Handshakes - A Short Film
Hey everyone I’m back and working on some more content about my experiences with ET…like losing job opportunities, disability payments (not) etc. But through my IETF support group, I had the amazing pleasure to speak with Jasper Dominic Abibas, a film student who made this amazing short film about ET. Sums up the crap that is ET.
I asked him to hear more of his story so, with his permission, I share his story and film:
https://youtu.be/qORPLFX07aY?si=hG043dKIyzUxp7C2
So, before my official diagnosis of ET came in yesterday, my dad was already showing symptoms for it (he's still not diagnosed) for like a decade now, but my family didn't bother with it that much. It was just a "fact of life": my dad's hands shake. It was only three years ago when I noticed that my hands were starting to shake too to the point that that company I was working for laid me off since shaky hands would surely bring scratches to their products. Because of that, I was unemployed for months, but was able to volunteer on helping on some film sets because I'm a film student. From those sets, my shaking was really apparent that I had to explain to people that that's just how my hands are. I can't even operate a camera because I was shaking really bad and some had to check out for me if I'm feeling pretty well that day. I felt miserable and helpless too because whenever I'm noticing I'm shaking, I would try my hands to not shake, but they get worse.
It was only last semester when I made a promise to myself that I had to produce, write, and direct a short film before I graduated. The short film: Handshakes as we all know started as a 60 second emotional "Asian" commercial which then molded into a short love story. While I think the script worked for me, my professor felt like it was too cliche. This was also the time when I discovered what ET is and started to do more research about it. I read some stories on Reddit and even on the ET Facebook Group we both a part of. I realized that those stories and mine share a lot more in common than I initially thought. I was like: "If my dad's hand shakes for more than a decade now, and I'm now just discovering my hand shakes too, how come I am only finding out about ET right now?" I realized that I need to spread awareness about it and morphed my original love story script into an ET story. The basic idea was to write a story that introduces ET to the general public and how it affects an individual with their daily lives. I had to write in my experiences, my dad's experience, and the experiences of the ET community that I found on the Internet to give the public why ET can suck sometimes. The new script took me a week to draft while finalizing it while we're on our way to the filming date. In a span of two weeks I was able to build a crew and find the two main leads and did a table read 1 week before filming. But what's important to this one is that everyone, the cast and crew, knows that my hands shake; that I have this condition. I may not be diagnosed for it yet during that time, but this condition brings suffering to me. This is why my hands didn't shake that much on Film Day: May 05, the Day before my Birthday, because everybody in the room knows that I have this condition; and it felt liberating. I edited the film in a span of a week and premiered it with friends, family, and the entire class a few days later and the rest is history.
While I'm so proud of this work since it was my directorial debut and a gift for myself for graduation, it was the messages and the other stories that was shared to me after people from the ET community has seen it. I may have made this movie, but it touched the hearts of many including my dad.
I can't thank enough the crew behind this movie and specially the cast and the two main leads: Joaquin Gawchua and Jassell Jimenez for giving such terrific performances by displaying what it's like to have ET. They only had weeks to prepare, but they embodied individuals with ET. I would also like to thank you Jessica for hearing my story and how I made the film. It's a film that I will forever cherish because I was able to be open about myself to everyone with the power of filmmaking.
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