'Cavite': Filmmaking on a Shoestring

"It's definitely not a Hollywood film," says Ian Gamazon, who starred, co-wrote and co-directed "Cavite" with longtime collaborator Neill dela Llana. (See review on Page 30.) It did require an exotic location shoot, but there the similarity ends. With a budget of just $7,000, the film is something of an antidote to summer blockbusters such as Michael Mann's "Miami Vice," also opening Friday, which cost more than $125 million.

The two filmmakers behind "Cavite," friends since childhood, saved money in ways both traditional -- such as staying with relatives while shooting in the Philippines -- and novel -- they sold their cameras on eBay after filming was finished. Shooting the movie required just a two-week break from their decidedly unglamorous day jobs as a medical researcher (dela Llana) and Banana Republic stock manager (Gamazon). "Cavite" is the pair's fourth feature-length film but the only one to get distribution. (Their film from 2001, "Freud's 2nd Law," screened at South by Southwest and the Los Angeles Film Festival but never got picked up.)

With regard to "Cavite," dela Llana says, "The idea really came about back in 2001 over a cellphone conversation that Ian and myself were having about what our next movie was going to be about. Then I thought, 'What if you got kidnapped right now, and I had to save you?' " The result of that "what if?" conversation is the story of a Filipino American man returning to Manila who gets a phone call saying his mother and sister have been kidnapped. The only way to save them is by carefully following the deadly plans of the Islamist militants holding his family, getting marching orders by cellphone. In script form, movies like "Phone Booth" and "Cellular" explored similar material, but "Cavite's" setting sets it apart, Gamazon says.

"It was the perfect opportunity to make a movie in the Philippines," he says. After all, both men were born in the island nation before moving to Southern California with their families as children.

The hardest part turned out to be casting the protagonist, originally written as a female. "We auditioned for a year," Gamazon says, "but no female wanted to take on the role for no pay, going to a foreign country with two strangers to make a terrorist film." So the pair rewrote the main character, and Gamazon stepped in.

In hindsight, it was a good move, they say. With just a two-person crew -- dela Llana as cameraman and co-director, Gamazon as cast, sound operator and the other director -- Gamazon says, "We were a lot more mobile. . . . We got into places we wouldn't have gotten into."

The movie was shot primarily in the markets, alleys, squatter camps and a cockfighting arena in Cavite, a coastal suburb of Manila. Dela Llana says: "I go back to the Philippines every few years, and Cavite is where my mom's family is from. I had visited places like where the cockfight was and the marketplace." Several years back, he began videotaping these colorful locales to show Gamazon, telling him, "we should really make a film there."

Once they arrived, "people would ask us, 'What news crew are you from?' " dela Llana says. "For the most part, people were really friendly. We could knock on people's doors and say, 'Can I climb up on your roof?' so I could get a shot of Ian."

The colorful locations were crucial because, dela Llana says, "We knew that since there was only one main character . . . the background and whatever environment we put the character in had to be really interesting." Gamazon adds, "Also, we just wanted to really explore Cavite and show every aspect of it."

What they didn't show, dela Llana says, was "the beautiful, touristy side, with the palm trees and everything. Cavite definitely does have that there, but we weren't interested."

Overall, Gamazon says, "For me personally, it's a slice of life in the Philippines. There aren't that many movies out there that take place [there]. So even if you don't like the movie, if you don't like anything about it, we've actually educated people about the Philippines."