She then moved to Los Angeles , where she hooked up with family friend and talented cinematographer Francis de la Torre, a film school graduate of USC and who has shot several music videos and independent short films shown on Cinemax and HBO. Their fellowship, together with Shiela's sister Donna, took root and formed Ube Media. The threesome then came up with the big idea of producing a film and shooting it in Manila , a landscape that is virtually unfamiliar to foreign audiences.

"The perception abroad is that the Philippines is a crazy, chaotic, terrorist-infested country. There's not a lot of confidence among investors to spend money here, with no guarantee of the quality of the product," she relates. "First and foremost, we want to bring attention to the country, in any shape or form. No one really knows what goes on here. We want something to be out there that represents us today," Shiela offers. Learning a thing or two from the successes of La Buena Onda, or the New Wave of acclaimed Latin American filmmakers who have hit commercial success with independently-produced films such as Mexico 's "Amores Perros" and "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and Brazil 's "City of God ," Ube Media hopes to offer something that will reveal contemporary Filipino society in Modern day Manila . "I think the reason why those foreign films make it in the commercial market is because they deal with universal themes," she believes, and thus they are embarking on creating genre films with concepts that even foreign audiences can relate to.