MANILA, Philippines—The award-winning team behind the GMA 7 documentary show "I-Witness" is sharing their expertise with 80 students in a free seminar-workshop set April 5 at SM Megatrade Hall.

Program hosts Howie Severino, Jay Taruc, Sandra Aguinaldo and Kara David believe the time is right to pass on the knowledge they've culled in the past nine years that the program has been on air.

"We've been receiving tons of e-mail from viewers, asking if they could work with us as 'interns,'" related Taruc who's handling the subjects Shooting and Directing at the seminar.

(Although the workshop is free, applicants competed for slots by writing an essay.)

The seminar is one way for students to "realize their dreams," Taruc said. The boom in Mini-DV and digital camera technology, Taruc noted, also pumped up the interest in docu-making, especially among the youth.

"It has become affordable and accessible," Taruc explained. "We want to empower people through the visual medium."

David agreed: "We are all storytellers. Anyone can be a documentarian. Also, a docu is the product of not just one, but numerous storytellers, from the cameraman to the researcher." David is in charge of Scriptwriting at the workshop.

A documentarian in the Philippines will never run out of interesting stories, said Aguinaldo who's assigned to discuss Research.

"In a way, the real-life stories of Filipinos are like telenovelas. Oftentimes, it's even more dramatic," Aguinaldo pointed out.

Severino asserted that viewers should watch more docus because these "create the opportunity to be ... transformed, even ennobled, by a true story." Severino is handling Editing.

David concurred: "A docu expands the viewer's world. A lot of people have become unaware or apathetic. Exposure to the real stories of their countrymen will be the first step for them to develop a sense of compassion for them."

Though the current TV landscape is overrun with soap operas and game shows, the docu format is quietly making inroads, Taruc commented. "People are probably looking for alternative, or more legitimate, sources of information."

Taruc insisted that, according to studies, the same people who follow telenovelas watch docus. "The housewives," he said.

Severino said he would instruct the students to "be interested in people and the individual stories they tell and the contexts (whether social, political or economic) they live in."

Aguinaldo added: "Listen! Filipinos tell a lot of stories. Listen to the taxi driver, to the janitor, to fish vendors, to your yaya. My style is just to let the story unfold the way it would have, without the camera."

Severino said the seminar would allow them, as media practitioners, "to think about our craft and why we do it."

"I expect to learn from the participants as well," said Aguinaldo. "It's not going to be a classroom-type of lecture, but a discussion."

"It will allow us to assess and analyze our work, too," David affirmed.

"What we will share is not limited to theory or Western practice," Taruc said. "It's based on our personal experiences."

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