2002 was the year the winners of the first National Scriptwriting Competition was announced. I had entered the then Singapore Broadcasting Authority (now MDA) organised competition in late November 2001 with a script entitled "Ceciliation". Ceciliation is a pilot for a series about a neurotic professional counsellor who joins a family service centre as the head of counselling. There she has to tackle hostile colleagues, a cranky boss and a slew of troubled cases. In addition, she has to juggle her work with her two sons and husband who also make demands on her time. A family drama with touches of humour and loads of commentary on the Singapore social scene.
After an agonising four-month wait, I attended the awards ceremony where the results were finally announced. I won the second prize, the silver award! I was over the moon. I want to take this chance to thank God for the talent, my parents for letting me pursue writing and my wife for always believing in me.
Ochre Pictures produced the script. I had a great time collaborating with them. They gave me ideas on how to improve the script and I wrote two additional drafts for them. We talked about how the director was going to shoot the script. I gave my opinions about the cast and we finally settled on Vernetta Lopez to star as Cecilia, the titular character. Other stars included Randall Tan (as Cecilia's husband Siong), Anna Belle Francis (as Wendy), Janice Koh (as Mei Yee), Evelyn Ng (as Serena). Ceciliation went on air January 3, 8 p.m. on MediaCorp's Channel 5.
In 2003, "Ceciliation" was nominated for "Best Single Drama or Telemovie" and Vernetta Lopez was nominated for "Best Drama Performance by an Actress" at the Asian Television Awards. Vernetta won for Best Actress!
There was a Blueprint script book that was published by the MDA and Ethos Publishing. The one in that book is the exact version I submitted for the competition. The story that went to air is based on the shooting script, which is better and is about one-third different from the book version. [Read the shooting script.]
