As I sat in the darkness in the half-filled hall with the Japanese audience, the credits roll of Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol went on as I soaked in Skywalker Sound’s latest master work, I couldn’t help but noticed names that sounded familiar to me: ILM Singapore’s Mohen Leo (visual effects supervisor), Nelson Lim (digital artist), Nicholas Lim (assistant technical director).
Exactly 10 years ago, I was commissioned by Hewlett Packard to help the Multimedia Development Corporation develop a solution for its Creative Applications Development Center (CADC), the purpose of it, was to help spur the creative industry in Malaysia so we don’t fall behind Thailand, Singapore and the other countries surrounding us.
During those hectic days as Solutions Architect, I was once ushered into a small room to watch un-cut footages of Lord of the Rings. They needed 140 compositors who can use Shake to complete that job. It was then I realized how unready we were, to tackle the daunting task of developing a market.
Shortly after that, Industrial Light & Magic and LucasFilm chose Singapore to be their home in Asia. That was a big news at that time, and I was pretty sure we have totally missed our boats. Malaysian filmmakers were polarized at that time: there were the independents who do, well, independent films. and there were the KRU and commercial filmmakers who were doing, well, commercial films.
Cicakman, among other so-called big budget films never really did push the envelop of filmmaking technologies to make us a worthy adversary to studios in Singapore, Thailand and now, Vietnam. Malaysia was too busy fighting the political game that made it impossible for an industry to thrive.
So there I was, sitting in the darkness, watching the credit roll with the Japanese who obediently read everything on screen until the lights came on, thinking about this Mission Impossible for Malaysia to one day rise up to the challenge to build a creative industry like no other.
Malaysia lacked a transparent film commission to drive the industry, relying on LIMKOKWING or UCSI or one of those half baked film schools in Malaysia to build a talent pool is a joke. I hope we can all give ourselves a second chance, Reboot Malaysia and give those so-called MDEC Administrators the boot and try to rebuild our industry.