison, it really took almost a day to take. We took pictures in the children’s prison, which also has a school there. Well, that’s the school room that we turned into a prison room.
(continued)
