To production work born

To production work born.

As one of the four kids of highly-respected and well-loved Eat, Bulaga! producer Tony Tuviera, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Michael "Mike" Tuviera had chosen to embrace the profession that fed him and sent him to good schools.

At age eight, his father already knew that Mike had the "eye" for production work and sensed that the boy was destined to become a director someday. Mike remembers that they were in Hong Kong that time and he started taking pictures of buildings in the former Crown Colony. When the pictures came out, Tony Tuviera was impressed with his young boy’s "composition," a technical term Mike didn’t even understand then.

A few years later, "composition" became part of his vocabulary because by then – and he was only 12 that time – he knew in his heart that he already wanted to be a director.

It all started when they had to do a film as a school project in Ateneo and he became the director. (His actor was Dato Macapagal-Arroyo.) Of course, he had the equipment he needed – TAPE being his playground (although he recalls borrowing the camera he used for the project without asking for permission).

However, it’s not just a camera and editing equipment that you need to come up with a good film project. In the case of Mike, he obviously had the talent to become a good director (as his works would later manifest) – and the passion for it.

Mike believes that he was born a storyteller and he was bent on becoming a filmmaker. In college, for a lack of film course at the Ateneo, he took up Communication Arts, which he finished in 1996. (He was a department award nominee.)

Immediately after graduation, instead of working for TAPE (he tried to stay away from it for the longest time), he got himself a job as second assistant director to Mike de Leon, who was then working on the film Rizal (the version with Aga Muhlach that never saw completion).

When production stopped (it never resumed – and Mike swears it would have been a great film), he worked for a company that dabbled in special effects during the day. At night, he typed away doing scripts for the sitcom 1-4-3 produced by Vic Sotto’s M-Zet Productions.

Eventually, he was "discovered" to become a director for TV when Gina Alajar sat as one of the board of judges in the Gawad CCP and saw his award-winning short film, Singko. She was impressed with his work and expressed her desire to get him as assistant director for Del Tierro, a soap opera she was directing for TAPE – unaware that the talent she was tapping was the boss’ son. Mike didn’t think it was a good idea to be working for his father’s company, but direk Gina was insistent because she really needed an assistant director – and a good one.

In time, Gina would ask him to direct the second unit of the soap opera (second units are set up when scenes have to be shot simultaneously in different locations). Once more, his work impressed Gina Alajar and she recommended him to become her co-director.

When things were already looking up for him here in the entertainment profession, he quit the scene to pursue what he had always wanted to do: take up his masters at the prestigious University of Southern California. Oh, that was an arduous process, but eventually he was accepted (the first Filipino to have accomplished such a feat).

Even much more difficult was completing the three-year course (plus one whole year of production). The requirements were backbreaking – one of which was to produce a short film every two weeks in the final year.

The hard work was worth it. And now, he has accumulated about 20 short films – some of which (Kung Fu Love Triangle, Fallen Angels, etc.) have been accepted in film festivals in the US and in other parts of the globe.

Then early this year – on Jan. 4 in Bangkok – he had a bad dream and as soon as he woke up, he put down the details in his cellphone. When he met up with his father at lunch time, he told him about the bad dream and that minute, he knew he was ready for his first full-length film – a horror movie, no doubt.

The finished product is entitled Txt, which stars Angel Locsin, Dennis Trillo and Oyo Boy Sotto.

I read the script of Txt before it was filmed and it was the best (and the most exciting) among the so many screenplays I was made to go over this year.

On the day I read the script of Txt, I remember having goose bumps all over while going over each page and that night I had a bit of trouble sleeping just remembering some of the scenes that were written down there.

Txt opens in theaters on Oct. 18 and I am determined to watch the finished product. And yes, I am gearing myself up for another sleepless night or two.