Interview with Hasnul Hadi Samsudin, Deputy President, POSTAM


By AMRITA VALECHA | 11 August, 2011 - 12:30

Former Head of MAC3 (MDeC) Hasnul Hadi Samsudin has recently been appointed as the Deputy President of POSTAM. Hasnul who is currently holding the position of Senior Manager at Rhythm & Hues Studios Malaysia will be supporting and heading various activities and programs of POSTAM. In this interview, he shares with AnimationXpress Asia Pacific about his role at POSTAM and about the initiatives & events of POSTAM in this fiscal year.


POSTAM (Post Production Animation & Creative Content Association Malaysia) which was founded in 1996 comprises of members of top notch companies and professionals in animation, post production, visual effects, mobile, game, IPTV, interactive, E-learning & other related creative content.

Excerpts

Could you tell us about your role as the Deputy President of POSTAM?
Role as the Deputy President is to be the support and help lead with the President in all activities and programs of POSTAM. I also work with the team to help realize the vision and mission of POSTAM in enhancing the Malaysian Creative Content Industry. Its vision is to help transform Malaysia into an internationally recognized Creative Content hub.

The mission of POSTAM is as follows:

  • To keep up with knowledge and the latest technological advancement and facilitate its use within our creative content industry.
  • To help galvanize & enhance Industry development across the traditional and digital sectors
  • To help maximize the use of converging media platforms by multi-industry applications
  • To help attract global creative content resources and projects to Malaysia
  • To help raise local creative content resources and projects to international standards.

What are the various initiatives that POSTAM would be taking up in 2011-2012?
Lot of our initiatives this year is to create a platform for the industry to come together and discuss and learn from each other. The special POSTAM Creative Content Teh Tarik Session allows our industry to communicate face to face and allow the actual knowledge sharing to happen on a casual basis. Hence the Teh Tarik Session- which is a very Malaysian community builder that brings everyone together over a cup of 'pulled tea or in Bahasa Malaysia Teh Tarik'. This session is planned for every month of the year in different venues across KL.

Another of our important initiatives is the International Creative Content Conference or IC3 (ICE) - which is a follow up of last year's Avatar Stereoscopic Seminar. The IC3 is slated as an industry platform for knowledge-sharing and networking for the creative content industry on a larger scale.

What have been the past events? Tell us about POSTAM Creative Content Teh Tarik Session 2: Co-Productions?
The POSTAM Creative Content Teh Tarik Session kicked off at FINAS (The National Film Development Corporation) with a session on Visual Effects Industry in Malaysia. This had speakers from various local VFX studios like Studio Voxel, APV and KRU Studios to talk about their latest projects and experiences. FINAS also introduced the CGI funding and Creative Industry Policy.

The POSTAM Creative Content Teh Tarik Session 2: Co-Productions had Edmund Chan from Animasia, Tan Chiang Loong from Ed-Online and Adlin Majid & Foong Cheng Loong from Lee, Hishamuddin Allen & Gledhill.

Edmund Chan showcased his experiences in creating several Co-production Projects with various partners like A-Gogo International for their project ABC Monsters. He showed us the before and after of the projects after the co-production has been done. He says that Animasia has learned a lot now that they have been working with co-production partners in elevating the quality of their content.

Tan Chiang Loong talked about their experience working with Korean partners on Eori. Language was certainly a barrier and thus having a full-time translator in-house has helped tremendously. Even with these problems, he finds the experience well worth it and wants to continue doing more. Adlin and Foong, came from the Legal perspective of IP rights and what is needed in making sure co-production or joint-venture agreements have all the necessary clauses/areas for IP protection. This helps a lot of companies understand what they need in place before a production goes along full steam ahead.

Tell us about International Creative Content Conference? What does POSTAM want to achieve from this conference?
POSTAM will be actively organizing more events and activities for the benefit of its members and creative industries. One of the events that we are working on is called the International Creative Content Conference, which will be held on 27th September 2011.

Some of the speakers invited for the conference are Michael Lake, CEO of Iskandar Pinewood Malaysia who has over thirty-six years' experience in production and management within the Australian and international film industry; Percy Fung, Chairman of AMP4, Association of Motion Pictures Post Production Professionals, Hong Kong; and Stephen Cha, Director, Asian Business Development of 3ality Digital, USA.