Oh I have just finished shooting episode 2 of my vlog - it took me about 90 minutes to shoot it and I imagine it will take me about 5 to 6 hours to edit it, but I am now doing to deal with work stuff instead, so I am hoping to start editing after dinner tonight. The topic of episode 2 is "What do the British think about Singapore?". There are plenty more little skits featuring Gwa Buay Song, along with a whole range of other new characters as well along with a skit in Hokkien. Akan datang!
You can check out episode 1 in the meantime.
So much for trying to make episode 2 shorter, I have just put together the first draft and it is already at 11:40 - crikey. The longer it is, the more editing I have to do, aaargh. That's it, I am so going to keep episode 3 under 5 minutes.
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| How have attitudes towards Singapore in Britain evolved since the days of the empire? |
I'd love to hear what your friends (or just some random bloke off the streets of London) in Britain think about Singapore, actually. One time I interacted with a research collaborator back at the University of Oregon who had spent significant time as a guest at NUS. He told me point-blank that he did not mean to offend, but he couldn't tell if people there were really doing any kind of research. To which I chuckled :).
ReplyDeleteHi there, thanks for your comment but I am going to say no to say no to it for the following reasons.
Delete1. If you turn the camera on someone, they are likely to be very guarded with what they say - they would censor themselves, try to be politically correct and if they don't know anything or if they are not sure, they would simply stop themselves from saying anything stupid because nobody wants to look stupid on camera by saying something factually incorrect, only for everyone on the internet to mock them, "hahaha look at that stupid fool".
If anything, it would almost feel really uncomfortable and painfully artificial as if you're milking for compliments and it just wouldn't work.
Think about the Belgian man in this piece who http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/how-rest-of-world-sees-singapore.html criticised the HDB flats he observed - he was willing to be that honest with me because it was a conversation, rather than a filmed interview. I really doubt I would get the same kind of honesty from him about just how he disliked what he saw if I was pointed a camera in his face and was filming him - he'll be like 'uh-oh I don't want to offend or upset anyone, so I am going to censor myself."
Many Brits have said critical things about Singapore to me over the years - but I can tell you that most of them would be extremely uncomfortable to voice those same sentiments to me on camera knowing that they will be seen by an unforgiving Singaporean audience who will have a knee-jerk 'fucking racist chao angmoh' reaction: no clearly, they'll decline to be filmed!
Furthermore, please - I am not a journalist, I am a blogger and there is a BIG difference between a blogger and a journalist. A journalist presents the news whilst allowing the facts to speak for themselves - whereas a blogger/vlogger stamps his/her personality all over the report. Sorry if that makes it sound like I have a big ego, but I am the story teller, I am the presenter, i am telling my viewers what my point of view is and what my experiences are - there's very much a ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME approach to it I'm afraid and for this piece, it's pretty much about me narrating my experiences on the issue.
I do hope to interview some people in the future and edit it - but that would depend on me finding someone very interesting or very important who has something very interesting to say about an important issue. Sure give me some VIP like that and i'd gladly take a back seat and play the role of the journalist then. But I really don't see the point of interviewing some random bloke on the streets of London - like who cares what this random bloke thinks?!?!