Documentary Filmmaking for an International Market Workshop
14th & 15th October 2019
We had a great & educational time at the Documentary Filmmaking for an International Market Workshop held for the FINAS DKD recipients. Thank you to our mentors & trainers for sharing their knowledge and of course to our participants for making it a success.
The aim of this workshop was to prepare the fund recipients on their documentary production journey and how to produce a film of an international standard. Trainers with different expertise came together to teach the participants about topics ranging from; storytelling, how to market their stories to an international audience, what international broadcasters look for, how to make monetise their projects online, international forums and festivals, as well as cinematography & sound.
On top of that, the participants were also broken into groups where they had the opportunity to be mentored by the trainers in an intimate and interactive space. This session gave our trainers the chance to give each participants tailored feedbacks regarding their projects.
The Trainers:
MAYYI LEE is VP of Regional Production & Development for National Geographic Channels Asia, based in Taiwan. With over 20 years of experience in the television and film industry, Mayyi is currently responsible for overseeing factual production and development for Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Mayyi originally joined National Geographic Television & Film in 1998, where she worked in production operations. She developed, produced, and post produced shows in the U.S., Australia, Africa, and Asia.
NICK OLLE has been a professional journalist for 18 years. He has worked across print, radio, television and online media for outlets in Australia, South America, North America, Europe and Asia. He is presently the Senior Supervising Producer at Al Jazeera International’s flagship Asia Documentary Programme 101 East, based in Kuala Lumpur. Before moving to Malaysia, he worked for Australia’s international current affairs programme, SBS Dateline and Network Ten’s The Project. Previously, he was a foreign correspondent based in Buenos Aires, Argentina for The Global Mail, ABC, NPR and other outlets.
JUSTIN ONG is an Executive Producer, Director and Writer with over 15 years of experience in the broadcast industry. He began his career in Hollywood running errands like buying doughnuts and making coffee. Despite excelling in that role, he moved back to Asia and fell in love with documentary filmmaking. Since then, he has directed documentaries, travel series, investigative series and formatted reality shows for National Geographic Channel, History Channel, BBC, NHK, Al Jazeera and Channel NewsAsia. He won Best Direction at the Television Awards 2010 and Best Documentary Bronze at the 2011 Malaysian Documentary Awards. He also serves at the Vice-President of MyDocs.
LINA TEOH is an experienced documentary filmmaker, having produced, written and directed world-class documentaries for international broadcasters such as the National Geographic Channel, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. She also ran her own production company specialising in crafting high quality documentaries for local, regional and international markets based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and has worked for many years as supervising producer for the Malaysian Film board’s (FINAS) “Malaysia to the World” initiative. She is now the Executive Director of MyDocs.
HARUN RAHMAN is an award winning documentary filmmaker with more than 20 years experience. He majored in film production at Minnesota, then pursued a career in film and television. He has travelled the world making documentaries and has won several accolades for his work. He is the founder of Nuvista, a leading documentary production company based in Kuala Lumpur and has worked on numerous films with the National Geographic Channel, the History Channel and Channel News Asia. He takes pride in often working on projects with NGO's with strong environmental, animal protection and other social issue messages. Harun is also the President of MyDocs.
LARA ARIFFIN trained as an architect, but has worked as a documentary producer for more than 20 years. She is responsible for productions at all levels from research and development, directing to executive producing. She has an eye for detail and has been responsible for many award-winning documentaries.
Lim Chern Yang (CY) is a Project Manager in Creators Academy Asia (CAA), a subsidiary division from WebTVAsia, which is a digital entertainment company that built Asia’s biggest multi-platform video network with 480 million subscribers and 5.8 billion monthly views, an official partner of Google, YouTube, Tencent, ByteDance, Weibo, Baidu, Twitter and more global platforms. WebTVAsia has lead groundbreaking Asian campaigns such as Youku-Tudou’s Little Apple viral video (500 mil views & 30,000 parodies), WebTVAsia Awards and Viral Fest Asia music festival (200 million & 250 million social media reach respectively).
WONG CHIN HOR is a Malaysian documentary cinematographer who loves being out in the field and capturing all sorts of visuals. He enjoys getting the most out of the pictures that will help you tell your stories best. He has over 13 years of experience in the Film, Video & Television industry, and has been specialising in documentaries and TV programs since 2006. He is also a full member of the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS).
FAUZAN AZIMAN is a sound mixer from Kelantan. Graduating with a Diploma in Audio Technology from School of Audio Engineering (SAE). He started working at Location Sound Asia in 2005 being a sound assistant, and then went on to do a lot of boom work and finally got his first sound mixing gig by 2008 and he hasn't looked back since! After 7 years he decided he wanted to freelance and 2012 was his breakout year. He started his own company, Sound Speed Production and slowly they built their own equipment inventory.
To see more photos of this event, please head to our gallery.