First Takes packs the crowd!

It sure is a sign. The number of people who turned up at the First Takes Oct screening last night exceeds the number who turned up for the S-Express screening of Singapore short films. Target audience strategies for screenings works here! Yesterday's screenings saw a sizeable clump of students from NTU and some from La Salle cheering on their school mates. Sure the films were not masterpieces but they enjoyed good-natured attention and curiosity from the audience. Thank you Singapore for your generosity! Films of similar calibre (come on, these are first films ater all!) in the US or other bigger countries may not even see the light of day, or end up being classified as a classroom project.

Not enough seats, so some spilled over to the floor.

Little Red Shoes.

The films featured all seemed to border on the absurd or supernatural. Most of them were from NTU students of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communications. The film line up was Sol Chang-Elephants on the Street by Low Ting Yi, Riding East by Melissa Foo, 2309 by Sivaraj Pragasm, Safety Zone by Eileen Loh and Bukit Chandu by Chiang Wei Liang.

Here, director of 2309 Sivaraj shares an anecdote about how he came up with the idea of trees housing left-behind souls of forgotten people.

Wei Liang and Sivaraj tell us what's good and bad that's been said about their films.

Stay tuned for reviews of 2309, Safety Zone and Bukit Chandu...