Flavert Media Lab {The Blog}

Assalamualaikum Warahmatullah and Peace and Blessings be upon you guys dear visitors. Today is 14th day and there’s less than one month before the nationwide screening of Geng The Movie / The Adventure Begins that was produced by Malaysian animation company, Les’Copaque Productions Sdn Bhd. Yesterday I was invited there with fellow bloggers such as Ayesha and Topotato and also Odin, to watch their press preview.

And if you’re looking for any spoilers, sorry, there isn’t any of the review :p

The press preview happens at Cineleisure Damansara, invited press, media, bloggers, and also their partners and executives. They also invite two Orphanage houses to entertain them. The screening starts a bit late from scheduled time and I think it’s around 850PM-9PM. The running time for the movie if I’m not mistaken is around 90 minutes. Geng is a story of two guys, Badrol and Lim going to spend their holidays at Badrol’s village with his grandfather a.k.a Tok Dalang, and Badrol’s grandpa makes an appearance on the prime news about the mystery surrounding that village. Fueled with happiness and joy, the duo going to the village and met the famous lovable twins, Upin & Ipin that have attracted most Malaysians during the last Ramadhan ( fasting month ) in 2007 & 2008. To complete the ‘gang’, they’ve also met Ros, the village beauty that’s the older sister to the twins and Rajoo, the animal whispering boy which his paranormal abilities will be totally useful to their plot and storyline.

Storyline? Hold on, there’s no spoilers ahead :p

And the geng discovers Oopet during their visit their visit to Tok Dalang’s Durian Orchard and the journey of action and adventure starts there, from the warm atmosphere of a Malaysian village and exotic Malaysian rainforest to the world of colorful and fantasy-like cavern with scary giant leeches and gargantuan beast.

If you’re again, thinking about spoilers, this is the third reminder. There’s no spoilers here and you have to see it for yourself.There’s a lot of surprise I really have a cosy time laughing out loud because of the jokes.

So to summarize all

STORYLINE: The storyline a bit…Just normal I think. But I kinda like the ending and the surprise. it’s surprisingly surprised me hahah.

VOICE ACTING: Pretty strong. The feel is there. The voice-actors deliver the emotion pretty well.Escpecially Rajoo.

SOUND EFFECTS: For some reason I think there’s too much song to elevate the mood. But nonetheless, I think it’s still okay and the song are suitable with the scene that presented.

VISUAL EFFECTS: Stunning, but of course can’t expect much from cinema view. If there’s DVD format and play it on LCD TV, of course it would be totally brilliant. Sometimes it felt a bit dark and tooo many details to spot on.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: The action-sequence pack is not complete if it has a bad camera angle/cinematography. I love the cinematography during the motorcycle and the sliding on the wood. Pretty amazing and seems too fast to catch the details.

LOCAL CONTENT: The singing part feels like Hindustan, but actually when I think back again there’s always a feature song in Animation, just that they presented in Action Sequence ( Like Shrek 3 – I need a Hero, more action when Fiona rushing into the castle ). But inside Geng, it was presented in local village set in harmonious village people from different races, which add Malaysian values. That’s more like it and really love it.

VALUE FOR MONEY/ RATING: If you’re looking for 3D Film/Animation benchmark in Malaysia, Geng will set the standards. Go watch it. rating = 4/5

But rest assured, as for me, after watching it, it’s worth to wait after two years for their film. I’m one of their friends and also fans starting with their work which is Misi Mustahak. It’s so promising back then. But they didn’t rush. They took their time and planned everything very carefully. They even test the market response with upin-Ipin mini series, which garnered positive response during their first Geng film Character trailer.

This is their first trailer, the character introduction

If you see carefully, during the lorry at the cliff, the background was pretty plain. But they reworked it to a more beautiful scenerey. They’re passionate about the work and since they made progress each day, they’ve decided to remake some scenes because during their production, all of the workers are fresh graduates and they keep improving each day. The reason it’s being delayed, to enhance the earlier part that didn’t carry the same quality after they worked for 1 years ++

That’s a good to know behind-the-scene facts.

Last Monday I’ve attended ‘What’s Hot in 2009′ talk that was organized by Cradle Fund Sdn bhd, an organisation that talks about business in Malaysia. The Moderator, Dr Sivapalan Vivakerajah from Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia can’t stop pronouncing that this Geng, will be hot in 2009 because it will re-ignite creative content in Malaysia and despite this economic downturn nowadays, Geng can do a feature animated film in 2 years with limited amount, RM4 Million, which is if you compare with Hollywood production, their budget will whoopping to USD 40 Million and 100 experience workers. Geng/Les’copaque only use 40 passionate fresh graduates. This, in return, will spark the outsourcing business during the recession. Everyone everywhere want to cut their cost and of course, they’ll see Malaysia as one of the destination because of this ability, to produce an artwork within limited resources.

And as I was also from Creative Content Field, I have a strong hunch that this is gonna be as hot as fried banana at the roadside stall.

So don’t you forget, mark your calendars, 12/2/2009. Of if you’re the type of person that always forgot or you suffer a Goldenfish-Memory-Syndrome ( remember for 30 seconds only), you might want to download this Geng The Movie – Interactive Flash lite Wallpaper/Screensaver that display the countdown of the movie. If you have kids, bring your kids and they’ll love it. If you can’t get enough of Upin – Ipin last 3 months, go get it here at the cinema.

Talking about future plans of Lescopaque, they started with want to produce a film. Now, they dreaming to built a theme park. Kudos! They’ve also mentioned during the Press Interview that they produce this on HD quality so.. there might be DVD -HD version later. Hoho. Visit their movie website = Geng The Movie

//Visit another Geng review by Topotato

//visit official review from Geng Official Blog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Cool Stuff, English, Mobile Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.