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Kinship film for Singapore’s PUB gets a crowd-sourced conclusion months after its release

Singapore’s national water agency Public Utilities Board (PUB) has come up with a conclusion to its Kinship film from earlier this year. The sequel ‘Dear Din, From Zul’ plays out via an audio story, with a crowd-sourced conclusion.

Released for Hari Raya, Kinship told the tale of brothers at an orphanage who get separated when one sibling gets adopted, leaving the other – Zul – in an emotionally vulnerable state. 

A note from Tribal said: “There were impassioned calls from the public to #findZul. PUB decided to put out a call on social media for fans to send in their story ideas about the ending that they would like to see.”

Dear Din, From Zul

So #wheresZul? Will Din and Zul ever reunite? Finally, here’s the ending to Kinship you’ve been waiting for! It is written together with Noor Arfa, Atiqah Ashari and Sam Chiu — the 3 writers who were shortlisted for a storytelling workshop with PUB and the film’s creators. Following the highly engaging and energising brainstorming session at the workshop, we’ve produced the finale in a fresh format that’s a first for PUB – an audio story. We won’t give any spoilers. Listen and find out for yourself. For the best experience, play the video with your headphones/earphones on!

Posted by PUB, Singapore's National Water Agency on Tuesday, 23 July 2019

After receiving over 200 submissions, PUB picked entries from Nur Atiqah Bte Ashari, Chiu Shengkai Seneca and Noor Arfa Bte Mohamad Yusoff. They were were invited to co-create the conclusion with PUB staff, creative agency Tribal Worldwide and director Roslee Yusof of Freeflow Productions, in a session that went on for over three hours. 

Speaking of the campaign, PUB’s director of 3P Network Cindy Keng said: “We are very humbled and encouraged by the overwhelming response for Kinship. We felt that it is only fitting to include our fans’ voices as part of this much anticipated ending and co-create the appropriate ending for Din and Zul. 

“This is a new way for PUB to collaborate and engage with the public and we hope that the ending will bring the audience closer to the characters, and fulfil their wish for a closure.” 

Tribal Worldwide creative director Benson Toh said: “We felt that the audio story format was a fresh and different way to tell the story, instead of putting out another film, which may have been expected. 

“‘Dear Din, From Zul’ takes on a very personal perspective, which helps listeners get close to the heart of the story and builds on the connection that people have already made with the original Kinship story.” 

Noor Arfa whose story was chosen to end Kinship with said: “I liked that everyone was very welcoming of different ideas. 

“I now realise that it’s really hard to come up with a short film, because you have to develop many storylines before you pick the final story. I also really wanted to meet the scriptwriters and the child actors because they were so good. 

“Kinship did change my perspective about PUB. We all know it as a big brand, but I connected with PUB through Kinship, even though it was just a short film.” 

The audio story will run across PUB’s online channels.

Kinship was apparently very well received – it was number four on the YouTube Ads Leaderboard for Singapore for the first half of 2019 with over 300,000 views. 

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