Young director award goes to YEE Chang Kang

Singaporean director Yee Chang Kang of Shooting Gallery film production house won the Best Young Director award at this year’s Phoenix Awards, the competition honouring top work produced in Asia for film, video and digital media.

Yee has won a number of awards in his short career as well as writing and directing two short feature films. Filmmaking is his biggest passion. Two of his short films, Good Time (2004) and Dai Bao (2005) were finalists in the Singapore International Film Festival Silver Screen Awards.

Yee has done TVCs for telco M1, Media Development Authority, Tiger Beer, KFC, Discovery, Disney and AXN Channels. More recently, the Mumbai India! TVC that he directed for M1 won Best Local TVC (Gold) for Viewer’s Choice 2008.

He graduated as the top student in his field, from Temasek Polytechnic’s School of Design - Visual Communication (Merit Award). Since then, he has been actively working in the line of production.

Besides making his films, Yee is also a singer-songwriter. He has been actively writing, recording and performing his original songs, and has his songs published by Warner/Chappell Singapore.

He started his first band, The Ordinary People, back in 1987. They have two CD album releases, It’s A Weird Existence (1993) and When Stars Collide (2000).

Chang Kang now fronts TypeWriter, an acclaimed indie-rock band in Singapore. The band is currently crafting and recording their new album Indian Head Massage.

Being an advocate of Made-in-Singapore music, Chang Kang uses local music extensively in his films.

Asia Image: How did you get started in this industry?

Yee Chang Kang: I graduated from Temasek Poly School of Design in mid 1996.

I majored in video and photography in the Visual Communications course. I was the top student in my field, and was awarded the Merit Award.

I had the chance to work as a crew on Eric Khoo’s Mee Pok Man and later on, on Army Daze The Film as well. I also worked as a freelance production assistant for TV commercials for Yarra Films, one of the more established TVC production houses then.

After graduation, I continue working in the line of production, directing various genres of television programmes. I joined Shooting Gallery as a producer five years ago. But it was only about two years back that I become a full-fledged TVC director.

AI: What inspiration do you draw upon for creativity?

YCK: First and foremost, music plays a very big part in my life. I been writing songs with my first band The Ordinary People since the early ‘90s. Since 2002, I have been fronting TypeWriter and we play indie-rock. We are in the midst of finishing an album.

The music knowledge that I have, has allow me to pick the right music and tempo for TVCs rather quickly and effectively.

I find lots of inspirations watching quirky films by cool directors like Woody Allen, Todd Solondz, Wes Anderson ... to Asian directors like Fruit Chan, Mark Meily and Kongdej Jaturanrasamee. I enjoy watching their storytelling and how nicely they are able to add nuances to each visual shot.

AI: How do you prepare for a shoot?

YCK: For TVCs, personally I think it is very important to meet up with the agency creatives once the job has been initiated. Nothing beats meeting face to face and understanding what the agency and client really wants out of the script.

How important is sound and music to your shoots?

YCK: I always like my TVCs, and my short films, to have original location sound, especially for dialogue lines. I like things to look natural and sound organic. When possible, I never ever like post-dubbing. Sometimes, pure ambience can be more effective than to muck around with too much music and sound effects.