Saving Sally, one of the eight entries in the revamped 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), got an A rating from the Cinema Evaluation Board.
The indie movie, which is a young romantic story set in wonderful 2D animation hues, stars Rhian Ramos in a titular role of Sally and Enzo Marcos as the male lead star Marty.
MMFF Screening Committee describes the film as an atypical youthful love story replete with child-like elements as applied through 2D animation.”
The movie which is the directorial debut of Avid Liongoren was 10 years in the making. Together with a small team of young animators, Liongoren started making the film as early as 2005, but production slowed down due to funding.
Production came into full swing in 2010 on a blue screen, which was later replaced with stylized Manila and 2D animated monsters created by Liongoren and his team of artists at Rocketsheep.
Every frame, every background, every piece of art was painstakingly made. “What we lacked in manpower, we made up for with love in every single frame. We spent counless hours checking and rechecking every detail,” shares Direk Avid.
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The story revolves around Marty, an aspiring comic book artist who pines for his best friend Sally, a gadget inventor. Sally, however, has monsters for parents and an inconsiderate boyfriend (TJ Trinidad). In Marty’s fantasies, he conjures up ways of defending the love of his life from the big bad world.
At its very heart, Saving Sally is a simple story about love and never, ever giving up told in a unique way that combines live action & vivid kaleidoscope-colored animation.
Lead stars Rhian and Enzo were in Iloilo recently for press conference and mall tours to promote the movie, which will be showing nationwide starting December 25.
“It’s really a cute movie, we put our heart and soul into making it,” said Rhian. “It you watch it, you will see that we were very ourselves.”
