My Reelity

“Vince, this is Liz! Call me back, its urgent!!” goes an excited Liz on my voicemail.

“I have just been told we won the Special Mention Prize at the Fest! So can you make it to the awards tonight?”
WTF?!!! Of course can lah!

Some two hours later, after I discarded my “Clark Kent” disguise, I rushed down to Substation to meet Liz. Dave, too had excitedly called me all the way from Oz, and told me that we were in the running for the Voice Award (Audience Choice) as well. “Man,” he exclaimed, “We were supposed to close the chapter on this one already.”
“Well,” I told him, “looks like we are closing it with a happy ending, hehehe.”

They explained to me what the award meant. The Fest had two best short film awards, one was the best overall short (Special Jury Prize) and the other one was the best overall local short (Special Mention Prize). That meant that our entry was the deemed the best S’porean short in the Fest! Wahahaha!

They also shortlist 6 shorts (from a total of 34) for audience choice, and we were the only S’porean entry! Wahahaha!

After the screening and while we waited for the results of Audience Choice (3 winners), the judges commented on why the various shorts were shortlisted for the Voice Awards. When it came to ours, one of the judges, Ho Tzu Nyen, poured on the accolades. He topped it off by saying that it was the best S’porean short film that he had ever watched so far. I thought it was a lucky thing Dave wasn’t with us; his head would have exploded from all the swelling. 😛

From the way he described the short, I knew he had understood it, and by his reaction, I knew he kinda confirmed what I had really felt all along; that if people could understand the short, they will be bowled over by it.

Later on, another judge added that it wasn’t really an unanimous decision and that the judges spent hours debating over this and another entry, “Closer Apart”. (Personally, I have not watched “Closer Apart” although from its synopsis, it does sound interesting) After the whole thing was over, while we were mingling, the same judge came over and told us that his personal choice was “Closer Apart”. He felt that “4444” was a tad too repetitive and he joked that he was suprised the next number used was “5555”.

He expected it to be “8888”. Thats when we know, good golly, he didn’t get it. Which made us wonder if the rest of the judges got it or not, and if they had, would there still be a heated debate? 😛
But I guess all this is water under the bridge. We were all just very happy that we won, and to top it off, we won it from a panel of judges consisting of film-makers, film critics and producers. I mean how cool is that? 😀

Both Liz and I wanted to express our gratitude to Tze Nyen for his kind words. I think I must have looked very different from my character in 4444 because almost everyone couldn’t recognise me as the lead actor, and even Tze Nyen didn’t recognise me as well. He was telling us how in the midst of reviewing the other entries in the wee hours of the morning, ours was the one that woke him up (makes you wonder if it was the langah scene doesn’t it lol). He later asked me for my contact, and thats how I ended up whoring showing my new reel to him. I guess I should be happy that he looked quite impressed with it, although at the end of it, he had to ask me if I would like to do more “negative” roles… *sigh*

Which brings to mind another incident; while touching base with a casting executive in Mediacorp 8 this year, I told her that I am now open to “bad guy” roles. Her response was :

“I’m SO GLAD you are open to “bad guy” roles now!”

KNS, must use “so glad” somemore. *sigh*

So with that, I can proudly say that this chapter is now closed. I’ll like to sincerely thanked everyone who had supported the film and rooted for us all this while, since it first debuted on Canon DV Fest for the Heartland. And to the 1000+ peeps (to date) who have downloaded and view it here at my website, do check out the redux version above and see if you can spot the difference hehehe.