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Sometimes it doesn’t has
to be long to be good and the Thai directors behind
the latest horror anthology, "4BIA"
are here to show that short horror done right could
be equally or even more spooky and scary than a full
length feature.
The
four directors, Yongyoot Thongkongtoon (Iron Ladies,
M.A.I.D & Metrosexual), Paween Purijitpanya ("Body
#19"), Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom
("Alone"&
"Shutter")
with their actors, Maneerat Kamaoun (Pinn in "Happiness"
segment) and Kantapat Permpoonpatcharasuk (Aey in "In
the Middle" segment) were in town recently to promote
their film.
They
revealed to us that it all got started with Director
Parkwoon during a flight commuting between Singapore
and Thailand. He wondered what if one person had to
fly alone with a dead body and how scary that setting
could be played out. After intense researching, he actually
dug out some interesting information to make what would
later become "Last Fright". However, the problem
was that it’s not long enough for a full length
feature and he really wanted to present this tale in
the cinemas.
A
discussion with fellow colleagues in the GMM Tai Hub
Co LTD (GTH) office who are brainstorming for new ways
to make horror movie different from what had been done
(to death in many cases) lead to the formation of 4BIA
(or phobia in case you are wondering what 4BIA stand
for). The four renowned directors from GTH, three with
recognition in the horror genre would come up with one
short segment each that’s different from the other
and make a horror anthology with fear and phobia as
the theme.
Director
Paween ("Tit for Tat" segment) dream up an
action horror about vengeance with a lot of visual and
computer generated effects to differentiate from the
other shorts while Director Banjong ('In the Middle'
segment) brought his choice of horror to an outdoor
setting to differentiate his shorts. Last but not least,
Director Yongyoot ("Happiness" segment) who
is also the producer of this horror anthology took the
'self sacrificing' duties by using the least amount
of budget for his segment.
He
jokingly explained to us that most of the budget went
to Director Parkwoon’s elaborate film set, Director
Paween’s CGI effects and Director Banjong’s
outdoor location setting, leaving him with very little
to work on. To get around that, he came up with a horror
story that limits to one setting (one old apartment
at Chinatown), one actress (the very attractive Maneerat
Kamaoun) with no dialogues (a departure from his films
which are usually filled with dialogues).
Not
easy feat as actress Maneerat had no prior experience
in horror films and had to work alone that it became
a test of her acting abilities and trust on her director.
However the most difficult part of making this segment
was wearing the cast on her leg and falling over with
it for more than 20 times.
Kantapat
revealed that the difficulties that he faced in making
the segment of "In the Middle" was the river
rafting scene as none of them had any experience and
they had to go through workshop for two weeks to bond
as 'close' friends that they are on screen.
As
four segments are distinctly different from each other,
the directors and casts also had different opinion on
which is their favourite segment. Actress Maneerat ,
Directors Banjong and Paween were fast to say that the
"Happiness" segment was their favourite segment.
It draws an immediate respond by Director Parkwoon that
the two directors are saying it because the Director
for the "Happiness" segment happens to be
the producer and all their capitals (potentially future
ones) depend on him. Parkwoon personally enjoyed "Tit
for Tat" more and for the producer, he lovingly
and fatherly declared that he loved all the segments.
The same sentiment was shared by first time Actor Kantapat
who felt that all the different segments had different
strength on their own and it’s impossible to choose
any from them.
Folks
who enjoyed the film will be delighted to learn that
development for the next anthology is already in progress
and there are already some interesting concepts that
came up and once there are enough to make a film, the
sequel production will be greenlighted. Keep a look
out for it and Moviexclusive.com will be here to report
it to you. In the meantime, faced your phobia and check
out 4BIA in all good cinemas right now.
Trivial
information
Nothing
spooky happened on the "Happiness" set but
rumours had it that in the old spooky apartment set,
someone actually hanged himself on the last day of shooting.
It
wasn’t that difficult for these directors to do
short segments as they had plenty of short films experience
earlier and in particularly Director Paween is a renowned
music video director in Thailand and he also did the
Music Video for 4BIA.
For
the directors of Shutter and Alone, 4BIA marks the first
time that they worked alone as they are more confident
in directing and they felt 4BIA presented an opportunity
to showcase just how different their different styles
of directing are.
"4BIA"
opens on 21 August 2008 and is reviewed here.
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