UTAR Students Won Two Astro Nextgen Contentpreneur Awards
A group of Broadcasting students of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) shone again at the Astro Nextgen Contentpreneur Awards (NCA) 2009 ceremony held on 6 August 2009 at the Sime Darby Convention, Bukit Kiara, Kuala Lumpur, bagging two awards from the eleven given out at the ceremony.
Like the previous year, UTAR students' winning entry was initially developed as a class project but it ended up as their ticket to victory at the NCA 2009 ceremony. The winning group comprised Quek Shio Chuan, Winnie Saw Shu Li, Chan Hsien Yu, Lai Tjun Kong and Woo Mun Kit, Mark. Their winning entry was a documentary titled Tidal Tales.
Tidal Tales won two awards - Revolutionary Documentary and Phenomenal Art Direction. For this excellent production, the group received a total of RM20,000 in cash, certificates and two trophies. Tidal Tales is a story about the last generation of fishermen in Segenting, Batu Pahat, using a unique method known as the Gombang to capture pomfrets.
About the award-winning documentary, Quek, 22, who is the leader of the group and was also the leader of last year's winning team, said, "Tidal Tales promises a heart warming journey of a fisherman, the obstacles he faces and also his catches told in a stylistic way. We chose this topic as a challenge as most of the footages were shot on a boat and thus required competent skills."
According to Quek, his group also submitted two other entries for the NCA 2009, namely Witty Wings under the documentary category and Consalvation under the short mobile content category. Both entries were nominated for awards too - Witty Wings for Revolutionary Documentary and Consalvation for Extraordinary Short Content Mobile.
Prior to the ceremony, Consalvation had emerged as 2nd runner-up in the Jerneh Friend of Green Malaysia Short Film Competition in the morning on the same day.
NCA 2009 were jointly organised by Astro Entertainment Sdn Bhd (AESB), Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) with the aim of developing and encouraging new talents from higher institutions of learning in Malaysia to be active industry players in the content industry.
Participants submitted their entries for any of the following five entry categories: Short Content (TV or Mobile), Documentary, Music Video, Animation and Designing. Entries were judged based on their originality, creativity and content.
(From left) Woo Mun Kit, Quek Shio Chuan and Lai Tjun Kong with their trophies at the ceremony.