SINGAPORE, April 29 — If you were to scroll through the Golden Village website, chances are you would find a seemingly obscure title called Oversteer among a long list of global blockbusters.
And if one were to head down to the cinema screening it — currently only at VivoCity — promotional posters for it are conspicuously absent.
“We don’t have any marketing budget, so you can’t even see our poster outside,” the film’s director Derrick Lui, 48, told TODAY candidly in a sit-down interview recently.
“We’ve got no money, so basically we rely on people who have watched the film sharing about it by word of mouth.”
Without giving away too much, here is the 86-minute feature film in a nutshell: It tells the tale of a young man whose ambitions and interest in the automotive industry led to a falling out with his family.
Though it is touted as Singapore’s first car racing-themed movie, Lui winces at attempts to compare it with more familiar titles of the same genre, like Hollywood’s Fast and Furious franchise.
Not least because his movie was produced on a starkly shoestring “six-figure” budget instead of a multi-million dollar one, but also because family is the central theme to his movie, he said.
For over an hour, Lui sat with TODAY at the Golden Village Gold Class lounge to talk about how he got into the filmmaking industry, and why Oversteer took 10 years to see the light of day.
He also spoke about why he thinks it is challenging to produce a commercially successful film here in Singapore.
Footballer to filmmaker
Lui’s career in filmmaking was largely by chance; his first career choice was football.
“I’ve decided since secondary school I wanted to be a footballer. And I worked very hard (for it) at the expense of everything else — studies, relationship,” he said.
His aspirations were, however, short-lived when he broke his ankle during a match.
Wanting to make full use of his time while serving National Service after the injury, the business diploma graduate decided then to further his studies.
Being a self-professed “mischievous” youth who “hates memorising”, he looked out for the course with as much practical component to the syllabus as possible, which led him to a filmmaking degree.
Even then, he experienced some speed bumps along the way. He could still remember how he was the only one in class to fail their first assignment in video editing.
“It got me thinking: ‘Is this all a big mistake?’” he recalled.
Fortunately, he had a wonderful lecturer “whom I attribute to changing a bit of my life”. She took him aside, told him that she saw talent in him and patiently went through with him the mistakes that he made.
Lui said that after the chat, he excelled for the rest of his assignments.
For about 20 years or so since then, Lui delved into a full-time career in production — with stints in Mediacorp’s television commercial division Caldecott Productions International and MTV Asia, among others.
He recalled at times travelling for months to film programmes, such as a food travelogue with Malaysian celebrity Chef Wan.
But the father of three eventually shifted gears, opting to do short-form productions so he could better control his schedule and spend more time with his children.
“I felt that if you lose them when they’re young, you will not recover what you’ve lost when you’re older. So you’ll lose them forever.”
Of Covid-19, coup and car selling
His first feature film, 1400, was completed in 2015 and went on to receive awards at film festivals in Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles, United States.
Oversteer is his second feature film but his first commercial theatrical release.
It almost never saw the light of day.
Lui lost a producer, who was poached for another project, as well as funding from a government agency.
At one point in 2017, the film reportedly had a budget of S$2.5 million, with Singapore singer and actor Nathan Hartono among the cast, though even this did not materialise.
Eventually, the budget dwindled down to “six figures”, funded by Lui’s life savings and him selling his extensively “zhenged” car — colloquial for upgraded.
Equivalent to a four-room public flat? Three-room? Lui merely let out a little chuckle at this reporter’s attempt to narrow down the figure he poured into the film.
“It’s hard to do itemised costing when you’re a one-man show,” he said, dismissing the question.
Even some of local filmmaker Jack Neo’s “drama-driven, no action scene” works cost upwards of a million dollars, Lui pointed out.
He wrote the first draft for the movie idea 10 years ago, and eventually managed to complete the actual shooting in 14 days in early 2020 — “very fast”, by his own admission.
But border lockdowns due to Covid-19 prevented him from flying to Bangkok to oversee the final touches of the post-production editing process.
He then outsourced the audio post-production works to a team in Myanmar, but then the 2021 military coup happened and threw another spanner in the works.
No next Jack Neo
After overcoming all the obstacles, Oversteer premiered in Golden Village cinemas in January this year and has since elicited some mixed responses.
A review by 8days described it as “unbelievably boring” and deserving to be renamed as Overhaul.
On Letterboxd — a social network where moviegoers share their own reviews — one reviewer described Oversteer as “woefully underwritten”, adding that Lui’s passion for the local car scene “is clear, but... (translated) in a generic fashion on screen”.
On the other hand, a review on Singapore Film Society site had this to say about the film: “Its tight storyline, reasonably strong performance, relatable characters, and some authentic racing moments will not leave you disappointed.”
Asked to comment, Lui said this is part and parcel of producing a commercial film, where even global blockbusters that have spawned their own cult following cannot please everybody.
Closer to home, he again cited Neo as an example: “Many critics can slam his movies, I realised, but his box office numbers (are) still very good.”
And he doesn’t see “the next Jack Neo” despite the emergence of a younger generation of filmmakers making waves in the film festival circuit.
Lui said there are many factors going against an aspiring director who wants to produce a commercially successful film here — partly why he pressed on with this commercial film project until the finish line despite the obstacles he faced.
To produce an indie film catering to a relatively smaller, niche audience at film festivals is already challenging, but to come up with one targeting the mass audience is a whole different set of challenges altogether, he said.
And in Singapore, an aspiring filmmaker has to grapple with a local market that is inherently small, consisting of an audience who are spoiled for choice when it comes to entertainment — from the big screens to streaming services.
Having a smaller target audience naturally means there is a cap to how much one could realistically make from ticket sales. Lui said that one can expect to make about S$2 or so per ticket sold here — which in turn sets the limit to how much a filmmaker can realistically spend on making a movie.
“If you don’t spend a lot of money, you cannot get the biggest actors, you cannot get the best crew,” he said.
Lui himself harbours little to no hope of making money from the movie, although he stressed that he would do it all over again with no regrets.
Asked for his parting words to Singaporeans, Lui said that making a film is already a tough endeavour, even more so in Singapore.
“So please support Singapore films. If our own Singaporeans don’t support Singapore films, who else will?” — TODAY
