Love is a Virus gone right.
Exactly 1.1 million views, 900+ comments and 5,000+ likes later I have much and more to be thankful for this past February.
I would like to first thank Gerry Cacanindin, Carla Laus, Anj Santos and Wish Torres over @ Oglivy – for giving me this great opportunity to work with them and direct the Real Men Valentine’s video for Dove Philippines. For those of you who are interested to watch it, you can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLJjsCwLeww
There is simply no way I could have accomplished my work on this video without the good people over at Torch Productions. I would like to especially thank Maricel Ticar, the Torch Executive Producer, for her energy, experience and intelligence. Her fine work made it easy for me to look very good.
I also would like to thank Ronnie Barbierra for his fine work as our Technical Director. Rudy Gonzales for his work as our Live Sound wizard and our production designer Mitoy Sta. Ana for doing a lot with a little when it came to concealing our cameras @ the venue.
I am so appreciative of the fine work from our veteran cameramen: Gerry Magtira, Nico Babierra, Dexter Da Silva and Nelson De Guzman. They had roughly around 230 seconds to get the footage we needed and they did a very admirable job with that extremely short window of time we had to film the stunt. I would like to especially thank Gerry Magtira on the 7D. He had the most challenging assignment for coverage and absolutely aced it with some incredibly framed shots.
The Real Men stunt could not have had a better kickstart from Jona Paculan – a member of the celebrated The Akafellas. He did a great job of launching the stunt and I am very glad he was kind enough to help us out with the Real Men video. I also would like to thank Jerome B Smooth and Tom Hines for making their beautiful LU Restaurant available to us for the filming of Real Men.
I would like to thank Geneive Mercado for her great work as our Caster and all the great gentlemen like Edric Mendoza who gamely volunteered to do something special for their wives and girlfriends. The video would not have been any kind of hit without the touching sincerity of the love they have for their partners.
This video was designed from the start with the full intent of it going viral – and that is an extremely difficult thing to do. A large part of the viral success of Real Men must be accredited to the fine work of Joseph Torrijos and Arlene Cheryl Calleja – the cyberspace warriors of Real Men.
As for myself, as a film professional – I really enjoyed having the trust of my colleagues as I went about my work and a unique chance to see hundreds of people reacting to work that I directed. The hundreds of comments from both men and women were overwhelmingly positive and stirring.
I am so very glad that the Real Men video reached out and touched peoples hearts this Valentines. It just goes to show, it is never wrong to show a little ♥ to the person you care about:
Fedde Le Grand – So Much Love (Official Video)
