Husband-and-wife team Burhanuddin Md Radzi, managing director, and Ainon Ariff, creative content director, Les'Copaque Production Sdn Bhd

What made you decide to set up an animation production house?
Burhanuddin: It was by chance.
Ainon: We were planning to set up our own company [four years ago]. We actually wanted to set up a drama production company. But then my friend’s daughter introduced us to Nizam Abd Razak, Mohd Safwan Ab Karim and Muhammad Usamah Zaid Yasin [Multimedia University graduates], who showed us their previous work, Misi Mustahak, a seven-minute animation film. We were impressed with their work and business plan and thus decided to set up the company.

So you trusted them based on their presentation. Wasn’t it a bit risky?
A: Well, we wanted to give these young people a chance and we weren’t going to get into it if we weren’t impressed by what we saw. We told them that it was their last chance and in fact, that’s where they got the idea for the name of the company. ‘Last kopek’ means ‘last chance’.

Where did you get the funding to start the company?
A: It was all our own funding.

What were the initial challenges?
B: The challenges we faced back then and now remain the same. People are talking about this sector as an economic growth area, the government feels that there’s a lot that can be done, but the problem is the people running this industry.

Firstly, they think you must come up with a product which is global, and only then can you tap all the money out there. There are thousands of such projects; nobody would bother about yours. When you try to penetrate the global market, you need something to get their attention. That’s why we came out with hutan (forest), a more Asian image [for our movie Geng Pengembaraan], things which are very different. (Editor’s note: Geng Pengembaraan is set in a kampung near a forest.)

That’s on the content. The other problem we face is technicalities. All universities are teaching the technicalities but there are no universities here that look into the storytelling and the directing. So that’s why I’m proposing, let some of the universities focus on the technicalities, like MMU, but other universities, like the National Arts Culture and Heritage Academy or Universiti Teknologi Mara, concentrate more on storytelling and directing, and we can combine both worlds. Then we can grow our products and go international. Now we don’t have good stories; they can’t sell.

You certainly proved your first movie, Geng Pengembaraan, could sell when it generated over RM6 million at the cinema. How much did it cost to create the movie?
B: RM4 million; RM3 million was our own and RM1 million from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Information while MIMOS (Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic Systems) lent us its rendering (process of inserting colour and texture) farm.

It took your team three years to make the movie with a budget that is small compared to other international studios. How did your team achieve it?
B: I think this is the only studio in the world that doesn’t use storyboard. When we started, we followed all the norms, but we found out that a lot of time was wasted on storyboarding. Whatever angle the team wanted, they would do the acting in front of these animators. So when the animators see, they will understand.

We don’t use high-powered PCs, but our team finds ways to cheat the eyes in the animation that they produce.

Geng Pengembaraan is a spin-off from your series Upin & Idin, which started it all. You are currently producing the third season of the series. What is the production cost of the series and do your television contracts cover the cost?
B: Each season typically has 42 episodes and cost around RM1 million. For the series, we cannot recover the cost. If we can sell the series to 10 to 20 television stations, then we can make money.
Upin & Idin is confirmed running on TPI (Indonesian television station) starting July. The contract is worth about RM100,000 for 42 episodes. Each episode is seven minutes, but they’re allowing us to get a share of the advertising revenue, which is very rare.
Here, we are shown on TV9 for the series and RTM1 for public service announcements. Sometimes they share ad revenue with us.
We’re still negotiating with Turkey and Kuwait, but they want it cheap.

Do you have revenue streams aside from TV station contracts?
B: Our merchandise side is doing very well. We have generated about RM200,000 since our merchandise shop, World of Geng, opened last November.
We also plan to open a Geng Pengembaraan theme park. We made a presentation to Khazanah [Nasional Bhd] last week on the theme park.

What are your plans going forward?
B: We plan to aggressively market the film after finishing the production of Upin & Idin’s third season in October.
A: The DVD of the film will be out around October or November.
B: The film will be screened at Mega Blitz, an upmarket cinema in Indonesia, possibly this August or September, it’s not confirmed yet. They’re selective and don’t usually select Malaysian films.
We’re also thinking of doing animal stories, based on our folklore but with our own twist. We have all the characters and the script for the first episode.
A: But since the boys want to do another Geng movie, it’s been put on hold. They’re targeting one year to get the film done.

This article appeared in Manager@work, the monthly management pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 752, April 27- May 3, 2009.