Producers must change mindsets and ways of producing films - Finas

Malaysian film producers must now start changing their mindsets and ways of producing films, TV series or documentaries to ensure their outputs would not face difficulties in the process of finding distributors and broadcasters.

National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (Finas) Director-General Datuk Kamil Othman said producers must be prepared with their pre-production work by finding the right distributors and broadcasters before they started working, not leaving it as a post-production work.

"We (Finas) usually fund the (film) projects, for which some of them have not figured out who are their distributors or where will it be shown.

"They must understand that all of these investments are aimed to make the outputs accepted in the market.

"I personally feel that the ‘Borneo’ documentary has the right model where producers meet first. Along the way, they brought in the broadcasters into the picture.

"I think we will adopt this model for future films, TV series or documentaries,” he told a press conference after witnessing the signing of the biggest factual co-production agreement between Singapore and Malaysia here, Thursday.

The agreement was signed between leading Malaysian producer Kyanite TV and Singapore’s multi-award winning production company Beach House Pictures (BHP) at the opening ceremony of the 5th Asia Content Business Summit (ACBS) to produce 10 half-an-hour episodes observatory documentary entitled ‘Borneo’.

The two-day summit, hosted by the Communications and Multimedia Ministry and Finas, is being held for the first time in Malaysia and as part of KL Converge! 2016 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC).

According to Kamil, being prepared could create an environment where the production process of a film would not be fraught with whether or not it would work or be accepted.

He stressed that it was imperative to kickstart the production process.

"When that’s being figured out, the team can focus on the creative aspect of the film, the writers' focus on writing the best scripts and plots, knowing that at the end of the day, there are distributors waiting to distribute the output and broadcasters to broadcast it," he said.

Commenting on the content development, Kamil said the production team must also now be diverse to attract even more diverse investors into their projects.

He said Finas was now focusing on producers, noting that they must be exposed and made aware that the money to fund their projects did not come from the government entirely.

"There are people out there who can co-invest and in the process, they co-produce the film because that’s how the world is today. The whole world is your potential market, not just domestic or regional," he added. -Bernama