The MY MAGIC TALK was held on 20 October 2008. The guests of the talk, the director, writer and producer of the film My Magic: Eric Khoo, Kim Hoh Wong and Tan Fong Cheng respectively spoke about their experience making the film and gave some useful tips on film production. Film And Media Studies (FMS) students of Ngee Ann Polytechnic and some lecturers attended the talk. A behind the scene video and still photographs of the film was shown. Below is a transcript of the Question and Answer session and a short video about My Magic.

Question: Hi I’m Farhan from 3rd year FSV, what are the toughest challenges you faced directing in a language that you weren’t entirely fluent in?

Eric Khoo(director):To be honest it is pretty easy because the great thing was that Francis is fluent in English so he knew exactly  what the character was all about and you know he was more of a friend for me than a guy who discussed about the character. (Writer’s name) wrote the dialogue and he has translate the dialogue into Tamil and it was done with one of the actresses in the film Grace so he says okay, I don’t want to translate it this way let’s go for this other way so I know exactly what they’re basically saying and on location with Grace  I would have the headphones on her ears so that she would listen to the way both Francis and (the kid) would pronounce the words and I said if ever there’s any sort of fault in it, just say cut because I wouldn’t know but I watch it for the performance and how they would act it out so you know I was saying, by the grace of god I found grace and she became my ears and she…

Kim Hoh Wong (writer) :And it was actually quite challenging. In a way, you know, it was just that we were very lucky to have Grace who happened to be an actress. I mean she was very experienced, she had done theatre she had done TV, she was very sensitive to, lets say, the nuances of both English and Tamil, she understood exactly what I meant when I said “ you know, okay this has got to sound like this, it can’t sound too stilted, too formal” she’s a trained actress and a trained director, she knows exactly what we were trying to achieve and then sometimes she gives rather good suggestions, I think Eric gave her cart blanch in the sense that okay grace listen you know I mean we are just the two of us are just looking out for the expressions and how they are acting (interruption)

Eric Khoo :For me I was more concerned in the terms of the level which Francis was drunk, because you know massive drunk, not so drunk,  you know and it had to be realistic and Francis actually did a great job and he was not drinking whisky at all, it was just Chinese tea, I mean how drunk you want this that was important.

Kim Hoh Wong (writer) :The thing is we didn’t know that Tamil is quite a tonal language  so it like you could be mispronouncing words  despite what Francis told us he’s not exactly 100% fluent in the language so often time he is pronouncing it wrong  if we didn’t have her around we would be in deep trouble

Question: You were saying that sometimes that you have only 4 hours to scout place on the spot what are the challenges you faced in getting location for such a short notice?

Eric Khoo : We didn’t film in the MRT though…(audience laugh)

Tan Fong Cheng (producer):And knowing that we had a very low budget  for this show I think we were very realistic about lots of things so when Eric says I just need to film this boy talking so the first thing I was thinking was a public place so spaces like parks open space where you don’t have to ask for permission that would be the fastest and I found out that it would be good to be familiar actually those places where you live in there are lots of those spots just take notice of them because you never know in last minutes it will be very useful for do location like…

Eric Khoo : And find them in close proximity so that you don’t trouble the…

Tan Fong Cheng (producer):So it’s places where you’re familiar with like the place where I was looking for at 4 hours time that was like at the back of my house and it was just next to the railway track and I think ,personally, it had flavor …and that is the advice when I became a production assistant …this director told me that “what you should do is always have a notebook that as you move around Singapore or any place just take note that it could be locations that you could use on a shoot so that during times of need you could always refer to this little notebook because it will be a very good reference to you and I think it is something that I have learn.

Eric Khoo : But actually when I see a location, I went around at night to find a little cheap bar and because we didn’t have a budget so we went to Joo Chiat and Little India and finally when one of the student from Lassalle says “I think I found a place for you” and it was this transsexual bar at Orchard towers or was it call ‘Crazy Horse’ and they have all these graffiti on the wall… and it was brilliant.  And then I met the owner. The owner looks like an old auntie in her 60s and I said I love this place and ask can I film here and she said as long as you don’t depict this place as…and she was so nice and she let us film there for two days and leave by 5 and we gave her an angpao.

Question: Having won the cultural medallion, how do you see your future role in the film industry?

Eric Khoo: I won the Young Artist Award 10 years ago…I thought I was very old and you know, I’m always like looking out for signs and signals so when I thought that because of the 80 thousand dollar price, I told Francis we cannot make the film and in some ways if I hadn’t receive the Cultural Medallion, I may have made the film last year…and I don’t think I am going to change meaning I’ll still make films but I think it was a good point that I got it last year. Does that answer your question?

Question: I heard you have been traveling around…

Eric Khoo: Yeah…I just came back last week from Paris because I was doing the promotion for My Magic. It’ll be released there November 5th, the day we’ll know whether Obama gets in (laugh). And the film was also premiered in Busan and it is great because it has really strong distributor called Eureka. They’ve got the new film called “The Wrestler” with Mickey Rourke and they will try to release My Magic in February or March. Now Francis is in the Tokyo Film Festival where they’re screening it but I think in terms of territories, the one territory that I really want has always been Japan and I hope we can make a deal with them and if the distributor can believe in the film and will do some marketing, I think we can hit the box office. In Busan, it was all packed halls about 600 seats and the audience cried, they were moved by the film.

Question: Because you like to have Kim Hoh as your writer, how is your relationship with him?

Eric Khoo : Well we’re actually lovers….(audience laugh). Well, I know Kim Hoh for around twenty years or 25 years? And we would always joked about us doing a script together and I think he was working at THE NEW PAPER and he was bored there so I said to him since you are so bored, maybe its time for you to write and…okay I’ll give you an idea of BE WITH ME its quite interesting. A couple years back, my nephew who was half French, 13 years old, came to Singapore during Christmas for a visit and he was talking to me about this girl that he was so in love in and he had seen this movie together and when his arm has crossed the gates of her arm, he felt like sea wave just move through his body. And he was like “I’ve been here for 2 weeks and I just can’t get her out of my mind and then I start to think back…who was my first love? Who I was crazy about?

Well, I’m going to make something up. It’s like teenage hood, middle aged and old aged and when I was hanging up with Kim Hoh in a bar in Holland Village and I said lets do a film that would end with HOPE but I want it to be almost a silent film and I would like it to be in the form of which people communicate whether its SMS or e-mail or a letter of communication and we were working on this and our main central character was a journalist. And, in one of the earlier draft, Francis from MY MAGIC, was going to be a character in Be With Me. But, characters came and characters went but actually it was teenage, middle aged guy and old age. And then Kim Hoh was pulled to The Straits Time so he left The New Paper and I remember all these discussion because we meet a lot of interesting people.

Transcript from Muhamad Afiq B Jaafar

Special Thanks: CTV of Ngee Ann Polytechic