“My Magic” Talk (2008)0

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 3^rd 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 5^th, 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