Welcome to Singawood.

 My dad is an advertising film director and my stepdad was a prominent creative director at an international advertising agency and so, most of the people who I met growing up were primarily in the business of creating images. For me, going to see a movie with my dad was more than just about seeing a movie. For him, watching movies or TV was more than just about watching TV or a movie. It was about studying the craft of storytelling. I guess it should be no surprise that I spent most of my working life in the busines of storytelling and creating stories.

So, having been around people who made their living from telling stories for around 40 odd years, I guess the question that most people would have for me, what makes a good story. I would argue that the most successful stories are those that involve our aspirations and/ or the things that we can relate to. I take the examples of my favourite brain frying activities – binge watching all sorts of movies.

Take Bollywood as an example. I love Bollywood movies. Sure, the story lines are pretty much the same (in fact there seems to be a limited number of actors on any given number of films) and the song and dance sequences drag the film out unnecessarily. Bollywood is as far away as it gets from the brutal reality for 90 odd percent of India. If Bollywood of ones only source of information about India, you’d get the impression that everyone in India was beautiful and very wealthy.

Yet, despite being all of that, Bollywood is the world’s largest film industry (by volume) and interestingly enough, the money coming into Bollywood comes from India’s poor masses. Why would the poor want to watch something that they have no relation to? Well, the answer is because Bollywood sells a fantasy. The four hours of your average Bollywood movie is four hours of being able to live in a life you can only dream of living rather than the life you actually lead.

However, I discovered the other element, which is realism. I discovered this when watched “Designated Survivor – Sixty Days,” which is the Korean version of “Designated Survivor.” Somehow, the Korean knock off seemed more compelling than its American original. Why was that? Then, I realized it was because South Korea has a nasty twin called North Korea and when Korean TV started showing a president having to deal with an external threat, it seemed all the more real. This is something that the American version didn’t quite match (Since we live in a Post-Cold War era, there’s no compelling villain).

I’ve now discovered Nollywood TV serials. Unlike Bollywood with its’ super slick productions, the Nollywood productions look like they’re shot with a handheld video camera and the sets are pretty much existing locations. The actors are not particularly beautiful and the topics they cover are about real-life nasty stuff that your average Nigerian would find oddly familiar, like government corruption and lawlessness on the streets. If Bollywood is about selling what you’d like to be, Nollywood sells you the life that you actually lead.

One might ask, where does Singapore’s film industry fit in. The truth is that we’re stuck in a neither here-nor-there. If you observe Singawood for want of a better term, you’ll notice that we’re not terribly good at selling the fantasy but we’re also not much good at producing anything that your average Singaporean can relate to. Cop shows for example, appear to distort anything resembling reality. Our TV programs always show fighting fit guys who get into shootouts and make Bruce Lee at his peak look like a geriatric. Given the inability of our actual cops to taser someone successfully, nobody is going to believe a story where the SPF is filled with people who can do the ground level stuff.

I think the problem here is the nature of the film business and dare I say the regulation of that business. Both Bollywood and Nollywood are havens to entrepreneurial activity. Who are the people who make movies in these “Shithole” countries (This Trumpism always works want you want to make a point)? It’s creative sparks, who somehow get out there, look for a backer to make their reality and then someone to distribute the final product. Like Hollywood, most of the production in Bolly and Nolly wood ends in financial failure and the majority of people in the industry struggles. However, the stuff that does succed really succeeds (as a fun fact, the richest actor in the world is Bollywood legend Shahrukh Khan). The film industry is generally brutal and you have to be really good to make it. Who determines “good?” In this case it’s the market. Either you compel people to watch you or you don’t. As a result, every film maker has to pour his or her heart out to ensure that every product sells.

By comparison, there is only one studio in Singawood, which happens to be owned by the government (via Temasek Holdings). Nobody actually starves. The situation is such where our aspiring actors, directors etc don’t need to become waiters just to make ends meet. Most of the “stars” in our local media scene get paid by that one single studio. Pay is not too bad (around $10-15 thousand a month) and you get to top it up by doing MC gigs and so on. The script writers are also on a steady pay cheque from the government. In short, Singawood is an extension of the civil service.

Sure, I have enjoyed some local Jack Neo movies like Ah Boys to Men. But these aren’t films that feel compelled to watch. They’re things you watch because there’s nothing else on TV or you feel obliged to support the local industry. They’re not things that glue you to the television or the movie screen.

The shareholder of our single studio will inevitably make the point that Singapore is too small to have a film industry and the only films that Singapore will make are either projects funding by the very wealthy trying to express themselves or by the government.

However, that’s not quite true. Hong Kong, which is of a comparable size to Singapore has a thriving film industry that sets the standards, particularly for Chinese films. Surely, with its greater cultural diversity, Singapore should be able to produce films that appeal to someone outside the heartland shopping centres.

The powers that need to realise that scripts that people want to read and brought to life cannot be written by civil servants who have gone through vast layers of approval. They should take note that the most compelling story out of Singapore comes from an event that didn’t follow its government written script.