Pedring Lopez
Peter "Pedring" Lopez was born and raised in Quezon City, Philippines. His parents ran a photo studio and his father worked as a professional and aerial photographer during the 1980s. Much of his early interest in visual arts were attributed to his early experience in helping with their family business. In high school, Pedring would spend his weekend filming weddings, birthdays and even funerals using JVC camcorders and would spend his weeknights editing projects to be delivered to customers. Peter "Pedring" Lopez never had any formal film school training and dropped out of college after he realized that he wanted to be a full-time filmmaker. He saw an ad for a news editor for IBC-13, a government ran TV network and got the job. He went on to pursue a career in broadcasting in local Philippine TV networks and later in the advertising industry as video editor. He continuously taught himself visual effects and motion design until finally being getting another job as a full-time VFX supervisor for GMA-7 Manila. A few years later, Pedring started directing music videos and TV ads - gaining him project after project as producers discovered his rare technical and creative vision and expertise in post-production and visual effects. He received several awards for music videos and TV Ads. His influences were products of his love for genre films particularly Asian horror and Hong Kong action cinema. His first feature film, BINHI (The Seed), was a micro-budget indie paranormal/horror film which was distributed by Viva Films, the leading film rights, and distributors of Filipino movies. The film had mix reactions and praises for its technical aesthetics, cinematography as well as editing. In 2015, Pedring directed Nilalang or Sonzai-sha (The Entity). The film won 5 awards in the 41st Metro Manila Film festival for Best Cinematography, Editing, Visual Effects, Musical Score & Sound Engineering. The film also won Best Director in New York & Spain film festivals. In 2019, Pedring directed "Maria", which became one of the first Filipino movies picked up by Netflix for worldwide distribution. American producers have started showing interest in his work which landed him his first American film with Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation) taking the lead role but due to the Covid-19 pandemic production was put on hold. He is also set to direct "GI" which will feature Indonesian actors, Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian, who were both in The Raid and John Wick 3 films with Blu Fox Entertainment in charge of production & distribution. Pedring is also the founder of BlackOps Studios Asia, a production company based out of Manila with offices in Hong Kong and Vietnam that concentrates on Asian genre features. He is also the director of content for agency Psyops8 which he is a founding partner.