This is Christmas eve and this is my first and probably the last blog post for 2023. The year passed quickly and then I realised that I have not blogged for the whole year. I only checked the blog after someone I met at the Asia TV Forum (ATF) 2023, asked about it.
I am surprised. I stopped writing because I thought very few people, if any, read blogs these days. Instead Tiktok videos are all a rage!
This is My TikTok.
But I am glad that somebody remembers me because of my blog. Well not quite really, as I also learned that she also happened to promote the short film "Gift", which went viral in 2014. So, a good film does hangs around in people's minds for a very long time,
A video/film is remembered because it tells a story that makes profound emotional connections with the audience. These days with the Internet, videos can go viral worldwide instantly.
The persistence and wide reach of Youtube also means it is now difficult to estimate the loading fees for commercials. As once online, the commercial technically has a global reach and unless it is taken down, it will be online perpetually. I believe this has caused some downward pressure on an actor's loading fees.
Also these days, talent can also be discovered online via social media. Granted that not every online celebrity has the desired acting abilities or of be of commercial material, the Internet does cast the net very wide. Thus thrusting more potential talents to the front of the camera. I cannot complain about this, as I was too talent scouted online via social media 14 years ago. Though not an influencer, I was picked up out of the blue and thrown into the deep end of acting. The rest is history.
So much so that actors are now expected to have some social media presence. However, not much is done to educate them about how they should go about with this new avenue of self-promotion. Many actors formerly protected by their managers are now thrown into the wild wild world of social media.
Social media can be a double edged sword. Wrongly applied, it can ruin the online persona and branding of the actor. It can also overexpose the actor.
Also these days, some businesses use online influencers, instead of actors, to promote their products. Usually, this results in more casual production quality and possibly risking the desired perception of the brand name. However, such promotional videos are likely to be cheaper to produce and they usually work well with brand names that have less snobbish requirements.
In some instances, businesses have also done away with human actors/models/influencers entirely and use Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated avatars. These avatars are sculptured to look picture perfect and will never age a single day from the first day you use them. Besides, they are also free of scandals. These avatars have been applied with some success in the US and China, even though the followers know that they are not real.
As a learning exercise, I have used AI to generate a dialogue, fictitious faces and animate a 2 minute video recently. Here it is:
AI will continue to make onslaughts into film production and acting. At the lower end of corporate videos, businesses may not need a human to illustrate their product. For instance, if it is a video to illustrate the instructions to use a microwave oven, human emotional connection is less important, but rather, clear and explicit graphics are crucial. I have given a talk to film makers, technologists and artists about this. See here.
Over time bad actors, that is, those that are unable to deliver the necessary human emotional connections will be replaced by photo-realistic avatars in lower end spectrum of instructional videos.
Conversely, actors that can deliver strong emotional bonds with the audience and turn them to be loyal following, will get more work despite and because of AI. So, now AI can make the actor look younger, or older, to suit the story. In the case of a story where there is a character that goes from youth to old age, the same actor can be cast.
I believe that with technology, there will be more videos/films made, because it will be cheaper to do so and also that it will be cheap enough to create content that cater to niche interests. Though, the audience will still expect quality productions. The lousy ones will still be ignored, unless it is so bad that they attract a cult following. :)
As we speak now, more and more tech is seeping into film production. Besides the well known AI-enabled deepfakes, LED backdrops, robot rigs...etc, there is now automated product placements. So, it is now even possible for product placements to be automatically inserted into the film during post-production. This saves time, effort and money, compared to placing products during production. Besides, product placements inserted during post production can be geography, culture, context and time driven.
Where will this all stop? I don't know. But I know that we can all make the best of it, if we continue to improve our craft. Yes, I believe that spontaneous human analogue delivery will still count and be here to stay.
I have now been in the media industry for 14 years, mostly as an actor, but recently also into screenwriting, producing and directing my own content. To date, I have won 2 acting awards, have 2 short films gone viral, and recently, also had a film that I produced, "WFH - Worry From Home", won a best film award.
In the last 2 years, I have also appeared as the main antagonist character in "Titan Academy", a uber viral webseries with very young fans, probably from 4 to 16 years old. Each of these episodes garner upwards of 2 million views. So if I do get recognised in public these days, it will most likely be from a child or a teen. The fans have even set up a fan page for me. Thank you so much guys!
This contrasts a lot with the mainstream media in Singapore, which I estimate probably gets 150k to 350k for each of their drama episodes. I believe this is the same for all free-to-air TVs around the world. This is confirmed by a few random media professionals I met during the recent ATF.
In fact, I was once corrected by a young chap that I shouldn't use the term "mainstream media" to refer to free-to-air TV (or TV), instead, "mainstream" ought to refer to the the Internet. He then suggest that I refer to free-to-air TV as "legacy media". I find it hard to debate that, especially while still reeling from his harshness!
That said, this is Christmas and we should also give thanks to the legacies that have propelled us this far. Many artistes and talents have spent a lot of their waking hours honing their skills and craft to entertain and inspire all of us all these years.
Thus Channel News Asia (CNA) has now made a 3-part mini-series called "Untold Legends", to remember some women who have contributed to the arts in Singapore.
I was interviewed in the episodes that featured Doris Young, who was the lead actor in the Cleopatra Wong movie series in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They interviewed me about my part working with Doris in Reel Frenz, a hobby film making group and as the lead actor in the feature film Certified Dead.
Tune in CNA at 9pm, 31st December 2023 for the episode "Untold Legends: Doris Young".
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