Digital Media Production

After I listened to the talk by the famous Singapore director, Jack Neo, I knew more about the film industry of Singapore. This talk was more like an interview. In the talk, Dr. Brown and some other lecturers just asked some questions and Jack answered these questions from his own experience. Because of this, the talk almost had nothing to do with technology and the topics were very broad. Because of the broadness of the talk, it seemed a bit messy and this maybe the same problem of this blog. Regard of these things, the talk was really interesting or I should say it was just these things that made the talk so interesting. You know, the formal lectures are always dull and sometimes we just can’t help to skip them. Basically, I will cover the most of the points of the talk and add the experience of me as once I was the assistant director of my class’ drama.
The talk began with Dr. Brown’s interesting introduction. In fact, as I stayed in for about one year and I never watched a Singapore movie before, I didn’t know Jack Neo is such a famous director in Singapore.
After the introduction, Dr. Brown went directly to the questions. I forget what the question really was, but I still remember his answer. He answered the question from his own experience of making films. As first, he was an EP (if I am not wrong, EP is short for Entertainment Partners). EP is in charge of the money. EP should decide the amount of money spending on the film and balance the income and expenditure. Because of this special experience, he talked more about the money. He said that a dilemma of Singapore film industry is the lack of money. He took the fight scene for an example: the fight scene can be a cheap one or a complicate but expensive one; they should always decide whether the scene being a complicate one is necessary because of the lack of money. To make it funny, he said that if you couldn’t find enough money, you can ask money from your mother and put her face on the scene. Also because of the lack of money, the special effect is not satisfactory. He said that he didn’t have enough money employ experts to do the CG (computer graphics). Because of this, he said that if you didn’t like Singapore film or even hate Singapore film, don’t just complain but try to donate some money for us.
He said that the script was the most important one to make a successful film. The film should have a big start, sex and action and dramatic changes to catch the audiences’ eye-ball. When Jack was still an EP, a young director tried to produce a film and he wanted to cooperate with Jack. But after read the script, Jack advised him to change the story. The young director didn’t take it and finally he used his own money to produce film. When he promoted his film, there was no cinema like this film, though the film was an expensive one. Later, he mentioned that the film which was simple but meaningful or complicate and interesting could always catch audiences’ eyes. From my own its experience, I think the complicate one is harder job. Our drama based on a historical story which happened in Han Dynasty of China. When we discussed whether our class drama should be an educative one or funny one, we decided to make a funny one. It is because, if we want to do an educative one, we must have professional directors to understand the characters fully but even myself can’t do this. But making a funny one is easy, we just add irrational things. For example, we let the characters play computer games which can’t happen at that time and we added the background music of the game; there were also some scandals which, in fact, were not the truth. It was easy for my classmates to express such kind of ideas in the drama.
At the end of the talk, he gave some advice for the ones who want to be a director. He suggested that they should start with MTV, because the MTV didn’t need too much logic and was easy for the beginners. He also suggested that when make the MTV, don’t do whatever you want. He said that some directors just killed the people randomly and made the film quite bloody and violent. He suggested that when you get the power, try to control yourself.
I learned a lot from the talk. I began to know the dilemma of Singapore film industry and the digital media production. In addition, I began to watch Singapore film. Yesterday, I just watched I Not Stupid Too, directed by Jack Neo.
It is educative and I found that his film was really good.