We first met Patty Keung when she attended our Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Class. Even then, her enthusiasm towards her goal as film director always shines through. So we proud to announce Hong Kong-based independent film director Patty Keung has emerged as the winner of the MTV Asia competition to find the best video to accompany the track titled "I'm Proud To Be Chinese" and also known as P2bChi.


Recorded by Scott Hui, youngest son of Canto-Rock pioneer and legend Sam Hui, the track was written and produced by Hans Ebert, former Executive Director of EMI South East Asia and now Chairman and CEO of new music-based entertainment company We-Enhance.


"Being a music channel that nurtures new creative talent, the committee is happy to have picked Patty's video as the winning entry and which we will start screening soon on MTV Asia," said Silvia Goh, Vice President, Multi-platform Content & Telco Digital. "We shall also continue to work closely with great partners such as We-Enhance to discover more new creative talent from all parts of Asia."


For Patty Keung, this was her first attempt at creating and directing a music video. "I am so happy for myself and my team who put in so much of their time to make this video happen," said Keung, who managed to even persuade well-known Hong Kong pro-Democracy advocate Anson Chan, 67, and who is running for the post of the city's Chief Executive, to make a cameo appearance in the video. "Miss Chan happened to be campaigning where I was filming. I asked if she would mind singing along to the line, 'I'm proud to be Chinese, I am, I am, I am.' She was such a good sport and said, Sure!" The video features Chairman Mao, kung fu artists, glamorous Chinese models and other things Chinese. Adds Keung, "It's just a fun video and is about Chinese pride - not politics."

We catch up with Patty recently to congratulate her and asked her a few questions for our readers.

What does this award means to you?
Compared to the last video that I made for the Orbis Eason trip to China, I had to make more creative efforts to illustrate the song this time. There was more planning and pre-production involved, and also more visual effects experimented at postproduction stage. So, winning the competition and getting this award is certainly an encouragement to me in my endeavor towards making movies.

   

What advice do you have for people who want to do MTV?
I think designing images to illustrate a movie script is comparatively more straightforward than designing images to illustrate a song. The images in an mv are there to enhance the song, not to distract from the song. Although it is often at editing stage that you play around and test what effects would work the best, it is always better if you know clearly what effects you want before hand so you can account for those elements at shooting stage and make everything work better and easier at editing stage. In my opinion, there is one other very important element in making mv, that is, you have to allocate certain resources in art direction and styling even though you do not have any budget for it. Unlike shooting a drama, if the your images in your mv look good, it cannot go too wrong because the story is either told by the song or there is no story to tell. On the contrary, if your mv looks cheap and tacky, the audience would not be attracted to view it. So, it will aversely affect the popularity of the song too!

Who are the people you want to thank?
I want to thank all the cast and crew involved in the making of this mv especially Hong Kong actress Farini Chang who has played the classic, modern and futuristic Chinese beauty; Mr. Gordon Liu (who has starred in Kill Bill 1 as Johnny Mo and Kill Bill 2 as Pai Mei) to appear as the Shaolin Monk; former HKSAR Chief Secretary, Ms. Anson Chan for agreeing to sing along to the chorus; Mr. Henry Chung, HKSC, for being the Director of Photography and Cameraman; Mr. Chan Chung Ki for his assistance in some of the camerawork; Universal McCann Hong Kong for allowing me to shoot their candidates while I was hired by them to shoot a presentation video for them and, lastly, my teachers at FatBars for their technical guidance and assistance!

What is your next project?
I will continue to make promotional films for clients but will go around to seek funding at the same time for 2 of my feature film projects. I know it may sound a bit far-fetched, but those are my resolutions for the year 2008!


Catch the premiering screening of the winning music video on MTV Asia soon. Catch it now on You Tube.

Client

MTV Asia

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