Some storytellers want to be seen; some, to be heard; most, to be felt. Regardless of medium, however, all storytellers need attention. Storytellers seek to share and to communicate, and they need a platform to do this.
Fraternize with any filmmaker cliques in Singapore and most will share about their struggles to get their films out "there". Out where, exactly? To film festivals, to fringe screenings, to arts events. To be seen, to be heard, to be felt, to be engaged with.
But after the film festivals and the fringe screenings and the events are over, will people still be talking about these films? Will people even remember them? SINdie has long been championing small independent films and trying to get a conversation on Singaporean films going, but one of our biggest concerns is that, by the time our write-ups get published, those films would have long evaporated from the public consciousness.
The digital age has of course provided more opportunities for filmmakers' works to be seen, with online platforms like Netflix, Mubi, Vimeo and of course Youtube sprouting up, but none of these outlets have brought the Southeast Asian filmmakers and film buffs together in a cohesive manner. While they provide a platform Southeast Asian (short-) filmmakers to upload their works, they don't do much to bring attention to these films. (Mubi comes the closest, but they mainly tackle feature films.)
Viddsee, co-founded by filmmaker-engineers Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan, attempts to fill that void. The duo aims to grow the community of short film audience by enabling a wide and accessible market reach for short films.
Viddsee, which went live about three weeks ago, will be partnering with the Singapore Short Film Awards (SSFA) 2013 to showcase nominated short films from past editions of SSFA. The new online social watching platform streams short films from Southeast Asia and streamlines the process of discovering, watching and sharing regional stories for a global online audience. (Think a Southeast Asian version of Mubi, but zoning in specifically on shorts instead of features.) Closely integrated with Facebook, Viddsee leverages on Facebook as a distribution channel to create a seamless experience for users to discover short films. With a mix of curation and social discovery of content, Viddsee helps to surface relevant local content to users.
Working with local filmmakers and film festivals to make local content accessible is key to grooming our local content audience. Viddsee has collaborated with local filmmakers like Kelvin Sng and Ray Pang in premiering their short films online. For this year’s SSFA, which runs at The Substation from the 25th February to 3rd March, SSFA will showcase some of its nominated films from last year’s awards on Viddsee. Audience can expect a line-up of 9 short films with one film released everyday at 7pm starting from 15th February 2013 (Refer to table below).
“We built Viddsee to create an accessible way for audience to watch the best local short films on their desktop or mobile devices,” said Jia Jian, co-founder of Viddsee. “While content is readily available over the Internet today, it’s still hard to find culturally contextual content from Singapore and around Southeast Asia. Working with the Singapore Short Film Awards, we hope to bring the best stories from Singapore to allow our local audience to discover new content in Singapore.”
"When no one watches or hears about your film, then what's the point of making one?” added filmmaker Ray Pang. “Filmmakers are storytellers and we have a part to play in our society in sharing our stories. Hence, every audience counts and we need to make find ways to allow audience to watch our works.”
Audience can log in to Viddsee to watch the selection of short films from SSFA and over 1000 minutes of short films from Southeast Asia, free of charge.
Film Schedule
The selected nominees and winners’ films of 2012 to be screened online are:
Friday 15th Feb
GODAIZER
Awarded Best Art Direction
Nominated for Best Director, Animation, Script
Saturday 16th Feb
MANDY'S 8 THEORIES OF SLEEP
Nominated for Best Art Direction
Sunday 17th Feb
EXISTENCE
Nominated for Best Documentary, Editing, Cinematography
Monday 18th Feb
LIBERTAS
Nominated for Best Animation
Tuesday 19th Feb
LOVE IN ANY GENRE
Nominated for Best Art Direction, Performance
Wednesday 20th Feb
WILD DOGS
Awarded Best Editing
Nominated for Best Documentary
Thursday 21st Feb
A CLOUDY CONUNDRUM
Nominated for Best Animation
Friday 22nd Feb
HENTAK KAKI
Awarded Best Performance
Nominated for Best Director, Script
Saturday 23rd Feb
THIN AIR
Nominated for Best Fiction
About Viddsee
Viddsee is an online social watching service for filmmakers and audience
of Southeast Asian short film viddeos. Built and designed by engineers and
filmmakers, Viddsee enables users to easily discover, watch and share stories
from around Southeast Asia on their desktop and mobile devices. Its vision
is to continually grow the community of short film audience and to enable a
wide and accessible market reach for short films.