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SINGAPORE, April 29 — If you were to browse the Golden Village website, you’d probably come across a probably hard-to-understand name called Oversteer among a long list of global blockbusters.
And if you went to the cinema to screen it – lately on VivoCity – the promotional posters would be conspicuous by their absence.
“We don’t have a marketing budget, so you can’t even see our poster outside,” the film’s director, Derrick Lui, 48, recently told TODAY in an interview.
“We don’t have any money, so we’re dependent on other people who have seen the movie and talk about it by word of mouth. “
Without giving too much away, here’s the 86-minute feature film in a nutshell: it tells the story of a young man whose ambitions and interest in the car led him to fight with his family.
Although it’s billed as Singapore’s first racing film, Lui grimaces as he tries to compare it to more familiar titles in the same genre, such as the Hollywood franchise Fast and Furious.
Not only because his film was produced on a very tight budget of “six figures” rather than several million dollars, but also because the family circle is the central theme of his film, he said.
For more than an hour, Lui sat down with TODAY in the Golden Village Gold Class to talk about how he entered the film industry and why it took Oversteer 10 years to see the light of day.
He also explained why he found it difficult to produce a commercially successful film here in Singapore.
Footballer-turned-filmmaker
Lui’s film career is largely a matter of luck; His first career in national team football.
“Since high school, I wanted to be a footballer. And I worked very hard (for this) at the expense of everything else: studies, relationships,” he said.
However, his aspirations were short-lived when he broke his ankle in a match.
Wanting to make the most of his time while serving nationally after his injury, the business graduate continued his studies.
Being a self-proclaimed “naughty” young man who “hates memorizing,” he sought out a course with every conceivable practical element in the curriculum, which led to a bachelor’s degree in film.
Even then, he encountered some obstacles along the way. He still remembered that he was the only one in elegance who failed in his first video editing task.
“It made me think, ‘Is this all a mistake?'”, he recalls. “
Luckily, I had a glorious speaker “to whom the credits replaced my life a little. “She took him aside, told him she saw skill in him, and patiently lived with him the mistakes he had made.
He who, after the conversation, had excelled for the rest of his assignments.
For some 20 years, Lui has embarked on a full-time career in production, with positions in the television business department of Mediacorp, Caldecott Productions International, and MTV Asia, among others.
He remembers traveling for months to attend movie shows, such as a culinary travelogue with Malaysian celebrity chef Wan.
But the father of three eventually changed course and opted to direct short productions so he could make better use of his schedule and spend more time with his children.
“I felt like if you lose them when they’re young, you probably won’t get back what you lost when you’re older. So lose them forever.
Covid-19, coup d’état and sales
His first feature film, 1400, ended in 2015 and won awards at film festivals in Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles, USA. U. S.
Oversteer is his second feature film and his first theatrical release.
I hardly ever saw the light of day.
He lost a producer, who he poached for some other project, as well as investment from a government agency.
At one point in 2017, the film reportedly had a budget of S$2. 5 million, with Singaporean singer and actor Nathan Hartono among the cast, but this did not materialize.
Eventually, the budget was reduced to “six figures,” financed through Lui’s savings and through the sale of his largely “zhenged” car, from family to modernized.
A four-bedroom public apartment?He merely chuckled at the journalist’s attempt to specify the figure he poured into the film.
“It’s tricky to identify detailed prices when you’re dealing with an individual exposure,” he said, downplaying the question.
Even some of filmmaker Jack Neo’s “dramatic, action-free” works cost more than $1 million, Lui said.
He wrote the first draft of the film’s concept 10 years ago and despite everything, he managed to finish filming in 14 days in early 2020 – “very quickly”, by his own admission.
But border closures due to Covid-19 prevented him from traveling to Bangkok to oversee the final touches of the editing and post-production process.
He then outsourced the audio post-production work to a team in Myanmar, but then the 2021 military coup took place and got the work going.
No Jack Neo
After overcoming all obstacles, Oversteer was released in Golden Village theaters in January of this year and has since garnered mixed reactions.
An 8days described it as “incredibly boring” and deserving of being rebranded as Overhaul.
On Letterboxd, a social network where moviegoers share their own reviews, one reviewer described Oversteer as “terribly subscribed,” adding that Lui’s fondness for the local auto scene “is clear, but . . . (translated) generically on the screen. “
On the other hand, a review on the Singapore Film Society’s website had this to say about the film: “Its tight script, strong performances, endearing characters, and original moments will not disappoint. “
When asked to comment, Lui said it’s an integral component of generating an advertising film, where even global blockbusters that have spawned their own cult can’t appeal to everyone.
Closer to home, he gave Neo as an example: “I’ve noticed that a lot of critics can criticize his films, but his box office numbers are very good. “
And he doesn’t see “the next Jack Neo” despite the emergence of a younger generation of filmmakers that’s making waves on the film festival circuit.
Lui said that there are many points that stand in the way of an aspiring director who can’t produce a commercially successful film here, and that’s why he pursued this advertising film work to the end despite the obstacles he faced.
Producing an independent film aimed at a smaller audience at film festivals is already a challenge, but creating one aimed at mass audiences is another set of challenges, he said.
And in Singapore, an aspiring filmmaker has to contend with an inherently small local market with an audience that’s spoilt for choice when it comes to entertainment, from the big screens to streaming services.
Having a smaller target audience naturally means that there is a limit to what one can earn from price ticket sales. He said you can expect to earn around S$2 according to the price ticket sold here, which sets the limit. about how much a filmmaker can spend on making a film.
“If you don’t spend a lot of money, you can’t have the most important players, you can’t have the most productive team,” he said.
He himself has little to no hope of making money from the film, he is under pressure to do it again without regrets.
When asked about his parting words to Singaporeans, Lui replied that making a film is already a complicated task, even more so in Singapore.
“So please, films from Singapur. Si our own Singaporeans don’t make Singaporean films, who else will?-TODAY