WIM News (our real attempt at bringing the fake news to you…)

So this is our first attempt at bringing fake news to the real Philippines.

when-in-manila-logo-philippinesIt started out as three guys and a camera… though the thoughts of a gay porno may have crossed the minds of my esteemed co-producers; I quickly denied any further thoughts in this direction. We were filming for our new online travel show, “When In Manila,” (www.WhenInManila.com) where we intend to highlight the wonderful people, places and events from the Philippines. We had about seven different shoots scheduled for that weekend but found ourselves with some lag time in between.

Being one of the biggest fans of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and Steven Colbert’s The Colbert Report, I realized that the Philippines greatly needed an outlet for humor that could shed fun into the current situations and news stories around. With BIG events such as the Con-Ass, the H1N1 Swine Flu in Manila, Hayden Kho, Katrina Halili and Dr. Vicki Belo’s sex tape scandals, we thought that this would be the perfect time for us to laugh at the media hypes and weird politics that are happening right in front of us. Also, strongly avoiding the slapstick / idiotic comedy routines and demanding more insightful / well-written comedic skits, we realized that it was our duty to start this movement!

I had rallied my team to push through with filming some fake news stories, to my delight they came along for the ride.

Funny thing was our director / video editor, Harold Soon, was WAAAAY into it. He’s an idealist who goes all out with his work, which of course is a great thing if you ever get to work with him. But the thing was, we got carried away and forgot that we don’t really have the resources, manpower, funding or location to pull off a full scale Conan O’Brien type Tonight Show! But of course, we didn’t realize this ‘til after…

fake-news-wim-weekend-update-daily-show3See we had set up a full on stage at Jason Qua’s parent’s house for this. They let us use this huge game / exercise room that had a ping pong table, work-out equipment and a whole bunch of other junk. We move all these things around, set up a giant blue curtain as our blue screen for the background, run extension cords up and about the whole place to get the lighting up, equip our laptop with a PowerPoint slideshow for our teleprompter, and of course, get our camera. After about three hours of setting up, we were finally ready to film our three minute fake news show.

Of course, remember that we’re under-budgeted, under-manned, under-everything really… so the writers for this show… well I mean writer… was just me, while Harold did the directing, video editing, lighting and sound checking and Jason helped out with the teleprompt creation, props, equipment and pretty much everything else.

Harold: “Yeah, that whole setup, what we just did, was actually a job for a whole crew…”

Vince: “(wearing my full suit for the show while sweating like I just ran a marathon) “I kinda figured that…”

fake-news-wim-weekend-update-daily-show-like-jon-stewart-or-stephen-colbert1Fortunately, Harold also had a friend, (will post link to his work soon), who was willing to help with the background and visual effects. Not to mention other friends who helped out by lending us the lighting, sound equipment and all the other props. So far so good…

Nothing too crazy or unexpected for the shoot, but we had to get going as another travel segment was quickly approaching. So we wrap up with hopes of releasing this video the next day…

A few days later, and still without our fake news reel, is around the time when reality set in… Harold texts me saying that he may have done the blue screen thing wrong, amongst other things; so it was going to take more time to work on it. Moreover, we underestimated the amount of work needed as we had to edit the video and sort out about an hour of footage into three minutes before sending it off to his friend who would then add on the background and graphics…

Harold: “Yeah Vince, I think you were right, we may have tried to do too much here.”

At this point… our late breaking news stories were already about a week late, and now we had to wait another week for the editing to finish.

So anywayz, long story short… this was our first attempt. Fortunately, we’re sponsored by GM and AIG so we’ll be getting better programming for the next… hold on… I have a call from my finance people… WHAT….GM and AIG WHAT!!!?!??!!? NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Well at least we were promised some help from the British legislators… yeah they said they’d help out and could easily get us some cash right after they clean out some moat from the pool and… oh hold on… another call from my finance people… WHAT…. HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU GET IN TROUBLE FOR CLEANING MOAT?!?!?!!?!??! NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, worst case scenarios is that we’ve still got help coming from the local government, I think the Philippines is taxing books now so we could probably get some funding from that… waaaaiiittt… need to take this call from my finance guys… WHAT… WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT’S ILLEGAL TO TAX BOOKS?!?!?!? NNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Without further delays… here’s our late breaking, two week old, first attempt at bringing the funny! WIM News – Your Real Source for Fake News!

P.S. We need writers…. Send us any headlines and punchlines and skits you may have. We’ll acknowledge you in the credits and will love you long time! Also, we’d love to hear your input you have on how to make this better! talk@wheninmanila.com


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