UTAR Division of Programme Promotion (DPP) organised a webinar titled “Alumni Sharing Series: PASSION, The Thing I Do at Work” on 11 June 2021 via Zoom and Facebook Live. The webinar was moderated by DPP staff Ng Jean Ling. It recorded a total of 284 views in total.

Invited to deliver the talk was Faculty of Creative Industries (FCI) Bachelor of Communication alumnus Adrian Lai Tjun Kong. Lai has been working in the advertising and production industry for 13 years. He began his career as an intern and production assistant. Upon joining Reservoir World in 2012, he was promoted to become a film producer. After taking numerous jobs from renowned Reservoir Film directors such as Quek Shio Chuan and Ismail Kamarul, he was promoted to become an Executive Producer in three years. He has also worked with various local and international freelance film directors within the ad industry throughout his career. Currently, Lai is a Partner/Executive Producer at PASSION Multimedia Sdn Bhd (PASSION PICTURES).

The webinar aimed to provide a platform for the alumnus to share his learning journey at UTAR so that future students and parents may gain insight and understanding into the life of university students. Besides, it also aimed to enable participants to learn and understand more about the broadcasting field, its challenges and how to overcome them.

Lai started his webinar by introducing himself. He said, “The production industry is a people-oriented environment. Our jobs require us to work with different people. So we need to build good networking skills while working with others. The production works need to have a creative and attractive idea with good visual to deliver the message. Not only that, the ideas and the storyboards will be proposed to the directors with allocated budgets. Besides, we are always on the move, so we need to be flexible and be on standby when working with the production team,” he added.

Speaking of the reason why he chose UTAR, Lai said, “I chose UTAR because the course offered was wholesome and it covered the basic requirement that I needed to graduate. Besides, UTAR’s Broadcasting course does not only expose us to theories while doing assignments, but it also provides hands-on experiences and real-life experiences working behind a screen using camera, and helps us familiarise with software editing.” According to Lai, the production industry is unique, especially before they start shooting contents. Normally the filmmakers, directors and content creators need to brainstorm for ideas and go through previous work references thoroughly to ensure there is no duplicate storyline in their works.

Lai also highlighted the challenges he faced during the pandemic period, where the broadcasting stations were not allowed to do filming due to the SOPs highlighted by the government. In order to make sure the broadcasting works continue, the staff need to keep on approaching potential clients and advertising agency online to do a discussion about filming content. Apart from that, due to the uncertainty period, the broadcasting team decided to work on animated and graphical contents that do not require staff and crew to attend live shooting locations. 

From the academic point of view, Lai advised his juniors that broadcasting is not solely based on theory, but also practical and hands-on exposure. Moreover, he encouraged the participants to be committed to their tasks, be passionate to explore the broadcasting environment, as well as enjoying what they do. In addition, he also advised them to be familiar with the Broadcasting subjects such as radio DJ assignments, short film projects, emcee programme, and working in a live studio. Lastly, he also encouraged them to engage with other people from the same field to build good relationships and networking skills.

DPP staff Yen Siew Fong said, “We hope the audiences were able to gain understanding and insights into the study life of students at UTAR. We also hope the audiences will obtain quality learning experience and career prospects from the programme offered.”

The interactive sharing session then ended with a Q&A session.