In this trying time our film and broadcasting industry need a total makeover. It has been more than 10 years since 1997-98 economic crisis. Before then, the industry was at its most lucrative stage. Lucrative for everyone including the artist, producers and tv station.
If you ask any production crew then, they can afford to own a car. Free flowing job offers where they have to decline some. Everyone was enjoying as if good times gonna last forever. When 1997-98 hit, many was hard hit.
There were surplus of finished products. At the same time advertisers stopped spending on advertisement. When it happened no one was prepared for it. Many have to ‘cari makan’ elsewhere. There were some who defaulted on their loans, including automobile and property.
Many opted to take pay cut with whatever small production jobs that was offered just to stay afloat. Since then the scenario in film and broadcasting changed.
The thing is, when the industry has somewhat recovered from the economic crisis, things haven’t change in film and tv land. I’m not sure people in this industry are as slow as a slacking sloth or they simply couldn’t be bothered with the changes?
If you ask me has the salary and remuneration for those in this line have changed since then?
My answer would be “Not much”. What’s funny they use the word ‘gawat’ religiously to justify their lack of budget. I don’t agree with ‘gawat’ as a reasoning or lack of budget. The budget hasn’t changed much but the cost has risen with time. That’s the reason, not ‘gawat’ or ‘bajet ciput’.
The tv stations haven’t changed much when it comes to budget given to the production houses to produce dramas or tv programs. Because of stiff competition today, the stations haggle on pricing. You have to agree with their price or you stand to get nothing if they decided to give it to someone else.
This is also another problem for those in tv and film production, there’s no sense of solidarity between them. One will back stab another friend just to get a RM10k job. And today technologies are getting cheaper.
You can produce a tv program with RM7k DV camera. Gone were the days where Betacam was the industry standard. I can’t remember when was the last time I worked with Betacam? You can edit a tv program on your laptop or MAC/PC at home. No need for RM100k+ editing machine. A film graduate can set up a basic production house with RM10k! So, I guess you don’t need an increase in budgeting for your tv program? Not really, there are still other things that have increased like ‘artis jual mahal’.
Now we’re facing another economic crisis. Will this be another 1997-98? I’m not sure. The only thing got affected is the tv commercial productions. Not many tv commercials have been produced lately. You can see this during recent festive season. Not many new tv commercials for Hari Raya and Chinese New Year. I can only recall Petronas producing tv commercials consistently. It’s because they can afford it.
Besides than budget constraint in the part of advertisers, another element that contributed to the lack of tv commercials is Made In Malaysia (MIM) certificate. MIM is a protective mechanism employed to protect local tv production, especially tv commercial productions.
Under this ruling, any production to be aired locally must be made by Malaysian, in Malaysia with Malaysian talents. TV commercials made abroad with foreign talents are not allowed. There were a few cases where foreign talents and directors were used. But they somehow managed to get the necessary permits to go ahead with it. It helps to spur the economy specifically our local film and tv productions. Our creative industry was kept alive by this ruling.
In recent years this MIM ruling has somehow relaxed to the extend foreign tv commercials can easily be aired on our tv channels. The advertisers find no reason to produce tv commercials for Malaysian market.
Change the tagline and voice over, they can make do with 1 standard tv commercial for worldwide release. This is what killing the industry. Some might argue that protectionism will kill any industry when we don’t have competition from abroad. For this industry, the competition is within this country. We compete to increase our share of the sales pie. Our imagination is our limit. For as long we understand the products, the targeted consumers and others are doing abroad, we can compete ‘internally’.
Only RTM religiously ask for MIM. If RTM stop practicing it, the tv commercial production industry can collapse. What is the government doing about this?
What has Jins Shamsudin done about this?
FINAS was under him. Don’t tell me he doesn’t know about this? I don’t think he has done enough for the industry to merit National Arts Award. He was someone representing the industry in the senate. Looking at the predicaments facing the industry today, he has done nothing or probably not much!
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