Singapore – Studio Birthplace is highlighting the plight of indigenous people fighting to protect the wilderness in a new film produced with Heckler Singapore.
Heckler Singapore joins Studio Birthplace as VFX partner on the music film, titled ‘Earth Defender.’ The film follows the story of a father and son defending the rainforest in the Sungai Utik community in Indonesia.
Directed by Studio Birthplace’s indigenous filmmaker Kynan Tegar, Heckler Singapore’s creative director Cody Amos led the VFX work. It also featured Novo Amor’s musical score.
As a VFX partner, Heckler Singapore recreated the forest’s destruction, battle scene, and sequences that highlight nature. The post-production company used drones, 3D/2D extensions, CG elements, and props to bring the vision to life.
According to Studio Birthplace’s co-directors Jorik Dozy and Sil van der Woerd, the film aims to shed light on the significance of indigenous people’s work as frontliners fighting crises in climate and human rights.
“This was the sort of project I wish I could work on every single day. Firstly, the technical VFX challenges were huge! Building a forest in CG is one thing, but getting the whole forest to fall over is completely another. We built a cool system to destroy huge trees and then duplicated them, so we had thousands of trees falling and breaking,” Amos commented.
“We also did some sad dead bird simulations and splashes, some epic matte painting work, along with creating a really abstract depiction of our hero moving on to the next life. To be doing such interesting work is already exciting, but to be doing it for a project that is addressing probably the most important issue of our time, the destruction of our natural world, felt like such an honour. And of course, working with the legends at Studio Birthplace is always delightful,” Amos added.
“We went through a really intense process with the community, doing multiple community meetings, where the whole project was openly discussed. As filmmakers, we’re used to having a certain degree of control, but working outdoors with a large community taught us to let go and flow with the moment. When it rained or the river flooded, we adapted. Everything given by the actors – who are all people from the Sungai Utik community – we considered a gift. It brought a beautiful unpredictability,” Dozy said.
“A full month we spent mostly disconnected from the internet, taking our morning showers in the river and spending our evenings on the comfortable wooden floors of the longhouse, amidst the community. We learned so much, not just as filmmakers, but spiritually too, as we started to see how incredibly far our individualistic Western culture has drifted away from living in harmony with the natural world. In a way, we became students, learning what it means to be Indigenous,” Sil added.
“This film is about the very real problems that exist within our world, the criminalisation and the murder of Earth Defenders. Indigenous Peoples that fought for their land, their forests, their rivers, and gave the biggest sacrifice, which is their life. There are communities whose whole livelihood was taken from them,” Tegar commented.
“The very part of their identity, which is the nature surrounding them, taken from them, ripped away. That’s a story that rang very close to home for me. That’s the story that we want to convey,” Tegar concluded.
