With his dark-rimmed glasses and studious demeanour, Ahmad Yazid Ahmad Puad cuts a serious, earnest figure.
You’d be forgiven for thinking him unapproachable. But don’t let the initial impression fool you because truth be told, this talented young documentary filmmaker is as fascinating as they come. And he definitely doesn’t bite!
Just engage him in his favourite subject – history – and then sit back and be entranced by this affable Johorian’s ‘alternative’ take on milestones and events in the annals of history. Talk to him long enough and you’ll find your perspective on history – and history makers – suddenly becoming disquietingly challenged.
Still flushed from the headiness of seeing his historical documentary, Road to Nationhood – Season 3, which he helmed with Sri Lankan filmmaker, Rob Nevis, and American/Sarawakian Lydia Lubon, being aired on National Geographic channel recently, Yazid, seated across from me in the spacious meeting room of his company, Rack Focus Films in Bukit Tunku, is in good spirits. Beyond the oversized windows, birds flutter gaily from tree to tree, perching occasionally on a branch to bask in the midmorning sun.
The 34-year-old, who wore the hats of director, scriptwriter and executive producer on the Nationhood project, which charts momentous milestones in our nation’s history, beginning from Malaysia’s journey to Independence right to the history of Sarawak, is already planning his next undertaking – a sports documentary.
His eyes dancing under his glasses, Yazid elaborates: “We’ll be looking at reliving some of the great sporting moments that occurred in Malaysia in the last 40 to 50 years. One of my idols when I was growing up was the boxer Sapok Biki, who won the gold medal in the light flyweight class at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. I’m really looking forward to doing this.”
CHARTING HIS PATH
Yazid’s early journey, as I soon discover, is as fascinating as his approach to documentary-making. As he keeps re-iterating: “One of the key ingredients of a good documentary is a good story and a good story requires an emotional ride, emotional journey. In any emotional journey, there has to be triumphs and failures…” And if Yazid’s life story is anything to go by, he certainly has all the
ingredients to make a documentary about himself.
Leaning towards me across the table, his eyes dancing with mirth, Yazid shares: “One of the things that I get asked quite often is which film school I went to. And I always surprise people when I say
that I never went to any. I’m an SPM drop-out!”
Noting my surprised expression with bemusement, Yazid proceeds to enlighten me on his early years. It seems that his formative schooling was spent at a Chinese school. He admits to enjoying his school days but unfortunately, when he turned 13 and was on the verge of Form 1, his father decided to take him out and enrol him in a ‘sekolah kebangsaan’.
Recalls Yazid: “I was so depressed. And he did this because of some silly reason that couldn’t be resolved. Dad wasn’t happy that the school wouldn’t let me out for Friday prayers because the timing clashed with Geography class! Dad negotiated for months but got nowhere so he took me out!”
Brows furrowing, the Johor Bahru-born filmmaker confides that he doesn’t have many fond memories of his spell at secondary school. “It was just a different world and to be honest, a real culture shock for me. I didn’t adjust well. I didn’t pass my SPM because I failed my BM (Bahasa Malaysia)! Basically with that, my SPM was as good as being in the dustbin. I threw the result paper away. I couldn’t go to the university or get a job.”
That realisation truly hit home when he was 17 – the age when he decided to ‘run away’. “Erm, I made the decision to move out of my family home and head to Kuala Lumpur to see whether I could make a better future for myself,” confides Yazid, before adding: “I had issues with my parents, perhaps because I failed my SPM. I was also a bit depressed. When I left the family home for KL, I only had RM50 in my pocket. I told my dad that I’d get a job in production somehow.”
His brows furrowing in recollection, Yazid recalls: “I did ask dad to come with me to KL and see whether we could grow our production, perhaps go into TV programmes or drama. But he didn’t want. So I went. I was a young man with huge dreams.”
MY FATHER, MY IDOL
His decision to chart his path into this industry wasn’t surprising. After all, Yazid’s father, Ahmad Puad Omar, was a camera man. Shares Yazid: “I started this career very early on with my dad actually. He taught me how to use the camera, how to edit. Do you know I edited my first corporate video when I was only 9? It was a video for one of the big petroleum companies in Pasir Gudang, a client of dad’s.”
The first son out of seven siblings (Yazid has two older sisters; he’s number three and the first boy), Yazid confides that he idolised his father when he was growing up. “Everything he did was fascinating to me. Dad was a part-time bus driver who did corporate/wedding/event videos in JB on the side.”
Smiling fondly, he shares that he grew up watching his father drive the school bus on weekdays, and then shooting wedding or event/corporate videos on the weekend or during school holidays. “I’d tag along with him whenever I had the chance and I often ended up helping to edit for him. I was child labour!” he exclaims, chuckling.
“My dad taught me how to edit but even before that, I’d always loved experimenting on the editing machine. My dad never really knew all the technical stuff so I had to figure those things out myself,” recalls Yazid. “When I was 9 or 10, I was determined to find out how many frames there were in a second. My dad had no idea and there was no Google back then. I’d spend hours jogging the machine. I had to know because I needed to do some precision cutting with music and have an explosion of visuals on screen. I was crazy about precision and all that!”
By the time he was 11, he could already produce 3D animation, says Yazid, pride lacing his voice. “I learnt it all myself. My dad only got me a computer and the software. He had no idea how to open the file so I had to figure it out.”
Fluidly, he leans in again, eyes sparkling: “Do you know MISC (Malaysia International Shipping Corporation Bhd)? I designed their logo when I was 10! I also did a 3D logo for Giant superstore. My dad would just use me - from 3D animation to editing to shooting to putting music. By the time I was 12, I’d made thousands of ringgit for him over a period of a few years. I loved doing all these things and knew that I didn’t want to do anything else.”
His father, recalls Yazid, joined RTM when the young Yazid was around 12 years of age. “He got a contract with them and that’s when he quit his bus driving job. With RTM, where he stayed for 15 years, he travelled all around Johor. He was one of two or three stringers and he had to cover a lot of things for RTM on a daily basis. And because I used to tag along, I was exposed to a lot of ‘real’
stuff.”
Enthusiastically, Yazid reels off: “I saw flash flood victims, road accidents, and we even filmed Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad one time. I used to carry the tripod for dad, set it up and sometimes I’d set the camera and
the mic so he could just roll. I was probably around 13 or so. But as I got older, I helped him less because of my commitments at school.”
FOLLOWING THE DREAM
When he arrived in the big city, the young man with big dreams found himself unemployed. “I ended up spending that time changing my cousin’s diapers,” recalls Yazid, breaking into a hearty guffaw. “I was staying with my aunty who had a six-month-old child. I didn’t want to be a useless bum so I offered to look after my cousin. And that was when I learnt how to make milk, change diapers and take care of a baby!”
It would be a year and a half later when Yazid finally landed a job – at the age of 19. He recalls: “I saw an ad in the papers that said ‘cameraman wanted’. I remember bringing with me my VCDs – those corporate videos which I’d worked on – and showing them to the guy during the interview. I guess he was impressed because I got the job and that’s how I became an employee (cameraman/editor) of Carter Productions in Jalan Imbi. It was a good start.”
During his stint there, Yazid learnt all about the workings of a production house and more. “I had fun. I learnt things that my dad never taught me, namely technical stuff. It was during this time that I met Lydia (Lubon, who was on the Nationhood project). She was freelancing as a production assistant and we used to spend hours talking about films and stuff.”
Lubon aspired to make documentaries, recalls Yazid, an aspiration that he was happy to explore with her. “I suggested that maybe we could do something together,” shares Yazid, continuing: “We
picked a topic. It was about sex education. I went to normal public school and had no idea about sex. What I knew of the topic came from err, pornography. But Lydia, who attended an international school, was taught the subject at school. So we decided to make a film about it and present it for the inaugural Film Festival in 2004.” The duo ended up winning their category with their 25-minute-long
production and toted home RM2000 and a video camera.
Pride in his voice, Yazid recalls: “The film went to the most prestigious video awards in Malaysia at the time. And we also won at another festival in Bangalore. We were so proud when that film got
nominated for best documentary at the Festival Film Malaysia in 2005. We had no training or anything.”
By this time, Yazid had quit his job and Lubon continued to freelance. The duo received plenty of offers to make documentaries. Recalls Yazid: “One of them came from UNICEF Malaysia. We were so excited because it was our first real client. We were offered RM5000 for a 3-minute video. We didn’t know that when we embarked on the undertaking that we needed to have a company so they could
invoice us. That’s when we created Rack Focus Films – 13 years ago.”
From then on, many more commissions came from UNICEF. Says Yazid: “We shot all around the country and did lots of short documentaries for them for YouTube and so on. Then we became more ambitious and started taking on jobs from beyond Malaysia.”
In 2007, the duo were told to pitch an idea for an initiative between FINAS and Discovery Channel called First Time Filmmakers Malaysia (FTFM), which was open to novice filmmakers and aimed to enable talented Malaysian filmmakers to gain recognition on an international platform.
“Our idea was accepted and we became one of the five chosen,” shares Yazid excitedly. “Our topic was about circumcision - the traditional and modern styles. This was where we got our big break. We finally made it on the international arena; a place we’d always wanted to be. It took us a while to get there but we did it.”
And the boy who failed his SPM hasn’t looked back since. A good documentary, as Yazid keeps reiterating, must contain elements of triumphs and failures. Well, Yazid’s certainly walking the talk – in his-story!