Reviving Malaysia's ad film industry

Malaysia - Earlier this week, Khoo Kay Lye (pictured), president of the Malaysian Association of Advertising Filmmakers (Persatuan Penerbit Filem Iklan Malaysia or PPFIM) called out to advertisers and relevant authorities to help him bring back the business ethics in the development of the commercial film production industry.Khoo urged advertisers to allow them to develop the commercial film production industry in a professional way or risk losing their competitiveness and future.This comes on the back of the lack of business ethics Khoo sees, forsaken by clients and advertisers in favour of greed, leading to a situation where the industry is rapidly declining.Another issue Khoo pointed out is the lack of a production contract between an agency and a production house, which is important in addressing the issues of non-payment and late payment of fees.In certain cases, PPFIM members have been made to wait for up to 10 months to receive their full payment in spite of completing the production as promised.In other cases, production or post-production houses accepted work in good faith without setting minimum rates for crew, film directors, director of photography and on other charges.This has led to production houses becoming the unofficial financiers for the advertisers and the main beneficiaries of their woes and also took cost-cutting companies to task.These issues, Khoo tells A+M, have been occurring for almost a decade now, and was often swept under the rug with little support from advertising governing bodies."Recently, the industry has been following a downward trend, reaching a point where we can't do much about it. So now we have gone to the Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture (FINAS) to plead to them to help us revive the industry," adds Khoo.He explains that previously, the industry was protected by Made in Malaysia (MIM) and producers had to be a member of PPFIM to make a commercial.The MIM guidelines explains that certificates from FINAS and acknowledgement letters among other things were needed before a commercial goes on air.While the law still exists, Khoo says the emergence of too many players and more private broadcast powerhouses that can do the job over production houses, has caused the need for contracts to diminish, giving little for producers to fight for.This in turn led to production houses charging little just to get commissioned for a job, making an impact on the quality of the commercial."These days anyone can shoot a commercial. Upstart one-man-show film and post-production outfits or individuals quote very low rates just to obtain their maiden projects."Everyone wants a slice of a very small pie and because everyone is fighting for a slice, we are slowly eating and killing each other through price wars," adds Khoo."The more we lower our fees and charges, the better it is for the client. What saddens me most as a longstanding film director and owner of a production house is that professionalism and creative craftsmanship seem to no longer be relevant to the clients as agencies and production or post-production houses do not operate in a manner that protect their interests," Khoo said.Today, Khoo has appealed to the Malaysian regulatory bodies and FINAS to help strengthen the existing infrastructure so that the industry would be able to enforce the production contract for the benefit of the commercial film industry at large."Vietnam is a country where advertising is just blooming and even they have a system to follow and contracts made up. So as a pioneer of the industry, it's sad to see our quality getting lower," he says.Giving it his best and last shot with hopes of seeing some improvement in the next three months, Khoo says that his hopes are for FINAS to help revive the industry today, as this could also impact job opportunities for multimedia graduates in the future."There's no point of having multimedia courses when there are little job opportunities, so I think parents now need to think twice about sending children to do these courses,' Khoo says."Many are not shouting too much about the issue, afraid of being blacklisted as it's too controversial of an issue. But we at PPFIM feel like this is our last hope to fight for a better industry."Stay tuned for more updates on this issue.