Rec.Create: Allison Barretto And Bob Guarina’s Child Of Frustration
By Mikael Rizada Borres
Portions of the interview were conducted in Filipino (Tagalog).
All Filipino quotes have been translated into English for clarity and length.
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Sure, Rec.Create – the YouTube channel Allison Barretto And Bob Guarina built together – is certainly a product made from their earnest love for the artistic process and the learning that comes with content creation, among other loves the real-life married couple holds. But what is more unmistakable to them is that Rec.Create is a child born out of clear frustration.
In a 2020 interview with Indioboy Productions’ Prodcast, Bob explained how he and Allison fret over their search for a core audience they can resonate with and find the best means to connect with them. “We do make beautiful movies in the Philippines,” said Bob during that interview. “One of the bigger problems is: Who are we reaching with the films that we’re making? Like, are we just reaching each other?”
Their response to this quandary is Rec.Create, producing unscripted videos that tackle a variety of topics, themes, and points of view. The team, with Bob and Allison at the helm, seeks out individuals willing to answer questions, explore different thoughts and experiences, and reveal their true selves to the world. The filmed content can go light, easy, and fun-hearted like their “Rec.Create Unfiltered” episode on ghosting or their well-known “Lie Detector Drinking Game” series. The team, however, often gives the sombre, poignant, and personal conversations their time of day, as evidenced by their videos about near-death experiences and mental health stereotypes.
Bob and Allison have come to understand that at its core, their YouTube channel is for inquisitive beings who are drawn to profound dialogue and ideas. Their channel, Bob believes, is “more for the curious and the people who want to think a little bit more critically, whether they know it or not.” Allison shares that she wants to reach audiences who are “in the mood for enriching their soul.” She desires to bond with those who are willing to answer tough questions and talk about the sensitive subjects society is still trying to figure out.
“‘How do these people behave? How did this start? Where do these thoughts come from?’” Allison would ask whenever the Rec.Create team is in the process of brainstorming and selecting topics and ideas for new videos. “Those are the kind of simple questions that we ask ourselves while we make these videos,” said Allison.
The Thrills From Rec.Create
When the Rec.Create team asks those aforementioned questions, they yield results that provoke peoples’ minds. In many instances, the team becomes one with the audience by also being amazed by the happenings and revelations shown in their videos. Bob recalled a 2019 “Lie Detector Drinking Game” series episode, which featured Xavi and Ja, a former couple that broke up because Xavi may have realized during their relationship that he was gay. A few years after that video with Xavi and Ja, Rec.Create brought Xavi back in 2021 for another couples video. For the second time around, Xavi was with Carlo, his partner at the time.
“You know the joke that goes something like, ‘What if we break up because I realized that I’m actually a lesbian? What if we break up because I realized that I’m actually gay?’ You kind of just laugh it off and think, ‘Ay, that’s impossible. That doesn’t happen.’ But then you actually meet a couple that went really through that,” said Bob in a mix of English.
Bob found himself fascinated that such a situation could play out in real life, leading to his deeper understanding of sexuality and gender expression. “It’s like, ‘OK, cool. So gender is really fluid. Of course, I know that people struggle to come out about their gender identity and their sexual orientation [...], but for me, I’ve never met anybody who, in the middle of their straight relationship, just realized that, ‘This is not making me happy. I feel like I’m lying to myself.’”
The team also yields results that connect viewers with the featured individuals’ stories. Allison pointed to their 2022 video about the “breadwinner” phenomenon, in which real-life breadwinners express their feelings about being the main financial supporter of their families. “When we posted the video, the engagement was huge,” Allison remembered. “ It’s not like the comments were like, ‘Wow, nice video.’ People were pouring out their souls, their insights, and their opinions.”
Allison, who interviewed the featured breadwinners, found herself struck by the stories they shared. “Of course, naturally, when you interview people about their hardships, their stories are really beautiful, they really make a mark in your brain. But these people, these young people – some of them haven’t ever reached 25 or some of them aren’t even 30, [...] but they were wiser beyond their years.”
“I think that was one of the interviews that’s like, ‘Wow, this is something so much more than what I expected’ because you are truly connecting to another soul with their struggles,” said Allison. “The stories make you cry, too. Even without saying anything, the fact that you just gave them a chance to speak their minds and to really just take the lead in [their] own narrative. It was really moving because [...] you think you know the person because of one label, being a ‘breadwinner,’ and then the moment they start talking, they’re just not that. They are so much more than that, and you got so much more from them. It was an experience for the respondents, and it was an experience for us, the interviewers.”
The Frustrations From Rec.Create
Rec.Create team is always in constant agony over how to create worthwhile and evergreen conversations. Bob shared that to create such conversations, a part of their video idea brainstorming process is to ask themselves questions like: Is this topic something you discuss during an inuman (drinking session) at 2 a.m. or while eating some snacks? They then follow up with: If we talk about this topic, then how do we approach it?
“Like, for example: you could be debating about which dish is the poster boy of Filipino food. Adobo or sinigang? And then you’re debating about that during lunch. Because it’s nothing, it’s just lunch.”
But when the topics are not only deep but also contentious, Allison and Bob become wary of the ramifications of choosing the path of controversy. At the time of the interview, the Philippines was a few months fresh off its presidential election, wherein the divides between political factions were cavernous and intense. Although Rec.Create does dip its toes into the conversation of politics, it does so by taking more objective positions as exemplified by the channel’s more informative, middle-of-the-road videos. (See their piece on political apathy among the Filipino youth). Even then, Rec.Create only has a few of those kinds of videos, preferring to focus on Filipino culture rather than Filipino politics.
For Allison, putting out more political content may result in their artistic space becoming a platform that stimulates petty commotion instead of the purposeful conversations they aim to showcase. “In the Philippines, it’s not that we don’t talk about politics or that it’s hard to talk about,” said Alison. It’s more of, “If we’re trying to create, you know, soul-enriching videos, and it’s counter-intuitive by talking about something that your audience is not ready to take it in – will it be an effective video? Should we still push through with it?’”
“It’s very difficult to stand your ground or to even explore an idea because there have been a lot of personal things and political things that have happened wherein they brand you as this and that. So it’s difficult in the sense that the message will be lost along the way if people just think, ‘Oh, they talked about this, so that means they side with this group.’ [The video] loses its message.”
The Future Of Rec.Create
Bob and Allison have big plans for Rec.Create. On the business end, Bob wants to grow the channel to get to the point where if they want to do something, they have the budget to execute their plans. “I want to expand and have more resources not because I want to get rich, not because of that... Well, of course, I want to get rich! That’s part of why I want to expand.”
“It’s not about growing the company for the sake of profit. It’s more that I want to grow more because it is a child of frustration that’s bringing me more frustration,” Bob continued, further noting that Rec.Create’s videos that serve as the alternative to the mainstream content available is not enough to tell the full picture of the stories they want to tell.
“So now that I’m making the alternative, I now feel that it’s still lacking. I want to do more. I want to do more, more, more.”
More resources, more research, more opportunities – that’s what Bob envisions. “I want to get to the point where I can fly my team to places, where we aren’t bound to only here [in Metro Manila]. If not the team, then I want to be able to fly the respondent here, or something like that.”
On the creative side of the channel, Allison is keen on continuing Rec.Create’s roles as an initiator and facilitator of meaningful online dialogue. “The content that we create, it also just reflects our current times here in the Philippines,” said Allison. “I hope we come to the point where we don’t have the ‘The Philippines is not ready for this’ kind of content.”
Allison believes testing the boundaries of what deep dialogues can look and sound like in the Philippines is how she wants Rec.Create to progress. “I would really love to be able to create and to have receptive – not necessarily positive feedback, but just a receptive audience for topics that go beyond the Filipino taboos and the basic ‘unconventional’ topics.
“I wanna go deeper. I wanna go emotionally mature, more challenging, and I hope we do get an audience for that because, at the end of the day, we want to create discourse, we wanna create conversations with people. These are all just conversation starters, our videos are conversation starters into really enriching your soul and your understanding of people.”
Allison, Bob, and Mikael conducted the interview through Zoom on Saturday, August 6, 2022.
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