Does Passion Make It Possible? My Eight Years on Square One

Today (26th April) marks the 8th anniversary of my first step towards a documentary life - a leap of faith towards a medium that has captivated me throughout my childhood and made me yearn to be better at telling stories.

I had always been talkative since I was a kid, but I was also often misunderstood. For reasons beyond my comprehension at the time, it seemed that I did not have the charisma, intellect and vocabulary to express what was going on so clearly in my mind.

My classmates’ negative reactions demoralised me, though my talkative nature was hardly subdued by it. Unfortunately, that also meant that I constantly experienced the rinse and repeat of failing in telling my stories.

In hindsight, this is probably the fundamental reason as to why I gravitated towards documentaries. Expert communicators that shared the wonders of the world and the universe in an hour’s time slot with such clarity compelled me to pay attention no matter how novel or complex the topic. I wished I could be like them.

But I never dreamt of being a documentary storyteller. It really isn’t an obvious choice in the early childhood discussions of what one’s ambition would be. And there were definitely no signs (even now) that doing this work would be financially sustainable.

So for years, I was simply a fan of documentaries, nothing more. That is, until 2013, when my graduation from Nanyang Polytechnic came with a late enlistment date for National Service. Surprisingly, I found myself with a 6 month break - a ‘purgatory’ of sorts before my next stage in life.

As a risk-verse person, this was a life-changing gift. And within the first month, I wrote my first documentary review on the then-named OKJ Discoveries blog after I was criticized during an interview for the National University of Singapore’s University Scholars Programme for not having good writing skills.

I took their remarks to heart and began writing on something that I cared about - the subject matter was obvious. Shortly thereafter, I went for my first PR event and learnt that documentary entities like National Geographic and BBC Earth (then known as BBC Knowledge) had a presence here. All of a sudden, a career in the documentary industry didn’t seem far fetched.

But the path towards documentary storytelling was still very much high risk, unknown reward. So, for my two year stint in the army, I worked on studying the local landscape of opportunities as well as building up my own capacity in handling heavy workloads since the next stage would involve juggling university studies with this pursuit.

At the back of my mind, I constantly checked in with myself on whether I had what it took to be successful in this path. While not formally trained, I do believe that everyone has at least one innate talent, and the lucky few who discover it early enough can then put in the hard work to be successful. This belief was also what fueled me past the risk-free period prior to National Service.

At the time, my philosophy was that if I discovered that I am innately good in Documentary Storytelling, then it would be a lot easier to try and make a good living out of it. I would also be extremely lucky should this be the case, as I would be doing what I love, something that is not always true. Passion, after all, does not equate to talent.

Perhaps the most daunting milestone that tested that belief was in 2016. I had just completed my first documentary, a 11-month epic journey that took all of myself and the capacity of a 28-person team to complete.

Yet, I looked at the work and I knew that if this was my best, then it would be better if I changed profession. The documentary was simply not good enough, in my opinion. But I reasoned with myself that the quality could have varied due to a myriad of factors for work overload due to being a first time filmmaker.

So, in response, I set out to do my second documentary, a one-man show effort that would help me answer the question - do I stick on this path that I had already spent 4 years and countless opportunity costs on, or do I pivot to something else?

The result of this was Trespass: Stories from Singapore’s Thieves Market. It won Best Documentary at the National Youth Film Awards in 2019, allowed me to see first hand how a documentary can affect the lives and experiences of others, and was the ticket to me making my television debut on a long-running episodic local documentary series.

But most importantly, I knew even before all the accolades, that I had renewed my belief that I have the innate talent to do this. And that is also what drives me to work hard on it everyday. What a waste it would be otherwise.

P.S. Even today, I am still taking criticisms of my writing to heart. That is why this weekly write up exists.