Independent Filmmaking in South East Asia

Conversations with Filmmakers on Building and Sustaining a Creative Career

Nico Meissner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367608941
• eBook ISBN: 9781000350364
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: History

Featuring interviews with 27 award-winning and emerging filmmakers, this book is the first comprehensive look at independent filmmaking careers in South East Asia with never-before published insights into the lives and careers of some of the most influential filmmakers in one of the world's most exciting screen production regions.Celebrating filmmaking in South East Asia, the interviews offer unique perspectives that highlight the various paths filmmakers have taken to establish and develop their independent filmmaking careers. Presenting filmmakers whose films span narrative, documentary and experimental genres, and from all ten South East Asian nations, the filmmakers in this collection include:

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• Camera d'Or winner Anthony Chen

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• Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee Mouly Surya

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• NETPAC Award Winner Sheron Dayoc

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• Brunei's first female director, Siti Kamaluddin

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• Directors of the Wathann Festival, Thaiddhi and Thu Thu Shein

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• Lao's only female and first horror film director, Mattie Do
  

Aimed at aspiring filmmakers with a focus on career building outside of global production hubs, Meißner has curated a collection of interviews that reflects the diversity and ambition of filmmaking in South East Asia.

The book is accompanied by a companion website (www.southeastasianfilmcareers.com) that includes 27 micro-documentaries on the included filmmakers.

1
Filmmaking in … Brunei

Siti Kamaluddin

Siti was introduced to me as Brunei’s first female film director. In 2014, she made the country’s first internationally distributed feature film, Yasmine. In the four years since we met, she has founded Brunei’s first film school, shot two more award-winning feature films, established a month-long international film festival in Brunei and created a YouTube Channel during the COVID-19 pandemic – an entrepreneur through and through and one of the most outstanding personalities in Brunei.

Ought to See …
Akademi (2020)
Hari Minggu Yang Ke-Empat (2018)
Yasmine (2014)

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The first time I fell in love with film was as a kid. I loved some extreme sports and used to ride my BMX. Then I watched E.T. sitting in the bicycle basket and the bike starts flying and I’m like, “Oh my God! How did that happen?” For days I was trying to ride and fly. It’s the magic of filmmaking. It’s the magic of cinema and that’s when I fell in love with it. From there on I wanted to make movies. But of course, it wasn’t a realistic dream because in Brunei there were no local movies.

When I was growing up my mum was a banker. She’s retired now and my dad was in education. He taught for a short time, then he was a principal, then he moved to the Ministry of Education. My father loves photography, and he paints in his spare time. I try to paint in my spare time, but I don’t really have too much.

My dad wanted me to become a doctor and I managed to get into medical school, but I didn’t want to go. Chemistry is like three years as opposed to five years of med school, so I studied chemistry in the UK. The School of Chemistry had different modules which you could study within your major. I studied modules like archaeology, human civilisation, oceanography and astronomy for poets, which is astronomy minus the calculations.

When I graduated, I taught chemistry at college for a while.

NM: How did you get into the world of film?

My life is like a series of wonderful accidents – I always get thrown into them. For example, I was hired as a scriptwriter while I was still teaching chemistry. Then the producers said, “We’re looking for a host. You seem like a perfect candidate”. I’m like, “No, I don’t want to do it”. They’re like, “No seriously, it’s either you do it or we’re not going to try and pitch the show”. And I’m like, “Okay”.

And then I went off to London for a holiday after I did the pilot episode. After I came back, they said, “Hey we got signed up, so we’ve got to shoot 13 of these”. I’m like, “What?” So I get thrown into things. The reason that I wrote in the first place was because one of my friends couldn’t write and she said, “I don’t know how to write this thing. I think you can write; would you write this show?” I’m like, “Seriously?” So I wrote it. I never wrote as a teenager. I kept a diary but didn’t write stories.

I’ve always loved film, but I come from Brunei and we’re not a film nation. We don’t really have filmmakers. I was hosting a reality singing show called Passport 2 Fame, which is like the Brunei version of “American Idol”. The winner was my friend and he needed management, so I set up a company and suddenly I’m an artist manager. I helped him and got an album for him. We also did a music label. Then we made my first music video.

Everybody started to ask me to make documentaries and commercials, which is how I got into advertising. The first people who hired me were Royal Brunei Airlines. We had an idea and we just pitched it and got it. It was as simple as that. Then the next one I did was for one of the major banks here. At that time, I was actually already working in Kuala Lumpur and I came back in and out to shoot my commercials in Brunei.

I would fly back and forth and take time out just to learn and get film experience because I never went to film school. My school is the set. I spent three years in Malaysia and came back to Brunei in 2010. I had to come back for an ad and then they just didn’t stop.

I used to keep a condo there in Taman Tun in Kuala Lumpur and had many friends who were Malaysian directors. I’d just call them up and say, “Hey can I just hang out at your set?” They would say, “Hey, you want to do this job? You can do continuity, or you can be the action director?”

I’ve done an action director job for Mohammed Khalid and I’ve worked with Aziz M. Osman. I’ve also worked for KRU Studios. It didn’t actually matter if I was making money from films or not at the time because I was on a big advertising and branding job for a Malaysian client.

I wanted to see how others make films, so I observed not one country, but a few. On my holidays, I would always try and see my friends in different countries – it could be in Thailand or even Indonesia. It was interesting because then I knew how I wanted to make films in Brunei.

I read books on a lot of things. I have read lots of scriptwriting books, even editing books, cinematography books, directing books. And I learn by observing, working on the job and reading books. The technical stuff and working with actors, I’ve learned on-set, but also a lot of it is logic. Sometimes I don’t know how to explain it. It just feels right.

NM: Tell me about your first film.

My first film was Yasmine. It was released in 2014 and was the first Brunei feature film. It’s an action film. I had written another story before I did Yasmine, a drama that didn’t get off the ground. The action element was more important for the producers and investors. Brunei people love action movies.

Yasmine was shot really quickly, in 45 or maybe 40 days. We had a wide release in Indonesia, Brunei and Singapore. I think Malaysian TV is buying it, but it didn’t go into the cinema in Malaysia.

I actually wrote the story in 2011. But when you come from a place like Brunei it’s not easy because there’s no infrastructure, nothing. It just took time to get it off the ground. I went to a friend to ask him to write the screenplay. He’s credited as the writer. We had seven or eight drafts and we were done by 2012. We were shopping the project around before the screenplay was complete.

The full budget for Yasmine was around USD2 million. We had some support for it from the Brunei government. My company, Origin, also put in some money. Yasmine took time to get up because of funding. I knocked on many, many doors. It’s not like we have a film commission. In Singapore they have the Media Development Authority. But film doesn’t fall under any of the ministries in Brunei and so we’re like, “Where do we go?”

When I made Yasmine, we didn’t have a professional film crew nor film gear readily available. I mean, you’re starting from ground zero. It made it expensive. We trained the lead actress for a year for the role. We took time in pre-production for rehearsals because it was her first time acting. She had never been in front of the camera, so it wasn’t just teaching her acting, but the technical aspects because when you shoot, you’re not doing it in sequence. And then sometimes there were cheat angles and we needed to train her with those. So basically, for one year it was just me and my action director helping with the script reading.

We don’t have an acting school or acting coaches in Brunei, so I still do a lot of readings and rehearsals. It’s very different from working with professional actors. Even today I was doing a script reading with two actresses and the rest are non-actors. It’s very, very different.

NM: Can you tell me about your company, Origin?

We set up Origin Artistic Management eleven and a half years ago. It is still my day job. I don’t just have to direct for Origin – I can be used by other companies, but everything has to go through Origin. For example, our action director is currently working on an Indonesian film.

We only manage a small number of artists; me as a director, one action director, three actors and one painter, but we’re very busy. We won’t take on any more as our main focus is not management but advertising, which has grown a lot in the last eleven and a half years.

In the first few years we would get three to five ads, but now it’s really become busy. When we started, Brunei didn’t really have many local commercials, but now people are advertising more. TV advertising started late. It’s more in demand now because you can have a lot more platforms, like digital and online advertising, which Origin is also doing.

For the last ad I did, we released a two-minute version and we also had a 60-second cut. Then you have 15- and 30-second cuts for digital. Now you make ads with that in mind. You don’t just make an ad for one platform. You write it and you treat it for TV and then cinema and online. The two-minute ad will go on YouTube usually or social media if the client has their own social media account. A lot of my advertising friends are not Asians, they are mostly Australian or American.

I mostly work for Bruneian companies, but I also have Jollibee as a client, which is my first Filipino company. I did something through Royal Brunei with Boeing, which was not just video production, but also directing and programming a big event. I’ve done live events where we’ve directed hundreds of performers. For example, His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei’s Birthday Field Performance. That’s a lot more stressful than shooting because it’s live. You only get one take and that’s it.

Again, I never went to school to learn about live event management. I have a great team. That’s essential in a production of any kind. I had a green team to begin with, but now they’re a very experienced, strong team. Everybody is so hardworking, dedicated and loyal. They work with a lot of heart. When I first started, I didn’t really have anybody around me, but now I have all these young people. They’ve been with me for the last few years and they are growing. I have crew from Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia.

I have worked with different crews throughout the years, but I think the core team (producer, production manager and film editor) should be the same if possible. But it all depends on everybody’s schedule if you want to make a film.

Sometimes we have commercials which have a very strong narrative and they’re like a short film. The work is different, but a lot of things are very similar, like the techniques and the technical aspects. I enjoy the advertising work because it is challenging working to a brief. And telling a story in 15 or 30 seconds is not easy. When I make a film, it’s fun because then I have longer shots and it’s like a holiday. With advertising, we shoot for maybe three days and sometimes with bigger jobs I spend maybe about a week – it doesn’t go beyond that.

Even though I still make a lot of commercials, my goal is always to make films. I just really love it. For me film is a magical world that once you step your foot in it’s like, I’m never going to leave. It’s fun.

When I make a movie, I’m just making a movie, and anybody can watch it. It’s not just for the Bruneian audience. There are at least three countries that speak a similar language in our region – Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as a lot of people in Singapore.

This industry is very small. I don’t know everybody in Indonesia or everybody in Malaysia or Singapore, but I do have friends and they can call me if they’re here or if they need anything from Brunei. It’s a big support network, actually. I already had friends and contacts before I made Yasmine, but I made more through it.

NM: Do you see yourself as a producer, director or writer?

I produce, but if I’m scriptwriting or once I go on set, I’m not producing anymore. It doesn’t work. I can start producing and then I’ll just hand it over. Or there could be two or three producers and then I just stop producing once I go into directing.

When working on jobs, I will only do the directing part. If I have huge events, I’ll just program them and direct the show. I’m still training some producers so I can just concentrate on directing.

It’s just really hard to do both jobs at the same time because if you produce and direct, then you have a lapse in between projects because you’re not preparing for the next project. It’s not very efficient. You really need to have a producer and a director. Can you imagine me producing my own work? If I wanted something on set I’d be like, “Approve, approve”. I’d be a monster!

When I write, I write everywhere. I can write in Bali. I can write in Brunei. On my latest project, I was travelling around and then I had an idea for a story while I was surfing in Bali, but I didn’t write anything. Then I was in Malaysia for a bit and I wrote all the scenes out. I did this for every scene until I finished.

NM: You mentioned that you never went to film school, but I know that you have plans for a film school in Brunei.

We need to open up a film school and maybe I’ll teach in it. I want to open one so that we can have Brunei filmmakers and we’ll have content from Brunei. That’s why you don’t know much about Brunei because you don’t see any of our content. We need people to make it.

Brunei sends students out internationally through scholarships. Wouldn’t it be better if it’s done here? It will be more affordable, and you will have even more students. For example, many years ago we didn’t have enough teachers. A lot of our teachers were from the UK, some from Australia or Canada or New Zealand. In the university here, they didn’t have a course for teaching. That’s now changing and most of the schools have local teachers. They’re all very well trained and very good because our education system is really good. Why can’t we do that for film?

And we don’t have enough content. We need to create new content, it doesn’t stop. We need to keep updating it. It’s not like you need to produce just one group of people that’s going to be working for 20 years. You need to keep producing them.

I think that our Brunei kids are not growing up with our stories and I think it’s a shame. I go to a five-year-old and start singing an old children’s song and they don’t know it. That’s scary. I think we are at risk of losing ourselves because we’re only watching content from overseas, from American, Malaysia or Indonesia. In the end, children are going to think it’s not cool to be Bruneian and that’s not good. You need to know who you are.

Brunei is a small country of 400,000 people and we need to have a film school to create local crews and local stories. A lot of people ask me, “Why are you here? You’re not in the right place”. But the thing is, I love Brunei. I’ve lived in different countries and I travel a lot. I do enjoy travelling but this is home and it’s almost ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Filmmaking in … Brunei
• 2 Filmmaking in … Cambodia
• 3 Filmmaking in … Indonesia
• 4 Filmmaking in … Laos
• 5 Filmmaking in … Malaysia
• 6 Filmmaking in … Myanmar
• 7 Urban Sights – a visual essay
• 8 Filmmaking in … the Philippines
• 9 Filmmaking in … Singapore
• 10 Filmmaking in … Thailand
• 11 Filmmaking in … Vietnam
• Index