I first got to know about the 15Malaysia project through an inconspicuous news report. Back then, I didn’t give much thought about it. A few days later, I found and watch The Tree on a blog I follow. Immediately, I started watching the previous two episodes and from then on, I await every single expisode with great excitement and anticipation. All of the short films are extremely thought provoking – that was their intention. Of those, I found Potong Saga, Halal, Slovak Sling, Meter and Healthy Paranoia to be quite comedic and interesting.
One important thing I realise is that the politicians involved in the projects are all good actors, especially Khairy Jamaluddin. His acting was so realistic and convincing one actually stop thinking he is a politician and start thinking he is a real taxi driver. Perhaps its because they are such good actors that they are “good” politicians. Perhaps it’s the other way round, I don’t really know.
From the project, I also got to know the names of a lot of actors and directors previously unknown to me. Baki Zainal, for example, was simply extraordinary. I am amazed by his ability to speak Mandarin fluently in both Meter and Healthy Paranoia. Perhaps this is the Malaysia we should be looking forward to – people of different races speaking and communicating in a myriad of different languages.
More importantly, I am amazed that the Malaysian in general are so technologically savvy, and so connected through the Internet. The whole 15Malaysia website is built on the WordPress platform, the same one this blog is currently using. All the short films are hosted on YouTube – knowing how slow connections to the video sharing site from Malaysia is, I am astonished the films have been watched so many times there. The films, and perhaps the website are licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-nd, which allows all the films to be copied and distributed (even on CD), provided that it’s for non-commercial purpose, and they are attributed.
This allowed the films to be provided through both direct download and BitTorrent download. That is surprising, considering that it’s a open secret TMNet Streamyx throttle BitTorrent bandwidth and traffic in Malaysia. The films are probably one of the first things Malaysians can share legally through BitTorrent, apart from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). This goes to show that BitTorrent is not a protocol and network for pirates, rather it’s a technology – which, like all technologies, can be used for both good and bad. Hopefully this will be a sign of good things to come for Malaysian broadband, and hopefully ISP will actually stop throttling BitTorrent traffic indiscriminately.
It is quite surprising that a project which had minimal coverage and promotion in the traditional media can be so successful. 15Malaysia relied mostly on online marketing, using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to promote the project. On Facebook, it has, as at today, 87386 fans. In a Facebook note, the 15Malaysia project claims to have over 5 million page views from 473070 unique visitor to their website, and that the videos have been downloaded 296,080 times. That was from the 13th of September.
Today, I grabbed some numbers from the YouTube channel and performed some calculations. The 15 short films, in all languages, attracted almost 2 million views. If one were to include all the trailers and “The Making’s”, the number swell up to over 2.6 million. The average views per film is over 132000. Despite Malaysia’s demographic, most of the films are watched with English subtitles. On average, 82.46% of the views are from videos with English subtitle, followed by 14.30% in Chinese, 3.05% in Malay and 0.19% in Tamil. That perhaps is indicative of the prefered communication language for Malaysians on the internet. Considering the number of people who actually CHOSE to watch the video with English subtitle, it makes little sense for the government to revert the teaching of Mathematics and Science subjects to Malay.
All in all, I’m fairly impressed with the concept of 15Malaysia and its achievement. It showed Malaysians that great things, at least by Malaysian standard, can be accomplished when we put aside our differences, be it political, ethnic or otherwise, and work together for a common cause. If only the political leaders realised this, and if only the real world were such wonderful, Malaysia would be a great place.