The CSB Experience 2: Symposium with Mr. Ramon Bautista

 Hay...It's my birthday today and it's raining as always. Last night, Ely Buendia was rushed to the hospital right in the middle of the Eraserheads reunion concert in Taguig, and a lot of people are praying for his recovery.

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"It's kind of ma-echo...it's so nakaka-ilang..." 

Last Thursday (August 28), a group of MMA seniors held a symposium inside the SDA Cinema at the 12th floor of SDA. This symposium is a talk about media and its influences to the people. A day before, I saw an ad about it on the 9th floor and was surprised on who's going to be their guest speakers, "Ramon Bautista (Strangebrew, Campus 99.5, HiT FM), Mojo Jojo (of Magic 89.9), and many more...".

Me being so much a crazy guy who wanna see famous personalities (exaggerated, yes!), I decided to go there. Although it was finals week that day, I don't have any problem about the time since the event was to start at 3pm,and my last finals test ended hours earlier (I was done at 11am for the day).

I was already at the venue around quarter to 3. Inside, I was seeing some seniors who were preparing the place for the symposium. I was just minding my own business there, keeping quiet and all. But I can't stop laughing because of the funny antics induced by the other people in the venue. There were two people who pretended to be...uhm...MC's, a guy and a girl. The girl pretends to be a singer...dancer...uhm...what else? I'm trying not to be too obvious laughing my socks off.

Then I got noticed.

They asked how I learned about the symposium, I just answered that I saw their ad and I came because I wanna see Mojo and Ramon, being an avid listener to their shows. These guys also knew about the latter's show being "moved" and its station being reformatted (go figure). Wasak na wasak!

I left for a while so that I could go the restroom. I came back to the cinema and I saw some people at the door. One of them turned his head and I was surprised that it was THE Ramon Bautista on the flesh. I scurried back to my chair and wait for the event to comence.

Ramon and company were given details about the symposium, later on he left the venue, probably to invite other students to come and watch the symposium.

He came back and the symposium was a go.

We were shown with clips of two music videos that he was in (one was with Radioactive Sago Project, the other was with Mojofly/Delara, the latter being produced by R.A. Rivera of Pedicab). Both videos, he explained, are not the conventional type of music videos/songs you would expect from artists. Like how RSP makes use of a non-conventional satire for its song lyrics, and Mojofly/Delara's music video which utterly shows the cliches of a local telenovela.

He does have a point though, the Filipinos' psyche and taste is not that mature enough to appreciate what their fellow countrymen can really do other than the more-often-than-not and the tried-and-tested "marketable" products the "masa" tend to see.

Ah...The power of media...Which lead us to another guest speaker, an educational advocate from RockEd. She came in late because she had come from a similar event at the Ateneo). She gave us a rather summarized history as to why the kind of things that media wants the people to see has evolved into an "artificial" truth, at least from her point of view:

Back then during the Industrial Revolution, diamond mines were discovered at different pars of the world. Prior that era, diamonds were deemed highly valuable brought about by its scarcity that time. Influential people from the industry are worried about a possible devaluation of their very source of financial livelihood so in order to keep people interested, they marketed diamonds into something that people may relate to.

 The speaker further explained to us about a certain kind of advertisement showing a guy giving a diamond ring to a girl as a symbol of his love. It was because of this ad, she says, that gained people's attention and telling themselves "Ooh, if that's how people do it for love, i gotta buy one for my love too!". This had been the media practice ever since.

Any idea that was deemed "too unmarketable", "too out of the box", and "too not-so-appealing to the masa" is more often rejected by big players in the local broadcast industry unless that idea have been used by influential broadcast players, like Hollywood and Japan (the latter being the no. 1 film industry in the world, FYI). If it is so, it is more likely that players here may take advantage of this trend for its own benefit, not because they want to support local ideas to begin with..

Hmmm...a very interesting symposium indeed. The best part was that we were encouraged to ask question, or at least answer questions posed by the speakers themselves. The RockEd lady asked if any one of us in the audience had ever watched an indie movie. I raised my hand and answered them through the microphone. "One of the best indie films I watched was Aureus Solito's 'Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros'...".

I really like the movie. It was somehow very different to the indie movies it preceded and that it contains a theme most unconventional to most film outfits, including independent movies. Yes, it does have a gay character as its main lead but it is not bastos (or 'art' as to what films like Masahista and Lalake sa Parola are being described), and it doesn't show a very cliched image about poverty which are being overused in other films found within the genre. 

It shows of an alternative, or rather a very rare situation, where a part of society accepts the existence of gays as a part of its realm, a masculine-dominated family that accepts the fact that one of its members is not a man inside, the good found in the world of bad and vice versa.

It was nice for Ramon et. al for sharing with us all that they know about the world we are about to step into in a few years. They challenged us to do what must be done to help alleviate our fellow Filipinos through responsible media and elevate their appreciation to the Filipino talent. So once again, once more..GO PINOYs!

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Pahabol: I like the way SDA Cinema was designed. It almost looks like a small theater with 12-seater rows. A large space in front which can be used as an open field to air videos, movies, etc.Actually my first time to be there so I was very excited to see what's really in it!