After over two decades, and after winning acclaim for their films not only in Manila but also in New York, London, Madrid, Brussels, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore and other cities around the world, writer-director Jun Robles Lana and producer-director Perci Intalan launched a new creative content company called The IdeaFirst Company.
The new company will create and produce everything, from movies to TV shows to digital entertainment to live events and even commercials.
The IdeaFirst Company boasts Lana and Intalan’s impressive resumés. It has also begun to gather some of the most promising young talent breaking through the entertainment industry today.
“This is an exciting time to be creative because there are many platforms available to the audience looking for entertainment content in various forms,” says Lana, the youngest Hall of Famer inducted into the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2006. He also won screenwriting awards for films like Jose Rizal, Muro Ami, and Sa Pusod ng Dagat that also won Best Screenplay at the Brussels International Film Festival. Formerly the Creative Director for drama at GMA Network, Lana moved from writing to directing and has been reaping acclaim for the Philippines almost every year for his films such as Bwakaw, which screened at film festivals in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Honolulu, London, and Vesoul, France; Barber’s Tales, which was screened in Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, Udine and won for him Best Director in Madrid, and now Shadow Behind the Moon (Anino Sa Likod g Buwan) which will have its world premiere in July in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic.
Likewise, Intalan adds, “It is definitely an advantage that both Jun (Lana) and I have experienced working in movies, TV shows, events, stage plays…you name it. Both of us even started out in advertising and marketing so that’s a huge plus also.”
A former TV executive who worked as an Executive Producer at the Walt Disney Company and was the First Vice President for Entertainment at TV5, Intalan has won awards for everything from an Asian TV Awards as a show producer, to a Palanca Award as a playwright, to a London International Advertising Awards as an editor, to a New York Film and TV Festivals award as a promo producer.
Last year, Intalan directed his first feature film, Dementia, which won Best Foreign Language Film and (for lead actress Nora Aunor) Best Actress in Foreign Language Film at the St. Tropez International Film Festival.
The IdeaFirst Company launched last year has already produced an array of projects. First was Intalan’s movie, Dementia, which was co-produced by TV5. Then, the company was hired by the Walt Disney Company Southeast Asia to produce segments of its Disney Channel 2014 on-air repackaging. In December, it went into production on Lana’s feature film Shadow Behind the Moon (Anino Sa Likod ng Buwan).
In February, the company was hired by TAPE Inc to produce the trade event for the Philippines’ longest running noontime show, Eat Bulaga. And just this year, TV5 has commissioned the company to develop content for the network and its platforms – the first projects of which are the upcoming TV shows LolaBasyang.com and #ParangNormalActivity that will air in July.
In creating all this content, Lana has also conducted a 10-week Screenwriting Workshop in which he and Intalan discovered new writers/filmmakers who are now part of the IdeaFirst team. These are Prime Cruz and Jenilee Chuaunsu who, apart from being accomplished film and TV writers are now directing and producing, respectively, a film for the QC Film Festival this year; Ivan Payawal, whose film project The Comeback was selected in this year’s Cinema One Originals; Dominic Lim, who has won a film grant from the Film Development Council of the Philippines and directed a film in the 2nd Sineng Pambansa National Film Festival; Miko Livelo, whose film Blue Bustamante was a finalist at the Cinema One Originals and Cinepilipino Film Festival; Ash Malanum, who won Best Screenplay at Lana’s Cine Panulat Screenwriting Workshop and also won Best Director at the Short Film Festival of the Asia Pacific College of Advanced Studies; and Petersen Vargas, whose short film LisyunQngGeografia was just selected for the 2015 Cinemalaya Film Festival.
To help guide this young creative team, IdeaFirst Company tapped Palanca Award-winning writer Elmer Gatchalian to be Head Writer of both LolaBasyang.com and #ParangNormalActivity. The company has also gathered some of the most experienced film and TV producers and production staff to work on its various projects.
“This is the time to broaden horizons and think out of the box, there are so many opportunities out there because of new technology and changing audience behavior,” says Intalan. To which Lana adds, “But whatever the platform is, the bottom line is you have to have a good idea that you develop into a good story or concept and execute into a good show.”