We produced this fun promo piece for travel website Amazing Palawan to showcase the beauty of the Philippine islands in a light-hearted video for their homepage and social channels. Palawan is famously one of the most beautiful provinces in the country, stretching between Mindoro in the northeast and Borneo in the southwest, and lying between the South China Sea and the Sulu Sea.
For this film we wanted to try and present something that felt genuine and spontaneous. We followed a group of tourists who had several visits to the islands courtesy of Cebu Pacific airlines, and through their activities showcase the various sights on offer.
Highlights include the incredible area known as El Nido, the coastline near Palawan’s capital Puerto Princessa, the islands around Port Barton, Kawasan Falls on Cebu Island, and the famous Puerto Princessa Subterranean River National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Here the tourists can sail into the caves with a guide, and also spot water snakes, bats, monitor lizards and monkeys in the area nearby. We also showcased scuba diving and swimming using cameras with underwater housing, a basketball game with some of the locals and plenty of banca boat rides between the gorgeous islands. We got lucky with our footage of the stunning beaches in El Nido, where we were camping for the night (as seen in our video thumbnail) as a super typhoon blew in the next day and destroyed some of our tents!
We already knew the Philippines well having worked there for a few years on various television projects, and so this was a really fun project to deliver. Almost all filming was done with natural light only, as some of the areas we visited had little or no power for charging light batteries. This was a great example of what can be done with a very small amount of equipment and not many resources or crew.
The bulk of the filming was completed during one stay in El Nido, one in Port Barton and a third near Pureto Princessa. These can serve as great hubs to see a phenomenal amount of beautiful island scenery if you don’t mind a lot of boat and minivan rides! Enjoy the film.
