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"El Gris Perfecto" tells the coming-of-age story about a Singaporean-Spanish boy who travels to Barcelona to discover …
Ask any local filmmaker and you'll be told the same thing -- making a successful picture here isn't easy, with challenges from start to finish ranging from funding to censorship.
Given these, the logistical nightmare of making a film in another country would only amplify the difficulty level of the task -- with added complications of understanding a foreign people and culture, finding separate accommodation, shooting locations and talent, to name just a few.
Yet, a group of four Singaporean broadcast media students made the latter happen -- the first in Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information to make their final year project film in a European country, Spain.
The students' work won the school's Asian Television Award for best final year film and has been selected to screen at the Short Film Corner of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, where distributors, sales agents and film festival programmers may pick selected films up.
The idea to produce a "foreign-based" film came to writer-director Edwin Ho when he was doing a six-month internship in Barcelona, where he said he fell in love with the city and wanted to write about it.
"Barcelona is definitely a very charming city with a lot of things happening... especially in arts and culture," said Ho, who shared that he heard a lot of interesting stories of people who went there, fell in love and stayed on even though they did not initially plan to.
"I saw and experienced things that were neither right nor wrong, but in the grey area... (people here) were just really open-minded to freedom of expression, of sexuality and experimentation."
From there, he spent six months working on a script, did site recces and got a number of people he met in Barcelona on-board to help with his project -- including a professional Spanish actress as well as his director of photography -- before returning to Singapore to work more closely with his groupmates Grace Thia, Trixie Yap and Felicia Ang.
The first question that of course would come to one's mind, though, is how four college students were able to find the funding involved in making a film overseas.
The answer? A long, tedious and arduous process riddled with rejections and in many cases, complete non-responses.
"We must have written in to over 100 foundations and organisations to try to pitch our idea to them," said Ho, who added that he and his groupmates were prepared to channel their own money into the project. "The process was really tough, and we felt really dejected at some points... we're glad that we (eventually) saw the light at the end of the tunnel!"
Much to their relief, the group received support from the Catalan Tourism Board, the Media Development Authority and a school-based grant, as well as contributions from a few small businesses and support from a couple of production studios.
Meanwhile, Ho plans to eventually write and direct his own feature-length film, after spending time in his masters' course and gaining more life experience.
"I would like to continue to make films... I'm definitely seeing my career in the film industry," he said. "I hope to spend the time in film school to really shape my voice and style, and to find a balance in my values for filmmaking."
El Gris Perfecto, will screen in Cannes' Short Film Corner in May. Watch the trailer here:
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