WITH a grant from Cinemalaya, Mike Sandejas embarks in his first directorial job.

It will not be the regular drama movie genre. Mike is directing The Dawn. The

movie is to be called “Tulad ng Dati.” It would be fictional story of the band with a musicale and narrative approach.

Mike is not a stranger to movies. He has been producing movies for more than 10 years now and has had the opportunity to work with top directors and producers like Gil Portes and Lily Monteverde.

Primarily a fan at heart, Mike hopes to relive the concert phenomenon of the 80’s. Without the benefit of music videos, most bands including the Dawn staged concerts to touch base with their followers. The concerts were theatrical in nature and not necessarily free. But the October Storm concerts of the Dawn were always filled to the rafters. Mike had been in most of those concerts.

As a director, Mike is surprised that all the band members, Jett, JB, Kiko and Buddy, can act. They were natural performers.

While they were shooting the hospital scene, the group quickly and effortlessly went through their lines. Agot Isidro is playing Jett’s wife in the movie. The cast and crew had camaraderie and there were no tense and high stress production moments during the whole time.

There is no distribution plans yet aside from Cinemalaya’s TV and cable rights for two years. Mike owns the theatrical and video distribution rights. He also looks forward to bringing the film outside of the country so that Filipinos (specially the batch 80’s-Filipinos who have migrated) abroad can appreciate the movie too.
The film is set to come out in July, 2006