ARTICLE
New Singaporean web series ‘One Take’ highlights youth social issues - all in 1 long take
By Flora / 16 May 2019 (Thursday)
Image Credit: The Hummingbird Co
Local production company, The Hummingbird Co., launched their new independent web series ‘One Take’, which aims to highlight current teenage and youth social issues.
Starring Salif Hardi, Tan Hui Er, and Ong Yi Xuan in the lead roles, each episode is filmed in a single take where the story of these youths unravel in real time.
Directed and written by Tan and Benedict Yeo, this series also marks the relaunch of Not Safe For TV (NSFTV), the company’s online video channel that has previously hosted comedy series, ‘The Average Guys’.
Image Credit: The Hummingbird Co
The concept of One Take arose as the showrunners keenly felt the need to create honest conversations within the digital space, holding up a mirror to society and touching on sensitive social issues such as teenage pregnancy, domestic abuse, and class differences. With the recent social commentary and online activism trends already prevalent amongst youths (e.g. the NUS peeping-tom incidents), the series provides a fresh take to open up even deeper conversations about the characters’ decisions and non-decisions, as well as the social impact that their choices create in a fictional world.
“We created One Take with the intent of exploring social issues through a narrative eye. Every episode being a single take allowed us to place these issues within reality in a manner that other narrative styles couldn’t. We wrote our characters into situations that we hope will engage audiences to think deeper about these issues, rather than forcing our opinion on them,” said co-showrunner Benedict Yeo.
In addition to the young cast, the series will also feature other prominent local actors and actresses such as Gurmit Singh, Oon Shu An, Lim Kay Siu, and Janice Koh.
The pilot episode was released on 10th May and will subsequently be released weekly on Not Safe For TV’s social media channels.