Why is KL getting destroyed in this new music video?

Malaysians very rarely get featured in music videos, especially the Western ones. We probably aren’t well-known for being a femes Western music video location… until now. We just found out that a British singer filmed his latest music video that was shot entirely in KL. 

We took a look at it and… we gotta say, it’s pretty cool. Don’t believe? Can watch it here:

Wah, so creative ah… macam new Maze Runner movie je?

It was made by a Malaysian film company and shot entirely in different parts of KL

The singer is a relatively unknown dude that goes by the name of Oliver Spalding, and he’s a 21 year-old solo artist/songwriter based in Brighton. The song above, ‘Epoch’, is part of his first mini-album titled ‘Unfurl’ which just got released in late 2017. The video was co-created by a Dutch director duo, Sil van der Woerd and Jorik Dozy, and an independent Malaysian film company, New Frontier Pictures. 

The video shows some kids running around, trying desperately to wake the adults up before the buildings start collapsing around them. But what does it mean?

If you guessed climate change, congrats! You win cookies.

“We wanted to portray the future generation, our children, in a dark scenario of the future that they wake up in. A place that is neglected by the adults, a place that has no future. As they explore their world, they quickly find out that it is ending.

We wanted to show the nightmare version of our future world that will happen if we, the adults, don’t wake up.” – Sil van der Woerd and Jorik Dozy, directors of Epoch.

The gist of the video is that Mother Earth is slowly dying, having been neglected by irresponsible adults. The directors wanted to portray the adults as sleeping on the problems we face in dealing with climate change, either because they are in denial of the issue (*cough*Trump*cough*) or because they simply don’t know what to change in order to fix this problem.

As a result, they end up leaving the innocent kids to deal with the problems of older generations.

But but… why did they choose KL? 

It is the second time these Dutch directors have worked with New Frontier Pictures. In fact, the first time they worked together was when they created ANOTHER artsy music video. It’s a documentary style music video called ‘Terraform’, which talks about the hardships and sacrifices of the sulphur miners of Kawah Ijen, Indonesia. The directors also have previously worked on several other productions based in Malaysia before this, so filming here was sap-sap sui.

The creators specifically chose those locations in KL because it had the special ‘look’ they were going for, in terms of making it look dystopian and more interesting. The entire music video was shot in Bangsar, Old Klang Road and Ampang – because Europe where got locations like this? 

So who is this Malaysian film company anyway? Like never hear before also. New Frontier Pictures has produced films that have gained a few awards, including International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2017, the Tokyo Short Shorts International Film Festival 2017 (an Oscar qualifying competition) and Shortcuts 2016 Short Film Competition by Astro Shaw and FINAS. 

“‘Epoch’ is especially special to me because we shot the entire video right here in Kuala Lumpur and worked with such incredible local talents, such as Harith Haziq and Chloe Luthi who play the leads in the video” – Sean Lin, the founder & producer of New Frontier Pictures

Wah, not bad right? Malaysian film companies also got so much recognition. According to Sean Lin, the company strives to use their art as a platform to empower conversations and awareness around social issues – all in hopes of inspiring change, especially among Malaysians.

 

But how can climate change affect us as Malaysians?

Ok ok. We know you know enough about climate change, but bear with us for a bit. See, climate change makes us have a lot more unpredictable weather in the future, damage our agricultural industry (which means less rice!!!) and cause more flooding with rising sea levels.

For one, carbon dioxide is one of the main greenhouse gases contributing to climate change, which basically floats around and absorbs heat in the atmosphere, slowly making the Earth increasingly panas. It’s mostly pumped out by humans from burning fossil fuels for transportation, making electricity and, of course, deforestation. Right now, humans produce 40 billion tonnes globally… and if you consider that our population is constantly growing, we’re producing more by the day.

According to this very canggih scientific study done in 2016, Southeast Asia released about 2.4 tonnes more CO2 per day than the entire European Union! Why? This was due to the forest fires across much of Kalimantan and Indonesia to make way for more palm oil farms, causing the choking haze in 2015.

This graph from the Malaysian Meteorological Department shows the rise in temperature in Malaysia from 1968 to 2007. Comparing the results in this graph against the latest annual temperature, 2017 was the second hottest year on record. The temperature in 2017, around 33°C, is an average of 14.7°C above temperatures we experienced during the pre-industrial times (agak-agak around year 1850).

This rice study on the other hand, shows that rice yields will continue decreasing between 12% to 31.3% till 2030 due to unpredictable environmental changes. That means we’ll be less self-sufficient in producing enough rice for our rakyat. If this trend of decreasing rice continues, the gomen will be forced to import more ric[]e from Thailand to supply the demand for rice, then of course confirm naik harga la.

Another huge problem Malaysians already face? Flooding – because it’s only going to get worse with global warming. As sea levels rise, floods will only become lagi teruk and affect even more people in the flood risk zones.

Floods affects around 4.82 million Malaysians, which is around 22% of the total population, according to East Coasts Environmental Research Institute.

But with all this talk about the effects of climate change, ever wondered whether Malaysians actually care about climate change?  Thankfully, research organisation Merdeka Center found that 99% of Malaysians DO believe in climate change.

That means, there’s only 1% who don’t believe in it. (And that’s pretty good compared to 20% of Americans who say there isn’t enough evidence of climate change!)

The study, conducted between 18 to 29 December 2016, had 1,208 voters from all 14 states. They also came from a random sampling of ethnicity, gender and age (21 and above la). Here’s what else they found:

• 81% of Malaysians are worried about climate change
• 70.1% of the respondents believed that climate change was caused by human activities (while 21.7% of them felt that it was caused by natural changes in the environment)
• Respondents with a higher income, college education and those aged above 40 years old tend to be more concerned about climate change, compared to the younger generations
• A total of 65.3% respondents in the survey felt like the temperature in Malaysia asyik naik je in the past three years
• 64.2% said they felt the weather had become more unstable

So what is the gomen actually doing about it? Thankfully, Malaysia is one of the 195 countries who have signed the Paris Agreement, pledging to limit global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The only 3 countries who have not signed the Paris Agreement are Syria, Nicaragua and the US. Syria, ravaged by civil war, didn’t participate in the agreement, while Nicaragua didn’t sign the agreement because it didn’t go far enough. The Latin America country’s climate envoy claimed it cannot support the agreement because not enough was being done in the agreement. Even Palestine and North Korea signed it!

Not only that, the gomen IS trying to take more green steps. The Star reported that Malaysia pledged to cut greenhouse emissions by 45% by 2030 as well as take more steps in being more eco-friendly. You can read more about the gomen’s efforts here.

 

What can ugaiz do to reduce climate change?

It’s such a serious issue we’ve heard it been said a million times, but we’re still talking about it. There are more steps all Malaysians can take to move towards greener habits, like people from more developed nations. But we’ll save you the long, mak cik lecture about how to save the environment. Click here or here if you want to know more about some green ways to reduce your carbon dioxide emissions.

We can safely say that media channels play an important role in putting some more focus on highlighting the issue and educating people on climate change. It’s nice to know that even the entertainment media channels are stepping up and using their platform to educate their audiences about climate change. Businesses are also doing their bit to save the environment, like the RSPO in Sabah which is striving to make palm oil more sustainable which you can read about here. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved!

It’s not that hard to start taking steps in reducing climate change – even the tiniest stuff can help reduce your carbon dioxide emissions.