EXPOSING ANA: DIGITAL DIARIES

EXPECTATIONS VS REALITY

STANDING GROUND

Because the goal was to explore influencer culture, I had to make that theme more evident. Sir Clems advised me to show how the manananggal could appear as a social media influencer—by framing her within various social media interfaces. This eventually led to an “expectations vs. reality” format: one image showing her through a curated, online lens, and the other revealing ana_nanggal’s reality.

I was then advised to create moodboards and storyboards for this new narrative format. From there, I decided to prioritize the visual design for my next batch of images.

I drew inspiration from Black Mirror’s episode “Nosedive,” which depicts a world run by a social credit system. Its pastel-toned, pristine visual style gave the impression of peace and perfection—but it’s all a carefully suppressed facade of artificiality.

To emphasize the duality of the manananggal, I presented ana_nanggal as conventionally attractive in the online layouts, much like in my earlier images, where she didn’t have white eyes. In contrast, her true manananggal form, which I already developed in the previous images, represented her reality.

I decided to shoot her from two perspectives: In the social media layouts, the intention was to purposely have her take up most of the space in frame, signifying that she’d be hiding parts of herself, the same way some influencers crop their photos on posts. In her reality, I wanted to take her from another angle and the same composition style I did in my previous images. 

To further contrast with her curated online persona, her reality has a darker color scheme and appearance since I wanted it to reflect the manananggal’s presence and sort of going back to how aswangs are afraid of light. Here, I wanted to show that she’s hiding what she doesn’t want the world to see.

Production also came with logistical challenges—mainly finding accessible locations and managing time efficiently. Once we secured spots, the next challenge now was time management. To account for my team’s schedule and the respective deadlines given to me, we would shoot about 2-3 sets of layouts a day (sometimes twice) per week in a span of one month. Each shoot also accounted for the time needed to get Shy into wardrobe and makeup, since she had to wear the same outfit twice for each layout. We typically photographed the online layout first, followed by the reality version later in the day.

I was pleased with the direction, though I felt my weakness was still in post-processing since this was the first time I was editing to simulate social media interfaces. For some, I had to find templates online and even take screenshots of some parts from the sites, and edit them all on Photoshop so they would look like screenshots. I purposely left out the names of these websites as I felt viewers would already know where exactly they were coming from.

By the time I had to do my second midpoint presentation and these new sets of images, the direction became clearer after incorporating the online layouts. Their feedback was to further expand the range of platforms ana_nanggal could be seen on. I was also encouraged to ditch the dark color scheme in her reality and showcase it more like a “behind-the-scenes” look—using the same lighting and posing as in the online images to highlight consistency.

Before reshooting, I wanted to add more personality to ana_nanggal’s environment. I researched creators who post “day in the life” content, especially influencers with public controversies. This was for me to get a better idea of what kind of gear they use and attempt to implement the certain aesthetic their environment has.

By late January, production wrapped. Sir Clems and I listed additional social media platforms beyond Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and labeled the sets with what platform would suit which layouts best. I also had to pay extra attention when selecting my final shots to ensure the poses stayed consistent across each set.

My perspective on the series became clearer: the social media version of ana_nanggal is the side she wants us to see—just like how we perceive real-life influencers. On the other hand, in ana_nanggal’s reality, it came from my perspective as an unknown observer.  

She doesn’t recognize I’m there, but I’ve been watching closely, seeing the inconsistencies, the deception, the cracks in how ana_nanggal wants everyone to see her as— Just like everyone who’s been calling out and exposing influencers online and how they are in reality. 

The fact that this has become a norm and a stereotype expected for this circle of people shows the problem within society, and that is why I am critiquing this issue through an allegory of folklore. 

After finalizing these in post-production, these were now the final images you now see for ANA_NANGGAL.