An interesting event today occurred—a meeting with an author of a viral Wattpad story that got turned into a popular Filipino movie.
When my class and I got the opportunity to meet a young author of a popular fiction novel, “She’s Dating the Gangster,” we made good use of the time to ask her well-made questions on both book and film.
Straight from her introduction, Bianca Bernardino stated her experiences when she first wrote the story back when she was just 19, writing for a year and a half and still hesitating to publish it. She also talked about how she had to create an account and publish her story because others were publishing her story without her consent. She experienced a complete turnover in her life when she got a call from Summit Publishing telling her how her story was the fittest Romance-Comedy for the celebrity acting couple, Kathrine Bernardo and Daniel Padilla. This had definitely changed her life as more fortuitous opportunities came her way—such as the meeting of both of these actors. She also mentioned just how ‘kulit‘ Kathrine was during the shooting.
During the question-and-answer, I learned that most of her decisions while making the story were very similar to how anyone would write a novel, like how she picked her character Kenji’s name by exploring Myspace, and not anything deep with too much information. I learned that her concept of love is very strong, telling us that “saying ‘I love you’ to someone you just met is very… weird, diba (“right”)?” Letting us know that—that was why she made her character in the novel, Kenji, say “I can’t breathe” in place of I love you.
Exploring more on her story, I learned that her reason for picking Southville as a setting was mostly because it was ‘like the perfect place’ for her characters’ situation, and she knew everything about Southville and how it looks. The changing of the name of Southville in the novel to Southwell in the movie was—as she had mentioned—all with her consent and approval, even the editing of the whole novel and the included changes made for the movie. Bianca mentioned that the whole ‘story-telling perspective change’ was because the movie had to appeal to a wider audience of the older generation, like mothers, and the teenagers and millennials altogether. By telling the story through flashbacks of Kenji and Athena and displaying Kenneth and Keyla, the movie would be able to give a sense of connection to both audiences.
We ended our meet up with Bianca Bernardino with lots of silly questions and pictures with warm, beaming smiles. I now know from her that anyone who is in the pursuit of success and works hard enough is able to receive the same fortunate opportunities and is able to become as successful and as fulfilled a person as they wish to become.
stvrdust 