You Don't Need To Be A Penangite To Appreciate How Awesome This Video Is
Born and bred in Penang, budding filmmaker Samuel Chuah wants to show you the unique culture and life in Penang through the eyes of a native Penangite.
By Samantha Khor — 14 Apr 2015, 07:39 PM
When budding filmmaker Samuel Chuah stumbled upon Leonardo Dalessandri's Watchtower of Turkey, he knew it was high time someone created one for Penang, the island he calls home
Drawing inspiration from the viral video, the born-and-bred Penangite decided to take things into his own hands and created his very own Watchtower-style short film to portray the Pearl of the Orient through the eyes of the local community
The video - titled 'Timeless Penang' - is a labour of love intended to convey the unique and timeless nature of Penang's food, culture and lifestyle with a combination of timelapse, slow-mo and hyperlapse filming techniques
Primarily shot with a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera, certain clips such as the cycling and kayaking sequences as well as the slow-mo scenes were shot with an iPhone 6 and GoPro Hero 4.
Samuel - who shot, directed and edited the video - roped in some assistance by Daniel and James Tan to capture the scenes he had visualised as well as in handling the technicalities of the camera and equipment
"My crew had a similar vision regarding the video, so they helped to capture the scenes that I'd wanted," Samuel said.
"Although most of the scenes were shot by me, some important shots were shot by my team, like the 360-degree shot of KOMTAR. The sequence is actually a series of photographs I'd compiled and adjusted frame-by-frame to achieve the 3D effect."
Shot over the course of four to five days, Samuel and his team managed to cover several places in Penang such as key areas in the Georgetown heritage trail (street art included), Straits Quay, Penang Hill, the clan jetties, and the Mt. Erskine morning market
A lot of preparation actually went into planning for the shoot. According to Samuel, the first step was to pick a suitable song for the video.
"I started out by picking a suitable song and my crew found a remix of the song used in Watchtower of Turkey. When I first heard the song, I knew it was perfect due to the structure of the song that had a rise and fall. I listened to the song over and over again and wrote down which part of the song would be which scene," he said.
But in most instances, spontaneous decisions proved to have worked best.
"Some of the shots were pre-planned, but most of the scenes were spur-of-the-moment thing. That's why you can see the actions of Penangites in the video were all genuine. Besides that, even new ideas popped up when I was editing," Samuel explained.
On the challenges of working on a tight schedule and a limited budget, Samuel disclosed that there were certain shots he wished he could capture but wasn't able to. However, it all worked out in the end.
"I wanted to get several shots from the sky but couldn’t get hold of the helicam due to tight budget, since it was pro bono. I also wanted night scenes such as that of Batu Feringghi, but since most of the video was shot during the day, I decided to keep it that way."
"It was quite a challenge to achieve the shots I wanted in such a short period of time," Samuel said, further explaining that he had to capture everything he needed within a tight timeframe because the camera was actually borrowed from his mentor who needed to rent it out to other people.
With the video, Samuel hopes to show people who've never been to Penang to see what life on the island is like. He also wanted Penangites who are currently out-of-state to be reminded of the beauty they've left behind and to have them miss home.