Singapore’s short-form filmmakers and platforms are taking a whole new look at domestic issues that would once have been considered taboo, challenging stereotypes and putting topics such as suicide, mental health, death, dying and homelessness front and centre of their work.

Suicide, eating disorders, mental health, dementia, homelessness and immigration are part of Singapore’s latest video conversation, with filmmakers surfacing a social underbelly that would once, in a shiny country proud of its development and modern advantages, have been taboo. Led by young homegrown talent, Singapore’s new wave of short-form programming is unafraid, unflinching and sometimes confrontational, putting unvarnished reality, including survivors of all manner of ills, families under pressure and raw emotion front and centre of their work.

Over the last two years, premium short form programming in Singapore has seen a wave of content such as born-in-Singapore digital platform Viddsee’s Uncomfortable Questions and Love & Grief, while Our Grandfather Story (OGS) – another homegrown platform – has offered series such as Can Ask Meh? and TBH (To Be Honest).

Even mainstream CNA, the international 24-hour current affairs channel owned and operated by national broadcaster Mediacorp, is on board, with, for instance, three-part series, Homeless in Singapore. Each episode on CNA’s YouTube channel received more than 300,000 views. In a country where 89.3% of residents own a home – one of the highest home-ownership rates in the world – this docu-series provides challenging insights to the day-to-day lives of rough sleepers. 

“It seemed to us that a lot of Singaporeans were vaguely aware that homelessness exists in Singapore,” says Sharon Hun Ee Lin, Mediacorp’s deputy chief editor of current affairs. “But the true nature and magnitude of the issue were unfamiliar territory for them,” she adds.

“Our first challenge was finding profiles who were willing to appear onscreen without having to conceal their identities. We wanted to challenge the stereotypes that people have about the homeless,” Lin says. 

Viddsee, which first started in 2013 as a platform curating short films, moved into producing original content telling “raw, unfiltered stories on taboo topics” after witnessing the boom of short-form video content on social media platforms. 

Today, Viddsee has more than one million subscribers on its main YouTube platform, while also running a separate Nuggets by Viddsee account focused on bite-sized content targetting Singaporean youth. 

“TikTok is not really a social platform like Facebook and Instagram, where you’re connected with your friends. When you go on TikTok, you’re scrolling to watch content,” says Michele Schofield, Viddsee’s senior VP of commercial. 

“We saw the opportunity for a very different offering to what’s on broadcast television. People have found it moving to watch these raw stories, which are a kind of confession of something quite personal. That content tends to do quite well and goes viral,” she says. 

A key consideration is avoiding exploiting topics for the sake of clicks. The balance is increasingly difficult to achieve in a media landscape where platforms have to optimise engagement and views for financial survival, and one where algorithms prioritise content that draws strong and extreme reactions. 

“This is a tricky thing to balance because we operate in the social media space. Especially on YouTube, we think about thumbnails and titles,” says OGS co-founder, Ng Kai Yuan. 

Hidden Hustles: Life in Death (2022) for instance, is a three-part miniseries featuring jobs in the death industry – an embalmer, a funeral director, and volunteers who give a final bath to the terminally ill. The aim is to encourage conversations about enabling dignified deaths, OGS says.

Ng says “the key is ensuring that you tell the story responsibly. You could, for example, have a title that is a bit sensational but eventually it’s how you tell the story within the video itself. That takes it in a different direction. We could go via a very sensational route or we could go a very educational route”. 

Schofield points out that the Viddsee team works hard for balance. For example, episode two of Viddsee’s original series, Love & Grief, is titled To My Lost Mum, and tells the story of a woman whose mother was murdered by the family’s domestic helper when she was six years old. 

Schofield says that if Viddsee had called the episode My Helper Murdered My Mother, social media engagement may have soared. 

“I asked myself if we were being insensitive towards the subject by calling the video that, are we exploiting her and her story with that title for it to go viral,” she says. “That’s what you have to weigh up when you are putting the keywords in there without seeming like you’re exploiting the subject.”

The platforms use different systems to gather ideas and commission videos. 

For OGS, Ng says the team works like a “publisher”, with an internal monthly meeting for the creative team to look at story pitches that come in from video journalists. Most videos take four to eight weeks to produce. 

Ng says that it is advantageous that most of OGS’ team members are in their 20s and 30s, which provides helpful firsthand insight into what topics and stories will do well among their audience. 

“For example, in TBH, we are trying to tackle problems from a millennial perspective,” Ng says. “We have a core audience that’s around that age looking for content like that. The past couple of episodes that are out are doing pretty decently.” 

The first video in the TBH series investigates how much rent a young adult can save by living in Malaysia’s Johor Bahru instead of Singapore. As of end September, the video had received 357,000 views since its premiere in mid-July 2023.

For Viddsee, studio head Kenny Tan does most of the commissioning. The platform also has a “greenlight council” made up of the commercial and marketing teams, which provide feedback. 

“We sit there to say what we think the audience is going to respond to,” says Schofield, who draws on experience from her previous content and marketing roles at A+E Networks Asia, One Animation and Turner Entertainment Networks. “I weigh in on ideas and sometimes say that I need a more SEO-rich title or flag if a series feels similar to another series.”

One of Viddsee’s priorities is opening opportunities to filmmakers across Singapore, and, in addition to being constantly on the lookout for ideas, the platform does regular call-outs to factual filmmakers. 

“We’ll give them the format and duration that we’re looking for and the rest is up to them to pitch,” Schofield says. The production cycle for these videos ranges from three to six months. 

For CNA, Hun’s team has to be open to evolving docu-series beyond the original brief to show, for instance, how the homeless community hacks the lack of convenient facilities, including potable water, washing clothes or dealing with the lack of privacy at shelters. 

“We quickly realised that the hacking wasn’t just a feature of homelessness. These were symptoms of deeper issues that have resulted in them falling into systemic gaps,” she says. 

“Another mis-perception is that the biggest problem the homeless in Singapore face is where to sleep at night. But in fact, Singapore provides shelters. So actually, their biggest challenge is what to do in the day.”

Looking ahead, OGS aims to expand beyond Singapore and tell stories about Southeast Asia, although Ng admits that the “fragmented” nature of the Southeast Asian market is a challenge. 

Ng says the push in the past two years has been for YouTube and TikTok, with longer former videos of 20-25 minutes replacing micro-documentaries of three to five minutes. 

For Viddsee, Schofield says that the platform plans to increase its volume of content by 30% in the next year, expanding the team, and growing its TikTok audience. 

Viddsee’s experience in the social space continues to evolve... and to surprise. “Our short dramatic films have performed really well on TikTok,” Schofield says, explaining that Viddsee adapts its short films to a vertical format. “You would think that everyone there wants infotainment and that short films would be a hard genre, but we found quite the opposite,” she says. – by Sara Merican

▶ Published in ContentAsia October 2023 magazine