Who is Gloria Chee (徐诗韵)?

(pictures via Smell of Rain official site)

According to her IMDB biography, Gloria Chee was a graduate from the pioneer batch of Film, Sound & Video (FSV) program, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore, and was the first FSV graduate to direct a full-length feature film (Smell of Rain (2006)).

She’s quite a seasoned filmmaker isn’t she? 🙂

Do you know she is also the same Gloria Chee who was recently bombarded by netizens for ripping off a Japanese TV ad for a National Day Parade (NDP) video?

Initially, I didn’t want to comment on this issue as I thought she might have been some newbie filmmaker being exploited by the NDP committee for cheap labour and unreasonable timeline, given that she mentioned only receiving a honorarium as a token of appreciation for her work.

However, when I googled her name… no lei… Gloria Chee is not an amateur hor!

For the benefit of those who do not know about this incident, here’s the full article from my paper:

Mon, Jul 14, 2008
my paper

Netizens slam NDP video as Japanese ad rip-off

THIS year’s National Day Parade (NDP) videos for its theme songs have sparked off some controversy online.

A contributor to citizen media website Stomp, Daniel, felt that some scenes in the videos were copied from a Japanese television advertisement for The Children’s Foundation. He said that although the NDP videos are not exact copies, some scenes, like that of a child painting, seemed very similar to those in the Japanese ad.

Daniel said: “I think this is unoriginal and uncreative, especially for our NDP.

“I feel that any national projects should be original and not recycle concepts already done by other countries.”

NDP video is three minutes long and depicts various everyday scenes in the lives of Singaporeans, such as children colouring, a boy courting a girl and a man running up the stairs in a block of HDB flats.

These scenes are interspersed with those of Singapore Idol 2006 winner Hady Mirza singing the theme song Shine

For Singapore. Joi Chua performs the Chinese NDP theme song Qing Kong Wan Li.

Among others, Daniel pointed out that scenes like those of children colouring and paying attention in class are very similar to those which can be seen in the Japanese advertisement.

A video of the 11/2-minute Japanese advertisement was uploaded onto Google Video in April 2006.

It is stated on the site that the advertisement was created by the Japan Ad Council.

Netizens who commented on the post on Stomp mainly felt that it was the fault of the advertising company which had been engaged to create the video.

Contributor goolen2001 said yesterday: “National Day advertisement also want to copy other advertisement? Shame on you.

Goolen2001 added: “The advertising agency wants to earn money only. Lazy to use brain.”

Fellow contributor krankiepants said: “It’s sad to see such things happening.”

However, pbcjohn79 defended the video’s creators: “It is an honest mistake. Let’s move on.”

But jacksparrow2 disagreed strongly: “I think it is serious as a lump sum has been paid to make that video.”

Stomp has contacted the authorities for comments.

I love the last quote which was obviously a sarcastic potshot aimed at the authorities, as duly pointed out by Mr Brown.

Below are the two music videos. The first one is the original Japanese ad promoting a children foundation:

Here’s the pirated version done by Gloria Chee for NDP:

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