SeeFood

SeeFood

Official poster
Directed by Goh Aun Hoe (吴侒何)
Produced by Gene Lim Bee Thin
Written by Jeffrey Chiang
Starring
  • Gavin Yap
  • Diong Chae Lian
  • Christina Orow
  • Kennie Dowle
Music by Tan Yan Wei
Imaginex Studios
Production
company
Silver Ant
Release dates
  • October 2011
Running time
 93 minutes
Country Malaysia, China
Language English
Budget RM 12 million (US$ 4 million)
Box office RM 2.36 million ($729,634)

SeeFood (Also known as Sea Level in USA[1]) is Malaysia's first 3D animated movie in English. The film is produced by Silver Ant and released in Malaysian cinemas beginning 8 March 2012.

SeeFood was first launched in Poland on 7 October 2011. It received financial support from Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Malaysia) (MOSTI) and also Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC).

Storyline

It starts with Julius, a large shark, chasing Pup, but then we see that he was only pretending to hunt him. They come upon and speak about the amazing number of shark egg sacks lying on Pup's reef. Later, while Julius is off chasing a school of fish, two human divers suddenly appear to steal the shark egg sacks from the reef. Pup does everything he can to fend them off; almost being captured himself, but in the end the divers speed back to shore with all the eggs.

In the next scene, which begins with a factory polluting the ocean, Myrtle, a sea turtle, suffocating from a plastic bag around her head, but she finally frees herself of it. The bag drops further down to where Spin, a stingray, was swimming around and he later grab a discarded restaurant menu with his tail. Later on, he throw it to Julius's three pilot fish servants who will open the menu and show him there are other varieties of food, especially chickens, which are only found on land. But this is actually a plan of Spin and Myrtle to get rid of Julius. She and the fish bring him to a nearby beach, where Julius tries to eat a hen called Heather. He's nearly stranded on the land, but is able to make it back into the water.

We are also introduced to a group of black coloured japanese spider crabs led by a giant moray eel portrayed with evil intentions, having animated red eyes which remind us of the red glowing light we saw at the factory. They all seem to enjoy the polluted water as the dark and murky stuff is ever expanding upward.

After the incident with the eggs, Pup struggles to come up with a way to save his brothers and sisters. While trying to think of a way, his friend, Octo, shows up and brings Pup to an old sunken ship where Octo keeps his inventions, trying to find a way to easily travel far away. Pup and he have a brief adventure which was fun for Pup, but he's soon brooding over the fate of his family again.

There's a scene where Julius learns what it is like to be hunted. He's out chasing more fish, but is suddenly caught on a large hook and hauled up onto a boat where a group of men attempt to cut off his fins and kill him! It's only due to the rough seas and crashing waves that he's able to jump back into the ocean.

Not long after, Pup has already decided he must rescue his brothers and sisters, and he pleads with Octo to build him a machine which would allow him to travel on land, but Octo refuses to do so. When Pup begins to swim back to his reef, Spin grabs him and they both listen covertly to Octo and Myrtle talking. Pup learns that he can actually breathe on land (being portrayed as a young Brown-banded Bamboo shark; which have been known to survive up to 12 hours out of the water). Spin had earlier shown Pup where the two divers were located, so he soon crawls up on the beach and heads inland towards them.

After suspecting that Spin has some plan involving Pup, Myrtle confronts him with Julius, and Spin spills what he knows. But it is too late, Pup had already gone up to a beach. When Julius learns what Pup has done, he immediately goes to Octo for help. After pleading for a some time, Octo finally agrees to help Julius by completing a machine that will enable Julius to walk and breathe on land. (We later learn that Octo's motive for helping was to get rid of Julius, since he believes the shark would eventually eat them.) After the machine is built, Julius and his three pilot fish servants enter it, and it is launched like a missile onto the land.

In the meantime, Pup had already found and gotten inside the shack where the divers were storing the shark eggs in some water-filled bins; one of which he has to hide in when the owner, a mean abusive man, who hunts sharks, returns.

Julius and the three pilot fish crash land at a chicken farm where they meet the roosters and the hen that Julius had tried to eat. When the roosters realise that Julius is the shark who tried to kill Heather, they chase after and finally disable it from walking, then roll it to the diver's shack where the humans pull it in and secure it to the floor.

While this was taking place, Pup rescued his brothers and sisters from the shack and made it back into the ocean with a bit of help from Myrtle at the very end. But when Pup realises that Julius is now in trouble, he goes back to find Julius. He quite literally runs into the roosters and hen. After telling them he'd never seen Julius eat anything but tires, they change their minds and decide to help Pup free Julius. With a great deal of help from a coconut crab, Julius, now joined by Pup, escape in the machine with the chickens riding on top of it.

However, the man in a dune buggy followed by his young helpers on motorcycles catch up to them. The chickens disable the two boys, and although numerous coconut crabs attack the man, he still continues to pursue Julius and at one point takes Pup captive just as Julius in the machine and an army of crabs are about to crush and assault him. Now he speeds off with Pup as Julius pursues him. While his buggy is bombarded by coconuts launched from bent over trees by the crabs, he loses his grip on Pup, who is caught by Julius.

While the rescue of Julius and the ensuing chase were taking place, Octo, having realised that the black waste being dumped into the sea was not only about to ruin their habitat, but also allow the hostile bottom dwellers to take over, he decides to do something about it: He picks up some mines from a sunken warship, and with the aid of Spin and Myrtle, pushes them into the large pipes of the factory.

The chase comes to a dramatic end when the man who was trying to shoot at Julius loses control of the buggy and it flies up a broken pier then down onto the mines, destroying the factory. Miraculously, he survives the explosion, only to be arrested by the police for causing much damage to boats and kites and possible injuries to dozens of people on the beach, not to mention possibly being held responsible for destruction of the factory.

Julius returns to the reef and forces all the sinister bottom dwellers off it and back down into their deep dark crevices. The last scene shows the three roosters inside the machine that Octo built, floating on the ocean. One pulls on some control, breaking it, then the machine starts heading down into the ocean while another yells: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before!

Voice cast

Production

SeeFood The Movie is jointly produced by Silver Ant Sdn Bhd and the Al Jazeera Children's Channel (JCC), with a grant from the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry and also support from the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC).

Silver Ant has worked with MDeC previously, having been hired in 2005 to produce the trailer for Saladin (also known as Saladin Al-Ayubi), a local animated series about the titular 12th-century Muslim warrior in his young days (the series in English, with Bahasa Malaysia subtitles, currently airs on TV1 on Saturdays, with the encores on Sundays). The JCC saw the trailer, loved it and decided to take a bite into SeeFood.

Despite not opening in Malaysia, the movie has managed to bring a good impression for the country as the producers have retained a 100% local flavour for it by using the voice talents of Malaysian artistes Gavin Yap and Diong Chae Lan for the two leads, Pup and Julius.[2]

Like the Pixar guys behind Finding Nemo, SeeFood animation team has put in much effort into studying the behaviour of the creatures that form the cast of Seefood to be sure that they are portrayed in a realistic manner besides projecting a human expression that would bring them to life.

Working with 40 animators, the team took about two years to work on the animation process.[3]

Film scores

The film score was composed by Tan Yan Wei of Imaginex Studios. The movie did not release any soundtrack as the composer died while in the making of the soundtrack, and during the time being he was also composing for the film score for the other Malaysian movie, Bunohan. The film score was later taken over by Imaginex Studios.

Box office

Country Gross (US$) Released Date
 Poland 1,237,232 7 October 2011
 Russia 2,219,684 20 October 2011
 Czech Republic 116,787 17 November 2011
 Iceland 25,909 30 December 2011
 Malaysia 751,650[4] 8 March 2012
 Croatia 26,840 15 March 2012
 Slovakia TBA 18 June 2015

[5]

Awards

Kre8tif! Award

Year Category Award Result
2010 Animation/VFX Category Best Animation Director Won
Animation/VFX Category Best Production Won
Animation/VFX Category Best Editor Won
Animation/VFX Category Best Audio Production Won
Animation/VFX Category Best Commissioned Work Won

[6]

Anugerah Karyawan Animasi (Malaysia)

Year Award Result
2011 Animator 3D Terbaik
Best 3D animation		 Won
Kompositor/VFX Animasi Terbaik
Best animation composite/visual effects		 Won
Montaj Animasi Terbaik
Best animation montage		 Won
Animasi Terbaik
Best animation		 Won

[7]

References

  1. ↑ "Release Dates". IMDb.com. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  2. ↑ ""Seefood" swims home! - Yahoo". My.entertainment.yahoo.com. 29 February 2012. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  3. ↑ The Star Online, A Malaysian shark tale, Foo Yen Ping, 13 February 2012
  4. ↑ "Industri - Tayangan Filem Cereka". Finas.gov.my. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  5. ↑ "SeeFood Gross Statistics". IMDb.com. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  6. ↑ "Silver Ant". Silver Ant. 13 February 2011. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  7. ↑ "Arkib Berita". Finas.gov.my. 28 June 2011. Retrieved 25 October 2013.

External links