Creative Individual Analysis Using The Five Dimensions of Creativity: Michelle Chong

Background Information about Michelle Chong

Michelle Chong is a former Singaporean host and actress who is now the founder of Left Profile (a full-service entertainment agency founded in 2012), an artiste management and content creation company. Left profile manages artistes like Michelle Chong, Pornsak, Lee Teng and Royce Lee. Michelle has appeared in both English-language and Chinese-language television dramas and programmes aired by MediaCorp. She has always been into creative writing since young and has took Theatre Studies as a subject as an A-level subject at Victoria Junior College. Thus, becoming an artiste in MediaCorp was a dream came true for her.

The Five Dimensions of Creativity will be applied to demonstrate Michelle Chong’s creativity.

Problem Sensitivity

When Michelle was at the TV station, she was always pitching show ideas to producers and directors. Due to the hierarchy of the company, everyone has their individual job scope, it is difficult to do compromise for her pitching though the producers/scriptwriters/directors are interested in her idea. She felt that there were so much that can be done but could not do so due to the way big companies are structured. Despite that, she still enjoys what she was doing. Job as a host/actress do provide Michelle a stable and comfortable income, but she is not happy with her life. Michelle soon realized she was misled by herself into thinking that being performing infront of the camera was what she wanted but in actuality, creating content and being part of the creative process is what she wants. At that point in time, she felt the need to step out of her comfort zone and pursue a career she is truly passionate about.

Fluency of Ideas

Back then when she started working under MediaCorp, most of her time was waiting for the company to give her a role to act on and it was very passive. Michelle thought to herself, rather than waiting for a role, she can develop it. Thus, she wrote down the story she had in mind. Without any prior experience to work behind the scene, Michelle started venturing with getting 3 months of unpaid leave at the start while she was still contracted with MediaCorp and subsequently the leave was extended till her contract with up. During this period, Michelle went to talk to her colleagues and one of them suggested her to take out the story she wrote when she first joined MediaCorp. Little did she know that the story written 10 years ago was her first movie filmed, “Already Famous” and it was selected to represent Singapore in the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars in 2012.

Flexibility of thoughts

There are already a few independent artist management agencies before Left Profile was set up. Greatest competitors would be J Team Production lead by Jack Neo where the agency is also the local and Malaysia representative for Taiwanese comedians Nono and Kang Kang, and NoonTalk Media lead by Well-known TV host Dasmond Koh. These agencies are constantly looking out for young talents to join their team. Unlike the norm, Michelle is banking on artists with ready following. She mentioned she will only sign on an artist with a certain level of popularity. Michelle was extremely clear in knowing how she want to management in order to go far.

Originality

The originality characteristic can be seen in the content and character that was created by Michelle. Characters like Lulu, Chiang Ying Wen and Singaporean Ah Lian are the one that we have come across with and are able to relate easily in Singapore content. What made these characters stand out was the details, how the character would actually dress up, their everyday vocabulary. Michelle was not aiming to Left Profile to be just another artist management agency. Her goal is to be like Lorne Michaels in S. N. L, to have talented contributors/team doing it and carrying on the legacy.

Imagination

Michelle become very successful, she has filmed 4 movies and had a YouTube channel which share interesting content with different characters. All of her characters are very outstanding. There is different story of the characters that was created for digital advertisement and it is unlike any others. With a saturated digital advertisement market, it is difficult to have a breakthrough as the viewers can easily differentiate sponsored and non-sponsored videos. However, it has never been the case for Michelle’s channel. Though YouTube channel is not her main source platform, she is using this to get more exposures.