Sunday November 22, 2009
Making magic
By ANDREW SIA
How does one make a movie that is invited to show at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France?
THE mother owns a cheesy karaoke bar set among desolate oil palm plantations. Her son returns after studies in Kuala Lumpur, works part-time shooting karaoke videos and hopes to take over the bar, perhaps even find love and the true meaning of Home. But selfish desires intervene....
How did this simple storyline become a movie invited to show at one of the world’s premiere film festivals, the Cannes Film Festival in France? Listening to filmmaker Chris Chong and co-scripwriter Shahnon Shah banter back and forth as they answer my questions, how they made the little movie that could becomes apparent.
Chong: Karaoke is a simple home coming story, people sing in it and you can sing along. Did you find it difficult to watch?
It’s a bit slow and moody.
Chong: There are some parts that are slow because I don’t move the camera and others where I cut the shots together.
Shahnon: He was trying to balance the fun in the karaoke and challenging viewers with the narrative, and visually. There’s some experimentation to get the audience to experience the story differently.
Proud papas: First-time feature filmmakers Chris Chong (left) and Shahnon Shah are tickled pink their little movie made it onto the international film festival circuit. – AZMAN GHANI / The Star Wouldn’t you say Karaoke is more melancholic – a karaoke in a desolate palm oil estate! – rather than fun?
Chong: No, I think the songs are fun (laughs).
Shahnon: The songs are fun but I think you’re right, home coming is not as sweet as we always think it will be, things change.
The original songs in the movie are set to corny electronic music (deliberately, for effect, says Shahnon ) and poorly sung so Karaoke is not exactly your blockbuster musical with catchy songs. What exactly was the effect you were going for with the songs?
Shahnon: There are scenes where the songs will directly ‘excavate’ what is happening in the scene, and others where the songs tell you the opposite.
Why was the Raihan-type Muslim song used?
Shahnon: It is a bit incongruous, isn’t it, as it’s in a karaoke on a palm oil estate (the movie also has Indian customers talking in Tamil), but such songs are sung in real karaokes.
Chong: Yeah, even in KK (Kota Kinabalu, his home town).
Shahnon: It’s interesting. Even though it’s a nasyid (Muslim song), a non-Muslim may go up and sing it, just as a Malay can go and sing a Hindi song – this is the beauty of karoake, anyone can take on a (different) persona, and that’s another layer in the movie.
A review of Karaoke at screendaily.com comments that Chong seems more interested in the landscape his characters inhabit – there are scenes of people overshadowed by monotonous masses of oil palm trees, for instance. Comments?
Shahnon: For Chris, it’s about the relationship between people and places, such as the palm oil estate and the karaoke bar. I come from a theatre background, so it’s very much the characters first before anything else.
Chong: For me, it’s places first. I find that places have very much more depth to them. Like, say, a house with three owners, many people have lived and passed through it, so it has more memories than one person could actually hold. That gives it more depth than just one person.
Shahnon: The karaoke bar is also a character. And if you watch Chris’ short film, Block B, the apartment block is a character too.
With such different approaches, how did you manage to co-write?
Shahnon: We just understand each other. For instance, he knows my music since he has seen my play, Air Con. For Chris, the soundscape is very important.
Chong: The sound is in Dolby 5.1, that means there are five speakers. In every scene, I went through (the sound) for five speakers. I’m thinking of your ears in every scene.
How did visual artist Yee I-Lann contribute?
Chong: I-Lann is a fantastic production designer. This is very important. It’s about what’s in every shot, the mood of the locations and how you use them to tell the story. Most people just pick a convenient and cheap location, but with I-Lann, the colours and textures have to tell a story.
The setting is significant, how the family live upstairs from the karaoke bar. The home that he (the protagonist) wants is upstairs but the fantasy is downstairs.
And it’s set inside a palm oil estate, it builds on that mood, otherwise there is no melancholy, the boy goes home, gets disappointed, but then you don’t really care. But you care because of the weight of what you see.
All that was done by I-Lann. Everything was thought out, and that’s why we’re very proud of this movie.
What are some of your film influences?
Shahnon: One of my favourite films is Raise the Red Lantern (by the award-winning Zhang Yimou). The story and visuals are stunning.
Chong: That was shot in a very visually structured way, room to room to wide shot, room to room to wide shot, like that.
Shanon: And there’s The Crucible, I like the film but it was the script that really grabbed me. That’s the kind of play I want to write one day, it tells a big story. In Karaoke, Chris had to tell me to make the story smaller.
Chong: In Karaoke, everything is done in three parts, beginning, middle and end, three scenes in the bar, three karaoke-making (filming) scenes. All these are supposed to communicate with each other. Shahnon thinks very fluidly, whereas I am more structured.
Many films are formulaic. In Karaoke, we flip the structure of what a film is supposed to be. We make sure people notice the sounds, the structure of the film, and how differently the shots are done, but we still have a very simple homecoming story in the middle.
Is it true that Sabah has a home-grown culture of bluesy, country & western style songs (such as the “classic” karaoke hit Proton Saga Kelabu about a guy losing his girl to the driver of the titular grey Proton Saga) and did that influence you to create Karaoke’s forlorn mood?
Chong: (Long pause) Maybe, maybe ... we sit three or four times a week in a karaoke (in Kota Kinabalu), but sometimes we don’t even talk to each other, we’re just there to hang out and drink and that’s it, it’s not so much a party.
In the movie, the people singing want something that they see on the (karaoke) screen. They want the fantasy, like when single people feel lonely, they want romance. I wanted the main character to long for his romantic ideal of what’s it’s like to be home.
When people sing at karaokes, they put their heart into it, even though they may never have the kind of love affair they see on the screen – just as the main character has a fantasy of home, of having a girlfriend and of taking over his mother’s karaoke. In the end, he sings and is fully immersed in his fantasy.
> ‘Karaoke’ will be screened at the GSC cinema in Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur, from Thursday to Dec 2.
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