Unscripted: Conversations in the Dollhouse

Book Review: Unscripted via The 5 to 9 Life

vickyherrera — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:08:50 +0800

Book Review: Unscripted via The 5 to 9 Life:

“Both Meier and Herrera didn’t hold back on the personal and probing questions either, which is a rare find in the world of journalism today. A refreshing read that had me wanting to find out more about some of the creative people interviewed within this book.”- Chau Tran, The 5 to 9 Life

Click the link to read the whole story.

OFF-SCRIPT

vickyherrera — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:24:06 +0800

liyow:

My short feature on Garage on the lovely ladies of the Dollhouse and their amazing book, Unscripted.

Unscripted in Sense & Style (April 2012)

vickyherrera — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:01:46 +0800

Unscripted Featured in the April 2012 issue of Sense & Style.

Many thanks to Margaux Salazar!

I love getting photos like this on twitter! Via Alyssa Lapid - V

vickyherrera — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:51:28 +0800

I love getting photos like this on twitter!

Via Alyssa Lapid

Unscripted in The Philippine Airline's Magazine: MABUHAY

vickyherrera — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:59:02 +0800

March 2012

Pick up your copy of the Fully Booked Newsletter OUT NOW Photo...

vickyherrera — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:40:52 +0800

Pick up your copy of the Fully Booked Newsletter OUT NOW

Photo Credit: Victoria Velasco

Shout Out to The BRIDGE

vickyherrera — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:13:50 +0800

Shout Out to The BRIDGE

fully-booked: “My country, my business.” - Gang Badoy Watch...

vickyherrera — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:13:51 +0800

fully-booked:

“My country, my business.” - Gang Badoy

Watch this video by WYD MNL about Rock Ed founder Gang Badoy and the passion behind her work. She is also featured in Unscripted by Vicky Herrera and Sarah Meier. Available at all Fully Booked branches at P999. http://fullybookedonline.com/productdetails.asp?id=20276

Unscripted Feature in UNO Magazine (Jan 2012)

vickyherrera — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:18:13 +0800

The Dollhouse in Metro Magazine (Jan 2012)

vickyherrera — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:13:27 +0800

“Out of all the shoes she had, Imelda Marcos didn’t own a single pair of sneakers!” says sarah Meier over lunch in a studio in Quezon City. “she was quite hard to interview on the show because she had set answers to things,” continues Vicky herrera, which got sarah nodding. “It tested my interview skills, but we did bust through her barrier when she started talking about her childhood,” sarah reveals.

The former first lady is just one of the people you’ll encounter in the first book of VJ/model/host Sarah Meier and model/writer Vicky Herrera. The two gathered 16 of the most interesting personalities from their former radio show The Dollhouse in u92fM through their book Unscripted.

With a stellar lineup that includes lourd de Veyra, Tessa Prieto-Valdes, German Moreno, Raimund Marasigan, Jeffrey Cariaso, Ryan Cayabyab, Carlos Celdran, Gang Badoy, Kate toralba, and more—the book contains frag- ments from their show’s segment “The Real oG” (original Gangsta), which loosely refers to people who are influential and innovative in their respective fields.

The idea for the book began right after they wrapped their last episode—they were sitting front row at fashion week and the idea popped up. “We got comments on twit- ter and on our blog about how the show changed them, and we felt that we should do something to keep the show in some way,” says Vicky. Though producing a book was the farthest thing from the minds of these two models, they’ve both been known for their creativity.

Vicky comes from the highly creative Herrera clan. Well-traveled and well- read, she moved quickly from graduating from Ateneo de Manila university to setting up Trilogy, a boutique in partnership with her siblings, and taking on even more writing and modeling work, including that for Behind the Brand for Fashion Week tV.

For Sarah, the progression from television to radio was not as natural as we all might think. “The thing about radio is that it’s a theater of the mind— you can’t giggle or do something physically to pull it off,” she says. Swiss-filipina sarah was a model long before she was part of MTV asia in 2000. Her brand of levelheaded-meets-witty hosting set her apart from the semi-neurotic fanfare of that time, so even as she left MTV after a few years, she still kept coming back to hosting shows.

“The nuggets of information and wisdom that came from our OGs are universal,” says sarah. “Yes, they’re filipino, and yes you can be proud of them—but at the same time, this book can be relevant to anybody, it’s timeless. trends come and go—what makes us different is that we need that kind of timelessness. We make the effort to make a significant difference.”

Unscripted is available in all Fully Booked branches.

UNSCRIPTED in GARAGE Magazine

vickyherrera — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:20:11 +0800

Shout Out to GARAGE Magazine for featuring our book launch in their party pages this month. Grab a copy!

Photos by Maj Liwanag

The Dollhouse in MEGA Magazine’s February 2012 issue

vickyherrera — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:05:14 +0800

The Dollhouse in MEGA Magazine’s February 2012 issue

The Dollhouse in Mega Magazine’s February 2012 Issue OUT...

vickyherrera — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:39:09 +0800

The Dollhouse in Mega Magazine’s February 2012 Issue

OUT NOW

Photo Courtesy of Maj Liwanag

vickyherrera — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:00:05 +0800

Photo Courtesy of Maj Liwanag

vickyherrera — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:05 +0800

Photo Courtesy of Maj Liwanag

A Photo + Art Exhibit by Roy Macam and Create.ph at the...

vickyherrera — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:03:00 +0800

A Photo + Art Exhibit by Roy Macam and Create.ph at the Unscripted Launch

What you see are are snippets of what you can find in the book!

Photo Courtesy of Maj Liwanag

vickyherrera — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0800

Photo Courtesy of Maj Liwanag

Check out this month’s issue of Chalk Magazine to see a...

vickyherrera — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:04:56 +0800

Check out this month’s issue of Chalk Magazine to see a feature on the Dollhouse and our new book Unscripted :)

Shoutout to Maureen Manuel for the write-up and Adrian Gonzales for the shoot.

- V

Chalk Scans via Adrian Gonzales

Win an UNSCRIPTED Book!

vickyherrera — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:46:13 +0800

CLICK HERE to win a book from Saab Magalona’s Blog

Why you should publish a book via Rappler.com

vickyherrera — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:38:00 +0800

Why you should publish a book via Rappler.com:

Unscripted: Conversations in the Dollhouse by Sarah Meier & Vicky Herrera

MANILA, Philippines - What business do fashion personalities like Sarah Meier-Albano and Vicky Herrera have entering the serious world of publishing?

As it turns out, they have every right do so.

“To be completely honest with you,” Sarah confides, “fashion has always been more than an effort than conversation.”

“Growing up, Sarah and I have always been very curious,” Vicky reveals. “We like to ask people questions.”

This is perhaps why modeling is only one part of their of career cocktail. Off the runway, the two have worked as writers (from scriptwriting, magazine writing and authoring newspaper columns), television hosts, and radio talk show hosts.

Last December, they launched “Unscripted: Conversations in the Dollhouse,” a book based on the interviews that transpired during a short-lived radio show, The Dollhouse, which they had hosted together.

The book features a curated set of conversations with a diverse group of people – musicians, educators, politicians, athletes and entertainers – who’ve made a mark in their own industries. It highlights their tales and struggles toward success.

Before it easily turns into the classic case of judging a book by its cover, so to speak, we asked Sarah and Vicky to share their thoughts about what makes a good book. And, more importantly, why they decided to publish one.

Radio Guest

To share a good story, or two, or many.

To get to the fine parts of anyone’s story, Vicky reveals that it takes more than crossing questions off an interview list.

“A whole part of the interviews is listening to what they have to say,” she asserts. “Sometimes, for certain guests, you know who they are before they walk in. The challenge, then, is how you pull out something new from them, how you pull out new answers and new memories. Sometimes, it’s not what they say; you look at their reactions. When they react to a certain word or to a certain question, or their eye would twitch or gaze out the window – if anything sparks our curiosity, we dive further.”

“It’s instinct,” says Sarah. “I usually would start off along the lines of: ‘Let’s go back to the beginning. How did it all begin.’ Or, ‘If you had a business card and you had to put a title on there, how would you describe yourself?’ But we never had a set of questions.”

And thus, unscripted.

Whether it involved a controversial former first lady, an icon in the rock and roll universe, or a veteran in the world of show business, the first rule here is to let the conversation simply flow.

To pass on one generation’s life lessons to another.

On their radio show, Sarah and Vicky had the chance to interview a slew of characters, and they were very specific about the kind of people whose stories they wanted to explore.

“We had a segment on the radio show called The Real OG,” Sarah relates. “The initial sort of scope of the interviewees was that they had to have something done something influential and innovative in the generation prior to us, generally speaking. The whole purpose was to be able to link and to communicate what they had done in a sort of demeanor and language that Generation X would be able to understand. So we incorporated a lot of slang. We never really conformed to who was sitting in the booth. We kept it consistent with how we usually spoke.”

OG, in fact, stands for ‘original gangsta,’ a slang reference to someone who has stood as a pioneer, a thought mover or a change maker.

“We brought them to our booth to ask them questions,” Vicky starts, “They’ve lived a very rich life full of ups and downs. They have the lessons and the backgrounds and the scars. The focus is learning from these people who’ve gone before us.”

To slow down and relearn patience.

A book, Sarah reflects, allows you (and will insist that you) take the time to go through what is being said.

She muses, “This ADD generation, where something written has to be amended to a blog reader’s attention span, this clickable shortcut, shortening URL, 140 character business… it made it more relevant and important to have something you couldn’t hit the refresh button on in an instant, something that wouldn’t have somebody’s attention because it went through another timeline.”

Producing a book also asks that its creators become painfully persistent with the project’s development itself.

Vicky adds, “Everything is very instant, right? From a blog post to a tweet. Coming up with a book took us a year! We were working knowing that our results would come out months later. I think the beautiful thing about working on something that doesn’t give you instant gratification is the discipline you develop during the process. The person that you become after you do a big project - it’s amazing.”

To encapsulate an era, or an aspect of it.

“This is something that will stick around,” says Sarah, referring to a book’s nature as a solid, tangible, physical item. “Should you choose to read it over and over again, the lessons sort of reveal themselves to you, depending on where you are in your life. Or what questions you want answered. Any other medium, I think, wouldn’t have achieved the same resonance.”

Unscripted draws from the radio show’s year on the air, specifically 2009 to 2010. While the names featured may span decades of influence, the pages can’t help but reflect the era when the conversations took place.

Vicky explains, “This is really the actual transcription. We didn’t really paraphrase anything. It’s, I would say, 99% true. The other one percent means we had to edit down to 8 pages per person.”

It was an era on the precipice of change, it would seem.

“Things like Twitter changed both the student and the teacher,” Sarah reasons. “The OGs (as teachers) became more diligent about conveying what matters the most to them in a language and sort of way that would be most understood and not be misinterpreted. It’s very unique for them to be able to express themselves in a demeanor that is very personal. And then for the listeners, they were having an education outside of the classroom, knowing that the world in essence was at their fingertips or on the dial of a radio. And that they’re allowed to ask questions – and to have an opinion.”

To put ideas into motion.

There’s nothing quite like creating a piece of work that takes a life of its own. Unscripted was released just last month, and only time will tell how far its reach in readership will grow to be. Meanwhile, its influence has gone full circle – the very people who put it out there are the first to admit of the book’s potential effects.

Vicky, for one, is learning to adjust to life’s curve balls.

“I look at the book and try to live a little bit more like that, a little more loose. I have my plans and my dreams but I also know that, for a certain part, you also have to go with things. That’s the beauty of it, to be in the moment. I would have to say, in hindsight, that life is unscripted.”

Sarah looks at it another way.

“I’d been really impulsive and free-wheeling my entire life, and now I’m sort of coming to the part where I’ve to be scripted, like there needs to be some kind of form and order. I think that comes with being responsible for another person’s life; the second that you become a mother, life doesn’t revolve around you anymore. It’s not so much of a pseudo-hedonistic life anymore. I think everything is both scripted and unscripted. To a certain extent, you plan, but sometimes you just say, ‘Let’s go!’” - Rappler.com

(All images courtesy of Sarah Meier-Albano and Vicky Herrera. Unscripted is available at Fully Booked http://unscriptedconversations.com/)