Fat Bidin Media

As you all probably already know, I’m was a mentor for the recent Apostrophe competition organised buy DiGi. Seven winners were selected (you can see their works here) and they all won a chance to go on a filmmaking trip to Hanoi, Vietnam, with me as their all-knowledgeable and infinitely intellectual mentor!

The winners are:
Amir Rashid Othman
Fatul Ghazali
Johan Arif Mazlan
Nik Ahmad Faiz
Tan Zi Hao
Lesly Leon Lee
Azizan Abdul Rahim (DiGi internal winner)

The trip to Hanoi was great! Although documentary filmmakers and journalists would call it parachuting (they only had 3 days to make a film there!), the guys were gung-ho from the get-go! The picture above is of them being interviewed by ntv7.

Aside from filming, the organizers also arranged a slew of activities. We met up with a group of Vietnamese filmmakers at Red Bridge Productions. Getting their perspective on filmmaking was an eye-opener. The picture above is of me with Bui Kim Quy, a young Vietnamese documentary filmmaker.

We also met up with a a group of young Hanoi artists who shared with us stories of their struggle in creating art in their country. Respect goes out to them.

And staying true to the whole Apostrophe theme of ‘Makan’, we learnt how to cook traditional Vietnamese dishes from the beautiful Hanh An at Hidden Hanoi.

But nothing could beat the PHO BO (Vietnamese beef noodles) you get on the streets!!

So it really wasn’t that hard for the guys to come up with a film (I’ll try and post the final film they did… if I can get my hands on a copy… FATUL!!). A nice dinner screening was held for an audience which consisted of the Malaysian contingent and the Vietnamese filmmakers and artists.

There were a bunch of reporters (The Star, New Straits Times, ntv7 and China Press) who were following us around. So watch out for write-ups and TV coverage. In fact, ntv7’s The Breakfast Show is running a 3-part package on Apostrophe starting yesterday and will continue till Friday. You can tune in from 8am to 10am.

(UPDATED ON 11 OCT 2007)

Here’s the video of the small gathering at Blog House in Damansara Heights a day before the forum.

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I hope none of you have forgotten my (extremely) long term film project ‘I May Be Malaysian, But I Carry A Big Stick‘. Well, in relation to this, All Blogs (National Alliance of Bloggers) organised a forum on Digital Democracy with David Sasaki of Global Voices Online as the main speaker. Other’s included Jeff Ooi, Rocky and Datuk A. Kadir Jasin. It was held on 3rd October 2007 at KLGCC, Kuala Lumpur. I was there to document the event on video. Check it out yo!

Go out and grab a copy of the latest issue (May/June 07) of SURF! It’s an awesome magazine! Absolutely terrific! Totally bodacious! And it has one hell of a regular contributing writer (it’s me obviously!)!

This issue’s cover theme deals with New Media news. Check out the opening article entitled ‘The New News’. Great stuff! One hell of a writer I tell you (it’s me obviously!)!

So I attended the Bloggers United Malaysia Gathering 2007 (BUM2007) last Saturday. After such a long break from the ‘I May Be Malaysian, But I Carry A Big Stick’ film project (due to work that actually pays the bills and feeds the stomach!), this event was just what I needed to get the momentum going again. I also have to mention… the roast lamb was excellent! Thanks Howsy and gang for inviting me.

(Apologies for the less than satisfactory audio. My mic was acting up. Should have paid more attention. So much for wanting to be a pro!)

As you all know, I wrote a book which is now on the shelves (and if you didn’t know… now you do!). The New Straits Times recently wrote an article about the publishing company, Content Cradle. What makes it unique is that submission of ideas are done online. Read the article here.

“Rescuing you from television’s deathlike grip.”

I’ve been pretty busy lately. So instead of a ‘Look-East’ video blog entry, I’m offering an old documentary entitled ‘Tudung’ I did with the supposedly cute and talented Liew Seng Tat. It was originally done for the Goethe Institute’s Tudung Short Film Competition but has also gone on to screen at the 2006 Los Angeles Asia Pacific Film Festival.

Editing ‘The Look-East Project’ is taking up a lot of time. Hours of footage to look through and I’m no where close to coming up with a proper structure. But it’s fun, so no worries. I’ve also been doing some other work such as writing proposals for several future film projects which, rest assured, will be announced here if everything goes according to plan.

And… I’ll be lecturing again at HELP University-College after taking a two month break. I’ll be teaching the ‘Intro to Film’ course which I have taught several times before, and a new subject called ‘IT, Mass Media and Society’, which shouldn’t be a problem since I’ve been a bloody IT journalist since 2000! Students always mistake me for being one of them (thanks to my boyish good looks!) so I can’t wait to see if any girls hit on me on the first day of classes next week!

Here’s the trailer to my latest short documentary film. You can download the whole film at Outphace.com. It was shot in Jogjakarta before the earthquake. I did go back after the earthquake as a volunteer videographer with Mercy Malaysia a few months ago. It was sad, but I’m glad the friends I made while shooting ‘Searching for Sheila’ are safe.

I wrote a book… with some help of course! It’s in the bookstores now and is being sold at RM19.90, published by Content Cradle. It’s a simple book that helps people to make full use of New Media/Internet.
Check it out! Buy a copy! Help me pay the bills, feed my kids and pay for my parents’ nursing home fees!

Let me teach you the best way to utilise New Media! Click!