Crunch time comes long before showtime for NDP 2023 multimedia team

SINGAPORE: This year’s National Day Parade (NDP) will involve a high degree of audiovisual elements, and the multimedia team has been fine-tuning their work to wow the audience come Aug 9.

Themed “Onward As One”, the parade will take place at the Padang, after it was last held there in 2019.

Third Warrant Officer (3WO) Solomon Goh, manager of the NDP in-house production team, said that crunch time for his team comes long before the show even begins. 

"Before the show day, we will all be scrambling. We'll be very busy doing all the changes, updates, amendments,” said 3WO Goh, who is also the assistant chief trainer in the army’s Engineer Unit Training Centre.

“We will all be very excited to see the actual corrections and work done on Saturday, and we sort of enjoy the show, but we also have our fingers crossed to make sure nothing goes wrong."

Saturdays are the days on which NDP rehearsals have been held, drawing many to the city centre to catch a glimpse of perennial crowd favourites, such as the Red Lions skydiving team and fireworks display.

The NDP veteran shared that since this year's multimedia committee is larger than previous years, good delegation of roles and responsibilities has gone a long way.

BRINGING THE ACTION CLOSER TO THE CROWD

One of those bringing the action in the skies closer to home and onto the jumbotrons at the Padang is Third Sergeant Kanthawat Akarawatcharakiat, a camera operator for the parade.

He told CNA he had set his sights behind the viewfinder, ever since he was a cadet. 

"I was assigned as a media IC (in-charge) to take my course videos. After that, I started having an interest in taking videos and filming,” said 3SG Kanthawat, who is a trainer at the army’s Bridging Engineer Training Centre.

“After that, I started helping out my unit to take videos for different exercises, such as overseas exercises, which were my biggest projects."

OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

Beyond military personnel, the NDP multimedia team also comprises some youth who work on the animations that play during the show.

Among them is 18-year-old Hussein Haiqal Riduan, a Ngee Ann Polytechnic student who is taking part in the parade as part of his final-year project.

The experience so far has been much richer than what he gains from a classroom, said Mr Hussein, who is pursuing a diploma in media post-production.

"It's extremely unique to what you get in school, because in school, everything is small-scale, everything is controlled. But in NDP, many things are bound to happen. And the way you grow is for you to adapt. You have to find solutions on your own,” he told CNA.

“You also slowly learn to realise that it's not kind of a ‘you versus them’ kind of thing. It's ‘you and them’, so you work together with people around you.”

He said that taking part in NDP has also been “quite refreshing” as it is not a competitive environment like in school, but instead everyone is on the same page to getting things done well.