The man with a plan
The new director-general of Finas aims to take the film industry out of its traditional sphere.
ON a sunny Friday morning, Datuk Kamil Othman arrives at the Finas (National Film Development Corporation) complex in Petaling Jaya, Selangor has a quick smoke outside before stepping into his office and starting the day proper with a discussion with a member of his staff.
As they go through the list of things he has to give his attention to, Kamil takes out his little notebook, opens to a new page and begins to write.
“OK, item number ...” he mutters, “... number ... 77 ...”
Kamil has been a very busy man since taking over the director-general’s office in Finas in November last year. But I’m fortunate to get a glimpse of how he works. He achieves a rather unusual and seemingly impossible balance of an easy-going and approachable persona and a no-nonsense attitude. He cracks jokes easily but you have to be mindful to take his words seriously when it comes to things related to his job.
Coming off a very successful stint at the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) where he had brought a much needed boost to the local animation industry, he now takes on his new position with a lot of other people’s expectations tailing him.
When it was announced last year that he would be Finas’ new director-general, the film and TV community reacted with many positive comments ( see sidebar).
Many pinned their hopes on him to bring much needed and pined for changes to the film and TV industry. This is understandable considering that recently local films have not been making much at the box-office, except for The Journey, which became the highest-grossing local film ever.
A scriptwriter that I spoke to lamented how things are slowing down in the industry and the number of jobs he gets has been gradually decreasing.
Also, Kamil is a well-known film buff, and even as a radio DJ back when he was with Time Highway Radio, he was already known as a person who is not prone to cookie-cutter aesthetics and trends.
Joe Kidd, a member of the punk band Carburetor Dung that had been on Kamil’s radio show Alternative Rock Hour twice, recalls how he was once stuck in a traffic jam listening to Black Sabbath’s live version of War Pigs that went on uninterrupted for nine minutes.
“That’s Kamil!” says Joe. “He was also playing local underground stuff when no other DJ or station would.”
With such a reputation as a trailblazer, it’s no wonder there is so much expectation heaped upon him. But does it bring added pressure to his new job?
“It adds pressure in terms of managing expectations,” says Kamil, when he finally has time to do this interview proper. Even then, there are already people outside his office waiting to see him.
“Different people have different ways of measuring the success of the industry. For some, they might think the way to build the industry is through more funding, more direct support. There may be others who think the solution lies in policies.
“But I think why most people are feeling confident, and this is where the pressure comes, is because we have a track record in building the animation industry. MDeC’s 14 years were about building the animation industry without following the traditional support system that Malaysia normally has.”
What happened at MDeC was that the animation industry was built from the ground up, with emphasis on manpower, infrastructure, network and distribution. These were the “building blocks of the industry. . Money was not the main focus.
Passion and creativity
This untraditional model enabled Malaysian animation to travel out of the country. Popular cartoon series Upin & Ipin was sold to Indonesia and even debuted on Disney Channel Asia. The steampunk-influenced War Of The Worlds: Goliath utilised local and American talents and was released in the United States.
Kamil now aims to take the film industry out of its “traditional” sphere of production grants and loans, in an effort to turn it from a heavily-subsidised industry into one driven by passion and creativity.
What has happened now, he says, is that practitioners are “making money from the production and not the product”. By receiving funds wholesale for an entire production much like a cash handout, filmmakers are no longer trying to make a film that sells, because everyone is already financially remunerated in just making the film.
“Even before the war there were already films being made here,” says Kamil. “The films made in the early days are what the films today should also be like. The early films, under Shaw Bros and Cathay, were all about business. It was all about giving entertainment and making money in the process.
“For the film and TV industry here of late, a majority is funded by the government. And that becomes the main source of one’s production budget, revenue and margins. It’s not the normal business way of doing things.”
The first thing that has to change is the funding mechanism, he says. It should now be in the form of “seed funding”, to give filmmakers a starting point. To qualify for the seed funding, filmmakers must show that they know their target market, their product and their environment.
“What I want to prevent is someone suddenly waking up one day and deciding to be a filmmaker all because there is money in it, just because the government is providing funds,” says Kamil.
He believes that government funds should be used as seed-funding for first-time filmmakers, matching grants for producers who have already raised part of their funds elsewhere, or incentives for those who have had their products travel around the world.
“The content creators must take it upon themselves to encourage high standards among their community,” adds Kamil. “This is to move towards things such as market validation and export orientation, so that the industry no longer depends entirely on the government for funding and airtime.
“A new breed of producers that can seek funds elsewhere and get the content distributed throughout the world is sorely needed.”
He also calls on local broadcasters to play a more developmental role and invest more in productions from the open local market to build smart partnerships.
“This is already taking place in some ways, however, the numbers are still small and monopolistic situations are still commonplace,” he says. “The newer entrants are the ones that are not really benefiting.”
If filmmaking should be treated as a money-making venture, then the obvious question is, what about the independent arthouse films which are rarely profitable?
“I am an arthouse film buff,’ says Kamil. “But even to make an arthouse film, it costs money. In the case of arthouse films, they don’t have to be expensive. And arthouse films depend on one thing, creativity. And that is