In Green Living, we talk about a more natural & human way of living in the city. So we try to make elements of the show reflect that.
For graphics, we asked Paolo to draw some objects we could use as icons or just design element in the text we superimpose on the video.
We think it makes the show look more natural & personal.
Architect Gelo Manosa was our first interview for the first episode of Green Living. During the shoot, all of us behind the camera were amazed with how you can build a sustainable home that works with the environment.
So just to share, here are some of the eco-friendly ideas on building a green home that I picked up from Gelo:
1. You can angle your house so that the wind stays a little before it flows out.
2. Having a fountain or pool by the path of the wind cools the air by half a degree.
3. Windows that open upward are perfect for the Philippines. You can keep them open when it rains and the volume of air isn’t reduced.
4. You can make a solar tube that funnels bright sunlight into a room. It’s basically free light.
5. If you use locally available material (Gelo used the adobe dug up from his lot!) you reduce your cost and carbon footprint.
6. You can save water by recycling it. Basically using grey water for gardening and flushing toilets.
A couple of weeks ago I joined a PEDALA courier Choy Calunsod on one of his deliveries. I ride my bike a lot for recreation and fitness but it’s a different experience riding point A to point B knowing that you have a specific purpose, which was to deliver a package. It was simple, dispatch send the pick-up and drop-off details to the courier, he shows up at point A and pedals the package to point B. Simple, no muss, no fuss, job done. It was such a slap-your-forehead moment to see that a old-school pedal-courier system that has worked for ages in developed cities like New York and London has gone largely unexploited here in a country where simple solutions to big problems are really needed. Here was a same-day courier service that didn’t add to the pollution and traffic problem we already have, costs less than the petrol you’d need if you were to do it yourself and required little more than the cost of a decent bike for someone who might wanna get into the business and make some sort of a living. Sometimes to move forward, we gotta look backwards. Point A is where we are now, lotsa pollution, lots of road congestion, and suffering from the high cost of petrol. Point B is the less polluted and less congested future that we wanna be in…keep on pedaling folks, we’ll get there eventually.
Another look at how we do things behind the camera. Every week, aside from the main segments, we shoot Paolo’s intros to the shows — which we call spiels. In the past we would print the spiels and give it to our go-anywhere-do-anthing host. Today, probably because of the nature of our show, we no longer use paper. We find a way to read the spiels on location without paper. In our first episode shot in Mercato Centrale at the Fort, Paolo used his iPad.
This is the one and only photograph from the first shoot ever for Green Living. The subject: Architect Gelo Manosa’s home. In the photo, the crew is taking footage of the second floor while waiting for Gelo to prepare the master’s bedroom, and Jake (on the right) is not thinking about the shoot. He’s looking out the window thinking about his dream green home. Yes, he was dreaming in broad daylight. And in all honesty, so was I.
The subject of the feature evolved and we realized that this one shoot explained everything that we wanted this show to be. Gelo’s interview opened so many doors the minute he open the door to his humble and green abode. I was no longer producing a feature on a home. I was having a lesson on a lifestyle. The conscious effort to make eco-friendly and sustainable choices, knowing the difference between short-term pleasures and long-term happiness… these are just some of the things that we would like to learn and discover, and in the greater scheme of things, share with the audience through this show.
As Gelo told me during the shoot, it’s one thing to know a concept, and another thing to live it.
After airing the first plug, we got interesting comments and questions. One of them was where we got the bike rack in the background.
The bike rack is locally made and is available at Al Terra — the bike store in Ortigas Home Depot. This one fits two bikes stacked on top of each other on the same side. Other models fit four (so it’s this model with 2 more hooks on the other side) or just two side to side.
The bike is well made, some thoughtful design elements (ex. surgical plastic tubes on the hooks so the bikes don’t get scratched) is well balanced, and (the best part) it’s locally made — you can have it custom built & it doesn’t need to get on a plane to get here.
Here’s a quick behind the scenes look at how we do the show and some of the thoughts that go into our creative decisions. This one is about lighting.
As a show that talks about being green, natural, and sustainable we thought that shooting outdoors as much as we could would be one of the ways we could bring that message across.
Here’s Paolo with our crew shooting the closing spiels to our first episode.
We realized that we save on electricity and can keep our bulbs longer because, as one producer says, we use “God’s lighting.”
