Sunday May 10, 2009
Sweet success
By SANDRA LOW
Making a short film may sound simple, but aside from a great script, and the undying commitment of crew and cast, you need a visionary director who is clever and courageous.
IT has been a year since Nazim Esa walked away with the grand prize of RM75,000 at the BMW Shorties 2008 – a short film competition to unearth cinematic talent in Malaysia. The freelance assistant director won for his nine-minute, 52-second film about the complexities of communication, For the Love of Drowning.
The prize allows a budding filmmaker to make a professional short film that will eventually be fielded in international festivals through the BMW group’s global network.
Apart from the grand prize, two Honourable Mention awards were given to freelance English tutor Mahaletchumi Tavamany and producer/director/writer Edmund Yeo Yee Haeng, for Sing in the Rain and Chicken Rice Mystery, respectively.
Moe Izwan Kamal’s Goat, which received the highest number of online votes, received the People’s Choice Award.
Nazim Esa says it’s more challenging to make a short film than a feature. To find out what it takes to be a winner, we recently caught up with Nazim, Moe, Yeo and Mahaletchumi, whose entries were shortlisted from 62 films entered in 2008.
For the Love of Drowning was subsequently shown at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Oberhausen International Film Festival and the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, says Nazim, 29.
“Short films are really a testing ground for filmmakers. In fact, a short film is more challenging to make than a feature, as you need to tell the story in under 20 minutes, and people tend to get bored after 13 minutes!”
Nazim, who has a diploma in fine art and a degree in film and animation, thought all the finalists’ works were great, but he reckons he won because he brought something slightly different to his film, due to his training.
“Some were really good, with a wonderful dose of Malaysian flavour, such as Singing in the Rain, Chicken Rice Mystery and 7 Square. There is the local take on comedy, infused with dark and dry humour. Audiences respond very well to this and I believe this is a genre that will take over the local film industry.”
He adds that as the BMW Shorties was not about recognizing a film that had the most polished look, but about identifying talent and ideas, he felt he had a chance of winning.
“After I won, I people came up to me and said, ‘I heard you won but I can’t understand your film’. That got me thinking that I should venture into more screenplay and narratives through which people can better grasp the concept of my film.”
On the concept of For the Love of Drowning, he says: “It took me three weeks to write this film about the complexities of communication. Compared to the current film I’m making that’s funded by BMW, it was a lot less stressful.”
Nazim adds that the Shorties organisers have helped him build his confidence. To the competitors this year, he says, “Look, listen and learn as stories are everywhere around you. If you have a vision, trust your instincts and don’t be scared.”
Winning the People’s Choice Award has made Moe Izwan more confident. Goat is a six-minute, 20-second film about a five-year-old’s perspective of the world around him.
“I think I garnered the most votes online because of the curiosity factor. We filmed it such that viewers were piqued about the child’s entity,” says Moe Izwan, 27. “People identified with the story as we were all kids once, and they understood it easily.”
This producer and creative director of a television and film production house, Jo Mama Productions, has been making short films since he was 18.
“Zak Kamal, one of my partners, came up with the idea for Goat and he wrote it around a little boy who didn’t like taking baths, keeping in mind the Shorties’ theme of H2O,” he says.
Moe took only a weekend to conceptualise the five-page script for Goat, and half a day to shoot it. His budget: RM800.
“The toughest thing was directing an eight-year-old! I have amazing respect for directors who work with kids. We learnt that Hakim, our eight-year-old actor, loved his playstation so we got him to act out his scenes and then promised him time on his favourite game!”
“I was pleasantly surprised with the win and it has given me more confidence, especially with the judges telling me that I have potential,” Moe adds, with a grin.
He believes that Malaysian films were given a huge boost when Yasmin Ahmad’s Sepet, an inter-racial romance, was recognised at the Cannes Film Festival, Today, the Cannes, Sundance and New York City’s Tribeca film festivals are all looking at new talent from South East-Asia for independent films.
How can BMW make its competition more challenging?
“They could put in more requirements, for example, specify that a particular character or scenario be included in the films, to see how budding filmmakers interpret and create their shorties around that.”
Edmund Yeo Yee Haeng’s 18-minute, 45-second Chicken Rice Mystery was screened at the Dubai International Film Festival after the Shorties.
Yeo, a producer/director/writer with Greenlight Pictures, a local production company, was on a roll after that – he directed four new short films and a full-length film.
For Mahaletchumi, the toughest part of making a short film is the editing. One of his short films, Love Suicides, has been selected for official competition at the up-coming Paris Cinema Film Festival.
In an e-mail interview from Toyko where he is doing his masters in film at Waseda University on a scholarship, Yeo says:
“The H2O theme was quite challenging and I found it difficult to place that in the narrative. I decided to work it into the aesthetics of the film, using water to generate atmosphere and for symbolism. For example, the climatic scene in which the boy has to make an important decision is set at the pasar malam on a rainy night, and the mother’s feelings of turmoil are illustrated by the shots of water droplets around her.”
Yeo, shot his RM2,000 film over two days, mostly in his own house and places nearby.“I was already happy to be shortlisted and never thought of winning. It felt like being a kid again. It was like I had a nice little toy that I loved, and knowing that other people also thought the toy was cool gave me a quiet sense of joy,” he says.
“I really hope that more people will start paying attention to short films as a medium. It’s probably quite alien to some, but just like how you can find gems in novels and short stories, some local short films are definitely worth a look. Especially now that they are now making some waves at international film festivals.”
Mahaletchumi, 29, was one of the three women shortlisted for the BMW Shorties. Sing in the Rain runs for 18 minutes and 32 seconds.
“Winning was unreal. I cannot take all the credit as I had a really good team from day one and everyone made an important contribution,” says the freelance English tutor.
Mahaletchumi’s RM800 film took four days to shoot and a week to edit. “The toughest part was editing as we had to cut a lot of good scenes to ensure it was under 20 minutes.”
To aspiring filmmakers, she says: “A shortie allows a filmmaker to send a very strong message to the community. It doesn’t take a complicated story to make a good short film. You just need a simple story line supported by good filming to present your story well.”
Sing in the Rain was Mahaletchumi’s first effort submitted for a competition. After the Honourable Mention award, she got to attend two premieres at the Rome International Film Festival, courtesy of BMW. The trip was a first for her as well. Not bad for a girl who aspired to be an actress when she was young.
The BMW Shorties 2009 will be launched on May 14. For details of this competition, open to aspiring Malaysian filmmakers aged 18 and above, visit www.bmwshorties.com.my.
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