Igniting passion through competition

2009/07/17

NURJEHAN MOHAMED

The Astro Nextgen Contentpreneur Awards are encouraging communications and multimedia students to work towards innovation in the field, writes NURJEHAN MOHAMED

THOUGH winning four of 11 categories in the Astro Nextgen Contentpreneur Awards (NCA) last year was an exciting achievement, Quek Shio Chuan sees it as an impetus to improve his abilities in the field of multimedia.

“Last year I entered my first music video called Contaminated after encouragement from my lecturer and teammates,” says the 23-year-old Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Communications in Broadcasting student.

Contaminated, which won the music and arrangement, lyrics, art direction and music video categories, depicts the sufferings of Mother Nature in a stylistic way — fusing contrasting elements in visuals and audio.
“The main challenge we faced was during post-production as it was our first time editing a video,” says Quek, who headed the team behind the video.

Taking part in the competition enabled the students to broadcast their work to a wide audience and gave them a deeper desire to improve themselves.

“It has taught me that winning should not be the ultimate goal but be used as a motivation to move on to the next level,” he says, adding that winning last year has boosted the team’s confidence as well.

The NCA caters to tertiary students in the fields of communications, broadcasting and multimedia who aim to pursue an education or career in broadcasting.

Awards are given for short content (television and Internet); documentary; animation; visual effects; web design; art direction; music video; lyrics; music and arrangement; sound effects; and creative use of medium.

Winners get RM10,000, a trophy and a chance to pitch for a government grant.

This year Quek and his group submitted a short documentary about the fishermen at Segenting, Johor, who are still using the gombang method of catching fish.
“We were better prepared this time — we had a good idea of the shots we wanted before filming,” says Quek, adding that gaining more experience through competing is what is most important to him.

For Mohd Rasydan Naim, whose short animation film Kesungguhan won the sound effects award, the contest presented an opportunity for his group to show its work to peers and industry players alike.

“Being winners in the NCA also means getting recognition and more job opportunities as well as getting a chance to pitch for a government grant to continue our work,” says the Multimedia University (MMU) Foundation in Creative Multimedia student.

The MMU project was inspired by another short animation clip, Kiwi, which the team saw on YouTube.

“This was our first attempt at making an animation clip and we learnt a lot about new animation, modelling and rendering techniques,” adds Mohd Rasydan.

Their biggest challenges were trying to juggle coursework and working on their entry as well as dealing with insufficient hardware to fully realise their goals for the video.

Mohd Rasydan entered another animation short this year, exploring more of the fantasy genre and says the experience and skills the group gained from joining the contest last year helped them greatly in developing their project this year.

“Entering the NCA gave us the opportunity to improve our skills and the confidence to aim higher in this field,” says Mohd Rasydan.

Redha Fansuri Ahmed Fauzi, an MMU graduate who is currently working with HIA Architects as a 3D architectural designer, entered the NCA in his final year of university with a visual effects-driven short film he created in 2007.

“It’s an action-cum-science fiction animation which allowed me to experiment with the latest technology,” he says.

His group’s video, entitled Project 57, won the awards for visual effects and animation.

One of the biggest challenges encountered by his group was during filming because that is when everything has to be carefully controlled to facilitate editing later.

“One of the things I learnt from the experience was how to manage a visual effects film production,” says Redha Fansuri.

“I also learnt that hardship during production pays off in the end.”
Though what he is doing now has little to do with what he did for the project, his experience gives him a different perspective from others in his field.

“The competition also provides a great platform to network with other contestants who would later be your colleagues.”

Mohd Rasydan Naim’s video is his first attempt at making an animation clip