MOVE over Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer, there are new boys in CGI town and they’re ready to rock your special effects world.

They are Film and Animation students Muhammad Faiz Abu Bakar and Wan Affendy Abdullah, who, together with the rest of their team mates in Epic Films, won in the Most Amazing Visual Effects and Extraordinary Short Content (Television) categories at the recent Astro’s NextGen Contentpreneur Awards (NCA).

The NCA is a competition for tertiary-level students in the communications, broadcasting, and multimedia field. The short-form movies are judged on the entrants’ experience, capability, area of expertise, and availability of resources.

Epic Film’s short sci-fi film titled Pestilence is totally action packed, and was mostly shot in visual effects with a bit of real time acting thrown in.

From left: Mark Woo, Lai Tjun Kong and Quek Shio Chuan won Revolutionary Documentary and Phenomenal Art Direction awards at NCA.

“Just think of it as a mixture of Transformers and maybe Terminator with a little bit of acting,” says Muhammad Faiz, 22.

Much like the real thing, then.

The Multimedia University students created the movie as part of their graduation project, but decided to submit their entry just to see how they’d fare in the competition.

Little did they know that they would be walking away with not just one, but two wins.

“That came totally as a surprise for us. We just wanted to do a good job with the movie so that we’d get good grades and it’d look good on our portfolio when we’re out looking for jobs,” says 22-year-old Wan Affendy.

They boys started the project earlier this year, throwing ideas back and forth until one stuck permanently and moulded it until it became solid and workable.

“It took us six months – two months of pre-production and four months of post-production – to wrap up the movie,” says Muhammad Faiz on the movie about alien culture taking over the world.

He adds, “We had to do lots of research on how to make the movie because what we learned in class was just the basic, necessary information to get us to complete the task. But for the detailed stuff, we had to look out for it ourselves.”

It was all experimental for the four boys working on the video. With limited experience, the boys spent hours in post-production, sleepless and cramped up in an office space they borrowed from their juniors.

The project not only tested their creativity and skills, it also eventually tested their friendship.

From left: Wan Affendy Abdullah and Muhammad Faiz Abu Bakar wonthe Most Amazing Visual Effects and Extraordinary Short Content (Television) categories at the recent Astro’s NextGen Contenpreneur Awards (NCA).

“Being cooped up in a small space with your friends can get a little difficult at times. But apart from working on the project, I also had to work on getting all of them to work together as a team.

“There were minor squabbles but I got them to understand the whole situation and gave them targets to achieve,” says Muhammad Faiz, the group leader.

Another band of friends, whose friendship was tested during filmmaking, is made up of Quek Shio Chuan, Mark Woo and Lai Tjun Kong. The boys spent a week in a fishing village in Segenting in Batu Pahat, Johor, to document the last generation of fishermen using the Gombang fishing techniques in Malaysia.

“The government is planning not to renew the fishermen’s permit to fish using the Gombang technique. But they are allowed to fish using other methods though,” says Shio Chuan.

The Gombang technique uses a close-knit fishing net, causing the fishermen to inadvertently capture jelly fish and other seacreatures already diminishing in quantity. This, the young filmmaker says, affects the ecological balance underwater.

“These fishermen here are the last in their generation permitted to use the Gombang technique. After their licence expires, they’ll have to revert to other methods. This is my chance to document the fishing method before it disappears completely,” says Shio Chuan, who made the documentary as part of his final year project. Mark and Tjun Kong are his juniors helping out as cameramen and narrator.

The boys followed one fisherman, Chua Cheng Hock, in particular, who goes into the Straits of Malacca up to four times a day.

“They have to check on their nets every six hours, including in wee hours in the morning when the sky is dark and we couldn’t see anything around us,” says Shio Chuan.

Despite feeling nauseous after every boat ride, the boys learned how to adjust themselves for the choppy waters and film at the same time.

Petilence.

“It was really fun being on the boat, though not as a cameraman. We couldn’t place a tripod properly but Cheng Hock thought us a way around it,” says Mark.

Even on the small boat, the boys had to manoeuvre their ways out of the camera shot and this almost cost Mark to lose his balance and fall of the boat.

“He was hanging for his life by holding on to a flimsy part of the boat. It was pretty scary, but an experience to remember nonetheless,” says Tjun Kong.

It took them almost a month to finish wrapping up their 10-minute documentary titled Tidal Tales.

Their work paid off when they won the Revolutionary Documentary and Phenomenal Art Direction awards at NCA.

“But even if we didn’t win any awards, the experience we gained from just making the documentary would be satisfying enough. We had lots of fun with the friendly fishermen and their families, breathed fresh air every morning and got to enjoy lots of fresh seafood,” says Shio Chuan.