What makes a good narrative?
In our younger years, we were covered with a lot of stories because that’s the easiest way to know and understand better. We carry on just fine with what we’re told, with what we’re told to watch, what we hear, and how our minds react to them afterwards.
Film director and illustrator, Gabriela Serrano, grew up watching movies because in the earliest of years, it was her parents who exposed her in the world of cinema even if she’s too young to even understand what she was watching back then.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
She never thought that she’ll be making films one day as she was also into drawings comics and portraits at that time. But we never know—if the universe has something to do with all our growing knowledge towards things. Gaby developed a hobby: recording videos and capturing moments like feelings from situations and places she’s in.
PEN, PAPER, AND DIGITAL
Gabriela started drawing before she could walk and talk. Growing up, drawing has been the quickest and best way she could explain a thought or a feeling to somebody.
She was a quiet person. And as a quiet person growing up with a lot going on internally, discovering the power of an illustration has something to do that was absolutely pivotal to her.
That’s her relationship with art; drawing comics and portraits was her main creative outlet growing up. Her medium is 50% traditional and 50% digital—ink and watercolor on cheap paper are her go-to mediums; she uses a scanner and Photoshop to add dimensions to her paper drawings, mixing them with textures and elements shot on camera.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
BEHIND PAPER AND LENSES
Gabriela really got bored with her static drawings so she started taking photographs and video stills and incorporating them into illustrations to give them more depth, which she continued doing all the way into a creative practice as an adult. One thing is for sure: through all these evolutions and mixing and melding of illustration work and image-capturing work, that thing remained constant: her sense of storytelling.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
When asked, “what made you want to be a filmmaker?”
“If I could identify the turning point, it probably had to be when I began shooting and editing little video assignments for school. Discovering that I could manipulate time and imagery and turn it into something that could hold my classmates’ attention for a few minutes was a groundbreaking realization for me. I felt like I could do that for the rest of my life.” she answered.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
“If you looked all the art made in my life, even from my early childhood, there has always been a character and some kind of plot. Of course, it made sense that I would eventually make the transition from doing that to making narrative video and film.” she added.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
STYLE AND THINGS IN BETWEEN
Gaby’s concepts have always been gravitating towards the role of women in the country we’re living in—being aware of images and feelings speaking and recurring to her in the current period of her life and chasing after these as thematic arches in her work.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
Her creative influences in the industry are two rare illustrator-directors, Marjane Satrapi and Dave McKean, whom she’s been a very big fan of for a long time. Some other big filmmaking influences she had in terms of subject matter and style include Nina Menkes, Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Costa, Marilou Diaz-Abaya, Mira Nair, and Alice Rohrwacher.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
Gaby’s art style has become more intentional and personal. According to her, there were times where she felt like she was just making art for the sake of having something to show people without much regard for the subconscious truth behind it, or the further repercussions her work could have.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
But ever since joining the workforce, she had a very strong awakening to feminism, politics, and philosophy that have affected her life and she then tries to address this awareness in all her work.
“My style may remain consistent aesthetically, but I think it has changed completely over time in that I now make sure everything I make stands for something important and bigger than myself.” Gaby said.
Photo from Instagram: @actiongirlbaby
Success to her is being able to move people through the imagery you create. She promotes her work on Instagram. The internet at large has been the primary space for her to share her art and film work. Aside that it opened doors for her, it also helped her forge creative partnerships and allowed her to reach an audience.
Photo from Instagram: @dikit.film
Photo from Instagram: @dikit.film
For Gaby, the biggest barrier to being an illustrator and a film director is having to draw her own storyboards instead of hiring someone else to do them. (But she cannot not do them)
Aren’t we all storytellers of our own time and isn’t it at our own will l to do it also? The stories we tell?
Her storyboards serve as her reminders—the joy of being able to translate her imagination directly on paper.
AT PRESENT
Part of Gaby’s network of artists is her immediate family and her dad herself who is an artist and a design professor. Gaby’s biggest support system are her friends and other women creatives she met working on jobs and other projects in the past up to now.
Photo from Instagram: @streetwoman.prod
They have recently formed a collective called ‘Street Woman Productions’, and it was built to provide a representation and support for up-and-coming woman and non-binary artists and production workers in the art industry. You can check them out here.
Gabriela Serrano uses the name “dalaga” for her audiovisual work. An amazing AV work you can check here.
At the same time, you can catch a glimpse at the creative processes together with her team after the success of her film, DIKIT, – a modern horror-drama retelling of Jose Nepomuceno’s classic Filipino silent film, “ANG MANANANGGAL” directed by Gabriela Serrano herself. Check it out here.
Also, you can follow Gabriela Serrano on Instragram here.
