Rusty Banana Forge

Ronnie Del Carmen hasn’t been in the Philippines for 17 years. He’s been in the US working in the animation industry for that long. Ronnie was been awarded for his contribution to American cultural legacy for “Finding Nemo” wherein he was story supervisor. He also received awards for storyboarding “Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron”, “Freakazoid”, and even an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue Batman Adventures Holiday Special!

Ronnie is the gentleman in the orange shirt. Animation circles here know him now as our guy in Pixar. (Of course there are a good number of Pinoys there besides Ronnie.) And the reason why there’s a bahay kubo in the aquarium in Finding Nemo.

August 17, 2006. Ronnie gave his talk on story and the Pixar “secret” at De La Salle Greenhills. I was in invited courtesy of Artfarm Asia. The entire video on his talk will be available from Artfarm Asia’s website.

Key points I remember and derived from Ronnie’s talk:

1. Having been influenced by foreign culture in movies & tv (most especially American & Japanese) we have become part American, European, Japanese, Korean, etc. in our sensibilities. Of course the danger is that Filipino culture ends up overrun.

2. Selling the story as well as telling the story to the artists are two very similar skills. Pixar story people get training on this. I’m guessing everyone in production gets training on it.

3. Based on scientific evidence we are biologically wired to “see” our ourselves doing the things we see others do. Ronnie’s presentation discussed an experiment on monkeys to study it. The part in a monkey’s brain responsible for empathy would “light up” in both cases when a monkey would pick up an object and also when a monkey SAW the object picked up by a man. Another example showed a man carrying a meter-high stack of boxes and the bystanders on the street empathizing with that person.

4. Pixar’s intention is to have a authentic human stories told well. Story, story, story. Nothing gets done without it, no one gets excited about anything until the story work gets done. Authentic meaning it is genuine with no presumptions and human meaning it connects to people even across different cultures.

5. The story therefore is perceived to have value if the beholder can relate to it. Pixar stories came from the experiences of Pixar people. But that sounds rather simple… how does it make money?

The ensuing forum after Ronnie’s talk gave very little insight to the industry that I didn’t already know.
In the First animation conference in the Philippines, the problem was there was no single group of animation companies that the government could recognize. Now we have ACPI and the government responded. But the lack of funds, lack of drive, the long return on investment, and the many risks still keep big businesses away from investing in local film & animation projects. I got the impression that whether or not a story can be used by big business depends on marketing & distribution. Since there’s not enough Pinoy animation content to go on television, we are content with festivals and the internet.

The dilemma of what makes a Pinoy “anything” was apparent. The way the academe (c/o Benjie Marasigan’s input from the College of Saint Benilde Animation department) and the government (National Center for Culture & the Arts NCCA) would like to begin addressing it would be to produce projects on Philippine folklore and national heritage & pride. Hmmm. I have my reservations on the latter.

A friend of mine pointed out though that people’d rather watch Batman & Pokemon over an animated Jose Rizal (perhaps even Sultan Kudarat) on any day. I’m sure there’ll be kids who’d love to watch our Pre-colonial & Colonial era heroes and how the banana came to be - and such an investment into these projects will benefit the psyche of Pinoy children in the long run. Nonetheless, my opinion is that many such stories will have a large risk of alienating the global audience. You could say they can be creatively made to be “human” as defined by Ronnie, but the content alone elicits doubts that the world will see themselves in those stories.

We have to face the fact that today’s audiences want to be entertained in a level more sophisticated than those of us who used to watch Popeye. If you think about it, Popeye was an effort to encourage children to eat their vegetables. Now our government is ready to financially support animation features that encourage an appreciation of our national identity and treasures. This is a very BIG sounding theme, and BIG themes often yield a lot of cynicism and skepticism. (Case in point: God on earth, dying for our sins, raised to life.) Kids can readily appreciate the value of eating vegetables, and believe it or not there are kids witnessing for Christ. They see spinach and salvation as practical things. But National identity… that’s difficult.

National identity, how human is it? Yes, it’s part of who one is. But if the Pixar (and Studio Ghibli) success has told us anything it’s that animated features don’t have to go shoving nationalism in our faces to get the country’s culture into our head. Isn’t that why we like so many independent films?

After the forum, I believe there were a few hopes in the air. Ronnie Del Carmen’s talk had inspired us all. But seeds have to be sown on ground, and not in air. What will be the result is anyone’s guess.