首屆馬來西亞MSC創意多媒體與内容國家買賣商集會

INAUGURAL MSC MALAYSIA CREATIVE MULTIMEDIA & CONTENT INITIATIVE MATCHES INTERNATIONAL BUYERS WITH LOCAL PRODUCERCYBERJAYA, 22 August 2007 (Wednesday) – An MSC Malaysia programme under the Creative Multimedia and Content Initiative today brought in 20 international buyers from the United States, Ireland, China, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Hungary, Korea and Belgium and introduced them to products of our local creative content companies.

The inaugural MSC Malaysia Buyer Fly In programme, organised by a division of MDeC, the custodian of the MSC Malaysia initiative and promoter and developer of ICT in Malaysia, is meant to tap tap into the USD600 billion dollar global industry.

“Malaysia is now ready to offer content for the world – we want the world to know that we have creative talents – and not just recently but our creative talents have been offering their services and talents to the world creative content producers since the 1950s,” said MDeC chief executive officer Badlisham Ghazali.

Badlisham said, as an example, P. Ramlee, our iconic producer, actor, singer, host, scriptwriter and song writer – had produced hundreds of award-winning feature films and movies for Shaw Brothers of Hong Kong while our animators and artists had been doing work for Japan since the Seventies being the creative force behind Sailor Moon, DragonballZ and even Doraemon.
He said that one of MDeC’s roles was to support and encourage Technology and Creative Multimedia industries to penetrate the international market ad at present there were very few local animation companies that had achieved the success.

“We are confident that our companies have the potential to reach audience globally in the near future,” he said.

On another note, Badlisham said there were many of these animators and creative talents in Malaysia who were just waiting to be discovered.

“With the right training and guidance, we believe that the local animation industry can achieve greater heights and be recognised as a global player. Hence, this will create more job opportunities for this pool of creative talents and indirectly help to expand the local animation market,” he explained.

Complementing the recently launched Malaysian Animation Creative Content Centre (MAC3) the BFI formed the bridge to showcase local intellectual property, increase exposure for creative local IPs to key players in the global digital content industry.

“The global digital content industry is currently thriving and there is an increasing demand of fresh creative content for animation, computer games, mobile content and digital comic from both developing nations and developed countries. It is a global industry that is worth USD600 billion and growing with opportunities for high profit margins, hence it is essential that the development of new local creative content IPs cater to this global market.

As a thriving new economic sector, the digital content industry is skewed to generate huge returns on a national scale. With the numerous initiatives and strategies MDeC has already set in place, the results have already been overwhelming. To illustrate the fruits of these efforts is the creation of Malaysia’s first ever animation project Saladin that recently bagged the Tokyo Big Sight Award at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2007, the world’s largest anime exhibition.

Over the next few years, we will place heavier emphasis to promote and tell the world that Malaysians have the capability and is committed to grow the industry via strategic collaborations with foreign partners. Therefore, partner with us and we’ll make this work for you as well as for us.

From this project alone, and its achievement in penetrating the global market, it has already sparked up the local digital content value chain, generating long-term profitable global business opportunities for the local players.

“It is the optimal time for young graduates to consider entering the digital content industry as a serious career move as the infrastructure and financial funding is already in place, while the possibilities for global success and attractive financial returns are endless.” added Badlisham.

To further encourage and target graduates from higher learning institutions, a Content Industry Development fund known as the eContent Fund was created as an incentive for providing ambitious graduates who wish to further pursue producing creative digital content as a career.
With increasing participations from the local digital content producers, increasing standards of local intellectual property with a global market appeal, and platforms such as the BFI to engage local and foreign collaborations in future projects the digital content industry engine has already begun to turn and prove its financial worth.