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ADDRESS BY MS PAM HU, DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, MEDIA DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY, AT THE TOON BOOM ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2007 AWARDS PRESENTATION, ON 25 SEPTEMBER 2007 AT THE CANADIAN HIGH COMMISSION

 

Your Excellency Alan Virtue, High Commissioner of Canada to Singapore,

Mr Ricky Tham, Principal, ITE College Central,

Partners, Friends from the media,

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

 

Good Morning.

 

In just two months, three students from Singapore will have the opportunity to spend one month interning at three top animation studios in Canada.

The Toon Boom Animation Festival has been an eye-opening competition for me personally.  The quality of the submissions has been simply creative and sophisticated.

For this, I would like to give credit to the students who took pains to learn the skills, the trainers who put in much effort to impart their knowledge, and the various partners who helped made the competition a success.

Who knows some of you may in a few years to come, follow on the footsteps of successful local animators such as Ben Kwa who was part of a team responsible for making everything in Shark Tale – from fur and feathers to ripples in the water – realistic. Or you could be the next Melvin Tan, who animated characters in popular animation films like Robots and Ice Age.

How MDA has helped to grow the nascent but exciting animation sector

The MDA’s objective is to develop Singapore into a vibrant media city. One of the ways in which we hope to achieve this goal is by growing the local animation industry by means of raising the capability of our talents. We achieve this through supporting events such as the Toon Boom Animation Festival, under our MediAction! initiative.

Promoting media adoption through MEDIAction

MediAction! is a year-round initiative organized by the MDA, together with our partners from the private, public and people sectors, to inspire Singaporeans, through a string of fun and engaging events to use media for work, learning and play.

Our aim is to raise the media literacy of Singaporeans by encouraging them to use media in a balanced and responsible manner.  For those who have the skill sets and passion, we hope to inspire them further to consider a career in the burgeoning media industry.

This competition has further helped strengthen the relationship and partnership between Canada and Singapore, both at the government and industry levels.  We hope that this will lead to more projects and co-productions between the two countries.

I would like to congratulate all the winners of the competition, and also give a pat to the other participants for a job well done.  I definitely look forward to seeing more of your works in the future and more Singaporeans breaking into Hollywood or following on the footsteps of Ben Kwa or Melvin Tan.

 

 

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