GIC has launched its first-ever animated film "Bold Sees the Bigger Picture".

Inspired by GIC's commemorative book, Bold Vision: The Untold Story of Singapore's Reserves and its Sovereign Wealth Fund, the film tells the history of how Singapore's reserves were managed from Singapore's early years to the founding of GIC.

It features original illustrations by Singaporean artist André Wee and an original soundtrack composed by MassiveMusic.

What's most impressive is that the soundtrack was performed by The Purple Symphony (TPS), Singapore's first and largest inclusive orchestra featuring people with and without disabilities.

TPS has been a GIC community partner since 2016.

The film took 10 months to make, starting with scriptwriting and storyboarding, to production, rehearsals, recording and finally rendering.

Mothership spoke to Wee, the music director and Gerard Fitzgerald, the co-orchestrator of the film's soundtrack to discover how the collaboration came into fruition.

André Wee: Spurred on by intrigue

GIC wanted to spotlight local talent for this project, so they approached Wee, who specialises in animation and illustration, to bring GIC's story to life.

"Art has always been a constant companion of mine," Wee shared.

He reminisced about his schooling days, where he would find himself doodling all over his exercise books, redrawing cell structures and dissections during biology class, and sketching people and places on his commutes.

He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honours at the Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Illustration and has since worked as a lecturer at both Nanyang Technological University and LASALLE College of the Arts.

GIC approached Wee at a time when his life was flurry of activity. He was constantly flying between Singapore, London, Amsterdam and New York during that period of time.

This proved to be the biggest challenge: moving between a few countries during the duration of the project and adjusting to multiple timezones.

However, despite the difficulty in designing and planning for meetings with the creative agency and animation house while on the move, Wee continued the project as he was intrigued by its nature.

"I think what spurred me to take on this project was the intrigue I had for the nature of it. Tons of people have heard of the GIC but very few of them know of its history and the colossal impact it has had on our nation’s success," he said.

As for how he found creative inspiration, he pointed to the other collaborators and teammates he worked with.

Bouncing off ideas, visuals and compositions off the animation team and creative agency and seeing what sticks, redesigning and refining visuals until it sat right with everyone – in Wee's words, the creative process was largely a team effort than a lone one.

"I am entirely grateful for that as it is easy to pigeonhole yourself and lose perspective when working alone creatively," Wee said.

As different scenes were worked on concurrently, it became more and more exciting to continue and see how far the team had come at each meeting.

"I’d even sometimes go back to bed too excited to sleep, thinking of how all the different parts of the project were coming together!" Wee quipped.

This was his first animated short outside of short-form content he's done in the past for social media.

Wee described the experience as "amazing" and "humbling". He lauded the teams involved, and said that the entire project had been a creative learning opportunity.

When asked what made the project special, he cited the inspirational nature of GIC's history.

Learning about the challenges and obstacles that Singapore faced and overcame, despite the odds that were against it, and how actions and choices culminated in the establishment of GIC and the success of a young country had made the experience all the more personal and special to Wee.

Gerard Fitzgerald: Fulfilling in unexpected ways

Similar to Wee, Fitzgerald grew up surrounded by music in Australia, with both his parents being musically trained.

Classically trained at first, he switched to jazz performance and arrangement before investing heavily in music technology which helped build up his career.

That was before Fitzgerald came to Singapore in 1996 and built up a company that is now known as MassiveMusic.

Speaking about the creative process, Fitzgerald shared that it was necessary to establish a tone and manner as a starting point for the entire project.

Inspired by film styles in both the traditional film orchestral and electronic film genre, Fitzgerald composed a number of ideas in mid-May. Then after a series of discussions, the composition was completed in June.

After orchestration was completed, the pieces and scores were sent to TPS for practice. Visually-challenged musicians were also sent an audio clip containing just their portion of music so that they could practise by themselves.

"Then, they went away and learnt the entire song from memory! That was fantastic," Fitzgerald exclaimed.

Full rehearsals were conducted in early September and the final recordings were completed in end-September.

He described the overall experience working with TPS as fulfilling in unexpected ways:

"I understood and had prepared for the challenges of the project, but it was the sense of community and family in the orchestra – the humanity, players helping players, the better players giving guidance where needed and working together as a team – which was inspiring and heartening in equal measure."

Film composer and orchestrator Adrian Sergovich, who worked on this along with Fitzgerald, also said that he was equally impressed and honoured to work with TPS.

"It’s rare to work with an orchestra, rarer still to work with an orchestra with such a diverse range of players and levels of skill," Sergovich said.

There were definitely some adjustments that had to be made to accommodate the musicians, such as keeping the music at a constant tempo and avoiding tricky rhythmic patterns, but Fitzgerald noted that these are challenging for musicians of any level.

He and his team instead focused on solid thematic ideas which showcased TPS's talents.

"Bold is the Bigger Picture"

When asked what makes the film worth seeing, both Wee and Fitzgerald offered their own reasons and insights.

"I think it is important to not take what we have for granted so my hope is that our work helps to illustrate and shed light on another significant part of our nation’s history that deserves both recognition and celebration," Wee said.

Similarly, Fitzgerald described GIC's journey as an interesting one that is worth checking out.

"Most Singaporeans and permanent residents know who GIC is and that they look after the country’s reserves, but they know little more than that. The story tells me that there were no easy decisions and that GIC will continue long into the future. It is an extremely focused organisation with a singular purpose of protecting Singapore’s reserves," he commented.

The five minute film can be viewed here.

Top photo via GIC