Recreating history is almost like finding an old childhood photo and wanting to take then and now photos; you do everything you can to get the visual elements right, even if it means using art and artifice. In the same vein, Tarriela had to maneuver around various logistical and financial constraints to keep the director’s vision alive, from replicating settings in different locations to building an entire town. “To make our production systematic, I chose around five to six locations where we could shoot our scenes,” he explains. “So, for example, even if in history Goyo and his army were stationed at a river in Pangasinan, I had to find one that looked similar in Tarlac, since we were already shooting some scenes there.”
But in cases where it was impossible to find locations that were accurate to the original, Tarriela has no choice but to construct the set. The whole town of Dagupan, for example, where the boy general and his men dallied for five months, was constructed largely with the help of the production design team in an empty lot in Tarlac. “I couldn’t find anything like it,” Tarriela says. “All the other old towns were too modern, one way or the other.”