KUALA LUMPUR, June 11 — Film-maker Edmund Yeo hasn’t taken much of a break since winning Best Director at the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) 2017 for his film Aqerat.
While Aqerat has continued to collect accolades, Yeo himself has been tackling numerous other projects – including a special Raya documentary shot entirely on an iPhone X.
He will be the first Malaysian to do so, though he joins the likes of Steven Soderbergh who shot his Unsane on an iPhone 7, and Sean Baker’s Tangerine that was shot with an iPhone 5.
Yeo collaborated with Warner Music artistes Faizal Tahir and Aziz Harun on the eight-minute feature, Setitis Cahaya di Pagi Raya (A Glimmer of Light on the Dawn of Raya).
The real star of the film, however, is the matriarch of a small family, who Yeo encountered years ago when he was a budding film-maker.
Of meetings and movies
Stumbling on a wooden house by the river in Tanjung Karang, Yeo thought it would be the perfect setting for his shoot.
The door being open, he nervously stepped in to find Makcik Rohayah seated in the living room. She graciously assented and Yeo ended up using the location for not one film but two: Love Suicides and River of Exploding Durians, both films going on win awards at various filmfests.
Yeo had kept in touch with the family, renting boats from them for his film Last Fragments of Winter and thought that they would be an ideal subject for a Raya feature.
They had been of so much help to him in past projects, Yeo said, remaining so generous throughout their occasional reunions.
Tragedy had befallen the family, he found, on his last visit; Rohayah and her daughter Kak Ogy were now bereft after the loss of the family’s primary breadwinners, Rohaya’s oldest son as well as her son-in-law.
“I made this short film so that I could tell the story of their plight, but also of their courage and generosity,” Yeo said. “Hari Raya is a time of joy and happiness, and I really wanted to do something for this family, to whom I owe a large part of my film-making career.”
Yeo had only praise for his collaborators in the project, citing Faizal’s “genuine compassion” and Aziz’s enthusiasm. He said he was truly grateful for their participation and also for bringing so much joy to the family.
Movie-making considerations
When asked about what he found most challenging about shooting with an iPhone X, Yeo said, “I guess it’s about not falling into the trap of seeing it as a phone, and just treating it as though it were a normal film camera.”
Yeo worked with his director of photography to coach him into seeing past the latter’s reservations on using an iPhone to shoot. It also led to some creative solutions – “We tied two iPhones together, put it between our singers… to maintain this rapport and naturalism.”
Technical challenges aside, Yeo found that an iPhone proved better at capturing the children during their most genuine moments. Yeo said that the great thing about mobile film-making is that “everyone shoots on phones, it’s not intimidating, so it lowers chances of people feeling self-conscious as they would with a bigger camera. So it’s great for a hybrid documentary like mine.”
The film will be an Apple Music exclusive from today until June 15, 7pm where it will be accessible on Warner Music’s YouTube page and other social media platforms. For Apple Music subscribers, the film is already available for viewing here.
