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Kelvin Tong and the real horrors of filmmaking

Inside the psyche of Kelvin Tong, a Singaporean filmmaker who is set to debut a locally-made horror film in Hollywood next year

Text & Photos: Joanna Goh
Video: Teng Siew Eng


Things are heating up in Singapore’s filmmaking industry of late, with the
influx of Hollywood and Asian productions set or based on this little red dot and the number of global or Asian movie premieres held here for the past few months.

It represents an exciting phase – especially for local filmmakers – and marks the start of something new, agreed Kelvin Tong, during his interview with xinmsn at the press conference for his upcoming horror film, The Faith of Anna Waters, yesterday.

The local auteur, who has helmed a diverse range of projects, from horror and thriller to nostalgia films, like The Maid, Kidnapper and It’s A Great Great World, is buzzed with excitement for his biggest movie production to date. Its modest budget of US$5 million (S$6.25m), although may seem paltry when compared to films in the big boys league such as Guardians of the Galaxy (US$170m), is considered very generous in the context of local films. On top of its American investors, we were told that the film has also received additional funding from the Media Development Authority of Singapore.

Set and filmed entirely in Singapore, The Faith of Anna Waters, which is produced by Boku Films, also boasts of an international cast, starring Hollywood faces like Mad Men actress Elizabeth Rice, Band of Brothers and Gossip Girl actor Matthew Settle, local actors Adrian Pang and Jaymee Ong, and Australian artistes Colin Borgonon and Adina Herz.

Lead actor Matthew, who is excited to catch some Formula One action in Singapore – if time permits, said this opportunity to work with Kelvin was like “kismet”. “It’s gonna be a rigourous shoot and we’re gonna have to dig deep into ourselves to make it work. I have a lot of faith in Kelvin and his vision.”

The story follows the main character, an American crime journalist (Elizabeth), who while investigating her sister’s mysterious death in Singapore, has a few encounters with the supernatural. While little was divulged of the movie’s plot, here’s what we learned so far from its tightlipped cast: there’d be a little exorcism done in the film (Adrian plays a priest – an item off his bucket list, he says) and there’d be a “visual of evil” seen in the movie - going by the prosthetic work done in pre-production phase.While the problems encountered in this film aren’t “unique” by filmmaking standards, Kelvin admits that it is everything times 10 – because it’s a “much bigger” film and cast and thus equates to a much bigger headache. And he had spent 1.5 years in total labouring over his biggest headache (or horror) of them all – coming up with the script and
Kelvin can't wait to "hang the actors" and "slam them around the room"


Do you get chills when you write your own horror movie script?
I get chills when I wrote my first draft ‘cos I’m approaching a lot of new things. I’m sitting down in front of my computer and working on a blank page and sort of in this meditative zone. And I get shocked by my own ideas sometimes. I tend to have a lot of nightmares when I’m writing my first draft – because my mind’s thinking up what’s scary. And when I’m asleep, it scares me. But as I move beyond the first draft, it becomes a little like you won’t be as scared, as if you saw the same horror film twice (…) at the end of pre-pro and completing my list of shots, I’d have seen my movie 90 times now. I go on to shoot it – 91 times, and maybe another 30 times in the editing room.

What about when directing? Have you ever gotten spooked out on set?
Never while filming [and] simply because if you’ve been to a horror film set, I guess it’s the un-scariest place on earth. There’s 50 people, giant lights and not a single dark corner in the room. And the actor who plays the ghost is squatting there eating char siew rice. The actual look of it is comedic lah. It’s very fun. A lot of people think just cos we’re shooting a scary movie it is scary, but the set is not scary.

On the topic of horror films, do you have a favourite “scream queen”?Not so much a favourite scream queen but I think one of my all-time favourite actress in a horror film – which is technically not a horror, but a Sci-Fi film - Sigourney Weaver in Alien. She really embodies what I’d like to see – the archetypal women being portrayed in a horror film. There are so many horror films where the main lead is blonde, dumb and goes round screaming.How hard is it to avoid clichés in horror movies since they can be quite predictable at times?The unique challenges for a writer of horror screenplays is while you want to avoid the cliché, you must be aware of genre conventions. When an audience goes in to watch a horror film, there’s something the audience expects to see (…) you have to come up with a fresh way of approaching the same conventions. That’s the biggest

a lot of Chinese productions are gonna come too) makes Singapore an easy place for foreigners to feel welcome – there’s no language barrier. You want steak? Go ahead. You want satay? Also got. I think Singapore is perfect in that sense, that’s why as a filmmaker and producer, you’d find it so attractive (…) And if you want Chinese shophouses, a business district or something space-age like Marina Bay Sands? We have [them all] and it’s all within 10 minutes of driving. It’s very efficient in a filmmaking point of view.

The Faith of Anna Waters is scheduled for an early 2015 release.

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