We were really pleased with the outcome and her sibling relationship with Chris was one that I really enjoyed too. There were two rounds of audition, I didn’t get to see the first round, but for the second round when we gave her the script, we were surprised by her emotional outburst and decided to give her a shot. And to be honest, we were taking a bet by casting her in this drama. Out of these new faces, which actor left the biggest impression on you? This cast is fielded with a fair bit of new actors too. As a writer, you get satisfaction when a scene in a show turns out to be exactly like how you have imagined it to be in your mind. So this is the most satisfying scene for me. When we write, we tend to have certain scenes play in our minds, and this scene was really close to what I had imagined originally. In comparison to that last scene, I thought the opening of episode 19 was really good too because it was really close to what I had previously imagined when I wrote the script. She hoped that this scene would not be filled with cheesy or cliché lines and thought it’d be better to end it with that, and I thought, ‘Hey this is a good idea.’ The outcome was good. The last scene where she said this line: ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness, hate cannot drive out hate, only love can,” was her idea. She will let me know if she thinks this scene can be improved and if her feedback is good I’d usually accept it. Some actors would give me suggestions for certain scenes, like Rui En. Were there a lot of improvisations to the script when you guys had to add scenes? So the overall episode might become choppy. But what happens is you end up having a surplus of scenes and chopping the scenes out. For some episodes, we added scenes because the director felt that it was insufficient. It’s really hard to gauge when you read the script. It becomes hard keep the story plot under wraps when she goes bad.ĭid you guys have to cut down on a lot of scenes then? But I personally think that the story can’t be dragged on for too long when Xueqing changes. She (Rui En) did a good job with it, although she thought there were insufficient scenes of her transition to a bad person. As for Xueqing, well, she is a character I’ve written before and someone that goes from good to bad when things happen. He’s one of my most favourite characters of late. When I was writing this script, I put some of my own thoughts into this character as a reflection of myself. The audio post wanted to try this new style and suggested for us to reduce the music for a more immersive experience with no distractions, especially if the acting is strong, so that it feels more like a movie.Īnd your favourite character in the show is?ĭi Sheng (Christopher Lee). That scene where she broke up with Christopher Lee was also memorable because it had a lot of feels to it and that was a silent scene with no background music. It was really Rui En’s one-man show in that episode. Kaiyi: Personally for me, my favourite scene is episode 19 because of Xueqing’s (Rui En) transformation (from good to evil). Xinmsn: What was your favourite scene in Against The Tide? We pick up a few interesting nuggets of information from answers Kaiyi gave to our questions, such as why there is a lack of background music in certain scenes and why certain pairings (read: Rui En and Christopher Lee’s romantic relationship as Qiu Xueqing and Di Sheng) didn’t feel as convincing as it should have been. And that is precisely why this writer, who was slightly disappointed at the drama’s outcome, set out to understand the backstory of Against The Tide and things that have gone unexplained, untold and unseen in the making of this drama from the brains behind it: the scriptwriter. “At the end of the day, you can’t please everyone.”ĭitto.
#AGAINST THE TIDE SINGAPORE DRAMA TV#
Looking back on how the drama panned out, he had all but one thing to say about his attempt to appeal to the masses: “This experiment shows that it’s hard to please audiences on both ends of the viewing spectrum, and the ones who enjoy such TV genre will feel that they don’t get a strong kick out of this. Another challenge he encountered – writing wise and much lesser of a headache – was finding a link that cohesively gelled all the story events together. Finding this delicate equilibrium, in his words, was one of the “biggest challenges” encountered for ATT and a work-in-progress mission for his future shows. The man behind Channel 8’s thriller vehicle shared that the watered down effect was intentional, as he tried to strike a balance and control the overall “darkness” of the story to widen the drama’s scope of audience. Fans of darker TV material like Unriddle 2 would be slightly disappointed at Against The Tide’s “lack of kick” and “feel that it’s not enough,” admitted script-writer Peng Kaiyi, in a post-mortem interview with xinmsn, yesterday afternoon, on his latest and just-ended TV project.