Breaking his duck in TV with uncredited roles in Chicago Fire and The Chi, Toom Chanda is now looking to make waves on the big screen.

His latest short film, The Cure (2020) centres on a man on a mission to rescue his kidnapped wife from a hired gang intent on stealing a lifesaving serum. The action is reminiscent of Jet Li and Donny Yen with some John Woo graphic violence thrown in for good measure. But this is what sets it apart from other short films of its ilk, having scored the Hollywood Gold Award for Best Action in June 2020. Devised as a calling card to raise awareness and finance for a feature, The Cure is currently looking for investors.

Toom Chanda's journey to the promised land began with much more humble beginnings. As a child growing up in poverty in Laos, doing his homework outside under streetlamps or beside lit candles, Chanda dreamt of a brighter future for himself and his family. Things were about to get real for him when his parents immigrated to the U.S. when he was 7.

Influenced by the martial arts scene, Chanda took up the challenge to become a Muay Thai fighter at the age of 12 and has never looked back. Fast becoming skilled in various disciplines of the artform, Chanda set up his own business as a trainer and coach from his own gym before embarking on a much more ambitious project… This is where Toom Stunt Team (TST) was born.

Screenshot from Betrayal

Founded by Chanda, the team now operates with 12 members. 3 in marketing, 1 director of photography and the rest combine to form actors and stuntmen.

1. What do you want people to learn from TST?

I started TST in 2019 but established in 2020 as LLC. The way it represents to me is you don’t need to be great to create, but you need to create to be great. I want people to learn that in life you don’t need to wait for permission or wait on an opportunity. You have to create the opportunity.

2. What would you advise other ethnic minorities on how to go about becoming an actor or filmmaker?

I would advise them to keep creating their own content, don’t worry about what people will have to say about you. Don’t be afraid to get creative, so get your brand out there.

3. What do you believe are the driving factors someone needs to achieve success?

The struggle is hard, but dedication is the key. Remember where you came from before thinking of giving up.

4. What’s something you learned about working in the industry that you take with you to set on your own productions?

Something I’ve learned a lot from the industry is that teamwork is God. Everyone will have their own assigned responsibility for their roles. Without a team you won’t go far. So everyone will have to come to terms with that knowledge, and professionalism will show.

5. What was the turning point for you to embark on a journey to become a Hollywood star?

I’ve been to countless auditions, that I soon realized minorities in this industry is hard to get into Hollywood. I don’t want to just be chasing Hollywood, it challenged me to rise up and be an international actor.

6. Top three martial artists to have had an influence on your own style

My top three martial artist would be Jet li, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan of course. They surpassed what the world once thought of them. They were the true underdogs of Hollywood and they fought their way to the top. They had the drive to make their dreams come true.

7. Top five films to hold significant influence on you personally

The Big Boss, Once Upon A Time In China, Rush Hour, Ong Bak and John Wick.

8. What style of martial arts do you most identify with?

My style is Muay Lao, Wresting, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and weapons such as knives, swords and firearms.

9. How would you say you intend to stand out different from the crowd in the world of martial arts movie stars?

I want to show the world my heritage and culture of Muay Lao style. The world have scene Muay Thai, Silat, TKD, Karate and MMA, but they have never seen Muay Lao in action yet.

10. What’s next for Toom Chanda?

Working on my first feature film debut. Might film in Laos my homeland and Thailand.

You can follow Toom Chanda on Facebook and Instagram

Thank you for taking the time to give us a sneak peak. We wish you much success and look forward to seeing more of your work in the near future!

Source for images used in this interview.

For more of my content, find me @BurntEnds88

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Subscribe for a bonus sneak peak into the making of Toom Chanda's short film, Man With Crowbar.

A blend of martial arts and horror, with a dollop of good old-fashioned British humour, the film dishes out an entertaining romp through tunnels and caves in this low-budget actioner.

Directed by Matthew Routledge (Manipulation, Mersey Cop), Tribal: Get Out Alive provides ample opportunity for him to show off his martial arts experience thanks to his previous collaboration with the female lead, Zara Phythian (Doctor Strange, Transit 17). Written by newcomer Johnny Walker, the low budget film packs a punch with a twist calling on the tropes of the horror genre.

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Caitlin (Zara Phythian) and Ross (Ross O’Hennessy) are ex-soldiers working for a private eviction firm tasked to secure the Kenning Farm Estate overrun by homeless squatters. Joined by a small team and the film’s villain Richard Kenning (Thomas Dodd), looking for a quick profit as the heir to the property he’s inherited, they soon find themselves trapped in a maze of underground tunnels being hunted by a horde of machete wielding manufactured zombies. Kenning’s father and scientist developed a potion to enhance human abilities but didn’t count on the degenerative defects resulting in feral-like creatures with low intelligence and a hunger for human flesh.

There’s plenty of quips and one liners between the two leads to keep in line with the conventions of British horror and allow them to shine in arguably a vehicle to showcase their talents. And they don’t disappoint, taking their opportunity with both hands. While O'Hennessy is the more well known of the two having a string of acting credits to his name including Game of Thrones, Mission Impossible: Fallout and Hanna, it's Phythian in particular who leads with a commanding performance to set the wheels in motion for her to make the leap into more high-profile productions.

[source](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10126136/mediaviewer/rm4082278913)

Routledge too impresses with his skills to capture moments of genuine terror along narrow corridors and dark tunnels. The action is handled with skill and efficiency, while the chemistry between the paring of Phythian and O'Hennessy comes across as natural, helped largely by developing their characters as longstanding colleagues from the outset.

While some of the more open framed action in the underground scenes suffer from needing more money to stitch together so as to match the claustrophobic tight shots, it should not detract from what is an entertaining popcorn thrill-ride to entertain the more ardent fans of the genre.

7/10

Tribal: Get Out Alive is available now to rent or buy online

**For access to an** **exclusive interview** **with director, Matt Routledge, sign up to Coil and watch in the subscriber's section.**

The advancement in film technology has unlocked the potential of filmmakers the world over.

There have been many technological movements in film to swing the needle towards it as a science. To accentuate it further, the construction of a film can be thought of as a mechanical process in as much as the equipment used to capture footage through a lens to create a print or image that plays frame by frame is designed as though it’s actually a moving piece. In essence, an illusion of reality tricking the mind into thinking it’s ‘live’.

All the moving parts of the camera, the lighting rig and the software in post-production are more examples of evidence to suggest the medium of film has more in common with the likes of WIRED, Stuff or Computeractive than it does with The Art Newspaper, Aesthetica Magazine or The Great Discontent. Perhaps if that’s the case then it would be considered more prestigious as a subject of study inside and outside of the classroom than it is thought of today. Unless you’re a film critic chances are, you’ll see film as a mere form of entertainment to please the masses for a couple of hours before doing something more ‘meaningful’ and ‘academic’. Forgive me for saying, but I sense an elitist attitude from those who turn their noses up at film for thinking of it as a bottom feeding form of intellectual pursuit.

From Disney’s pioneering days of developing the multiplane camera to computer generated imagery used to blur the lines of reality, it’s fair to say that film has undergone a technological transformation over the years. Cinema verité gave prominence to a new form of cinema that allowed us closer to the subject matter with smaller and lighter cameras. The digital age has given rise to new filmmakers able to afford equipment and become social media sensations utilising all the new tech has to offer them at the download of an app.

How else can film be considered anything but a science – one that’s firmly situated around technology?

Infographic created on [Photopea](https://www.photopea.com/)

From the first captured footage screened to the masses in an auditorium to video streaming platforms such as Cinnamon.video placing control into the hands of the creators reaching out to you in your very homes or through your mobile devices, technology has had a profound impact on the industry.

Three Benefits of the Digital Age for the Independent Filmmaker:

1. Affordable Prosumer Hardware Products: the cost of video recording equipment pre-digital was financially inaccessible for amateur filmmakers or hobbyists. Today you can purchase cameras at relatively low costs and achieve the look and feel of cinema with some tweaking in post. The cameras today are lightweight and compact, allowing more freedom for the filmmaker to experiment with style. And with the improvement in smartphone technology, filmmakers have even more choice!

If you were were concerned about the affordability of a helicopter to capture the sprawling city through an aerial shot to establish your narrative's location, then fret no more. You only have to look at how Hollywood are now utilising drone technology to reduce their own costs. Drones are now affordable for the enthusiastic amateur filmmaker and photographer.

2. Non-Linear Editing Software Makes it Easy: analogue editing was cumbersome and time consuming. Since moving to digital, professional editing software packages such as Final Cut Pro and Sony Vegas have been designed for all users to download onto their own home computers.

Special effects are now achievable through affordable packs. Apps such as Action Movie FX, FX Guru and Videorama have revolutionised the home entertainment editing market. Take a look at some of the top app editing products:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PELmOrlZlZw

3. Marketing & Distribution is Now in Your Control: since the advent of the internet, it is no longer a requirement to spend millions of dollars producing print-based campaigns or hiring out advertising space on traditional television broadcast for trailer time. The internet is unregulated and to a large extent 'free'. Video streaming platforms have a wide reach and accept digital file formats.

Imagination is now the only barrier to entry into the film industry. With open source software available to creators, digital technology has transformed the way we consume content.

Header photo by Noom Peerapong on Unsplash

Subscribe to read part 2 – Film as Art – and let me know which side of the bread is buttered for you by checking out the Twitter thread:

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I’m often reflecting on my own practice for ways in which I can improve as a professional.

When I set my students an assessment I expect them to have done the revision beforehand as to give it their all. Only then can my feedback be constructive in a way for them to make the required improvements on the next turn. These assessments are my form of QA (quality assurance) to monitor their progress and understanding.

We are no different as adults and as teachers. We too require QA, not because we can’t be trusted (though in some cases I would argue we feel we’re not), but because we are meant to offer our students our best. And if our best in the classroom isn’t cutting it then we need to do something about it. There are various strategies to improve your own practice with training offered much in the way we deliver the knowledge to our students. We put into practice what we have learned and are assessed on it during a lesson visit. From there we are provided with feedback – verbal and written. This is much in the same way students undergo a process of learning before taking an assessment to which we provide feedback – verbal and written. Written feedback bespoke to their response. And verbal feedback to the whole class to address common errors or misconceptions.

But how often do we turn our noses up at feedback, constructive or not? We don’t like to hear about our failings. We don’t want others to pick our faults. So, is it any wonder why students dread getting their papers back with comments? They don’t want to read what we have to say about their performance. Instead they look at the mark our of 40 or whatever the question total was and ask what grade it is. My response is always the same, look at the feedback – read it and make the improvements. Worse still, is when they say their mark is good enough! I intend not to offer a raw mark in future. There needs to be a change in the culture of education, but cultural change tends to be the hardest to make happen because of how long we have been moulded from it.

When we complete a project or test or task we often marvel at the finished product. As a society we become consumed by the final image. But it's the journey we go through to get to that moment which becomes our true accomplishment. The hunger to want to experience the process repeatedly because of what it led to is what’s going to get you the top grades. Every. Single. Time.

Header photo by Sarah Noltner on Unsplash

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With Halloween just around the corner I thought I’d reflect on a film that fostered my love for the genre.

I was only young when I first watched An American Werewolf in London (Landis, 1981) – I wasn’t in my teens even! It was a Saturday morning – usually we’re watching cartoons together. I say we, as in my three brothers and me. The four of us lined up on the couch with a blanket cutting across us all. It was a good job we had it, as we were about to watch a horror film. I’d say it was the first horror film I remember watching.

I’m a huge classic monster fan so any movie narrative involving lycanthropy is right up my street. Landis was able to capture a mood and tone from the opening sequence to have us on the edge of our seats. The first attack was glorious because we weren’t really given a full-blown shot of the monster. Instead we were treated to extreme close-up shots that transitioned with sharp edits and sounds of flesh being torn that cut deep in terms of our emotional response. We were teased with a shot of the monster’s eyes to close the scene. The threat and terror had been well and truly established.

Then came the other memorable sequence, and one that raised a chuckle, but I’ll come back to that in a moment. You see, one of the tropes of horror is a jump scare. I’m susceptible to those more so than gore. In fact, gore really doesn’t concern me so much as I find it unnecessary on most occasions with the more recent torture porn style horrors of Hostel and Saw. Those films rely on its usage to thrill their fans, but I find that to be lazy filmmaking. Horror for me is not about what you see on screen, but more about what you don’t see and subsequently imagine instead. Those are the images that truly linger in the mind and leave an imprint. Others will disagree I’m sure, but that’s the beauty of film. The subjectivity and debates they generate is truly why the subject lends itself to developing those all-important critical thinking skills.

As horror conventions go, jump scares should never be relied upon or used with frequency because they leave a hollow impression of a film. However, incorporating two or three to meet our expectations is key to maintaining the integrity of the genre. When making Jaws, the tale goes that when Ben Gardner’s head floats into shot to give us our first jump scare in the film, Spielberg felt the audience needed one more to provide balance. Hence why we have one of the most quoted lines in film history from the scene where Brody is shovelling chum into the sea to lure the shark. There was no sound to that scene other than the shark raising its head above sea level. It’s the composition and unexpectant timing that made us all jump and forever repeat, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

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So that leads me onto the most terrifying moment from my memory of An American Werewolf in London – the dream sequence involving the Nazi zombies breaking into our protagonists’ home and murdering the family. We had that blanket over our eyes, but we really weren’t prepared because it was an open-weave blanket so we saw everything! We screamed out… only to hear laughter coming from upstairs. Well, that was my mother listening out for that moment and she guessed the exact scene at which we experienced our first truly terrifying horror film viewing moment. Whereas the opening sequence was exciting, this was horrifying. It was offset with comedic moments of course, like when his friend, Jack would appear to him to warn him of his impending transformation, making the film delightfully British. There are conventions that make British horror recognisable, one of which is a moment or scene of dry wit and humour proceeding one of horror. This can be exemplified by many Hammer Horror productions of the past to distinguish themselves from our cousins across the pond on the Universal lot.

Any film involving body horror – a character undergoing a physical transformation is one that is roped in by a core theme, isolation. It’s something we can all relate to I’m sure. It’s something that burrows deep into the mind because as a species, we fear it. The sense of abandonment is very much associated with our protagonist as a student taking a gap year to travel with his friend. He ends up alone in a foreign city and separated from his own family thousands of miles away. It’s this distance from his own familiarity that provides an emotional core to the narrative. Genre should only ever be added to a story to supplement the drama. It’s why Kafka’s Metamorphosis is considered a classic and one that many films make cultural reference to, particularly of the horror genre, including this one.

For An American Werewolf in London, the physical metamorphosis David undergoes is stunning in its craftmanship as it is in its ability to create a cinematic moment that reverberates to this day. The diegetic sounds of the cracking of bones and the real-time footage of the monster’s face pushing out to form a snout, captured in glorious close-ups was instrumental in rightfully winning it’s Makeup and Hairstyling team an Academy Award.

Five Must-Watch Horror Films For A Fun-Filled Night Of Terror This Halloween:

Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982)

A family is haunted by an evil poltergeist after they buy a house unbeknown to them was built atop of a sacred Indian burial ground by a shady developer. All together now, “They’re here.”

I remember watching this for the first time with my mum when I was young. It wasn’t until years later when it was premiering on television when I re-watched it only to find there was an additional 30 minutes at the end I hadn’t seen. My mum then revealed how she stopped the tape that first time round because it was getting too scary. I didn’t mind, because I didn’t know any better – I had actually thought the film finished. So, to watch it again, was like experiencing it for the first time.

The Ring (Verbinski, 2002)

A single mother has seven days to stop an evil entity from killing her son after he mistakenly watches a videotape known to haunt its victims.

I saw this twice at the cinema! This first time was with my brother. Yes, you could say I’m a glutton for punishment… or, I was just safeguarding my own protection by taking my friends on the seventh day to absolve me of the curse! I remember watching the film and looking for their reactions knowing what was about to happen at various moments – they shuffled in their seats and squirmed on many occasions. It fascinating watching how others respond to film.

Fright Night (Holland, 1986)

A teenager suspects his neighbour of being a vampire and hires a late-night television actor to help him get back his kidnapped girlfriend from him after no one believes him. As vampire films go this one plays to all the tropes and provides some laughs to ease the nerves.

For two alternatives to the vampire lore then feast your eyes on 30 Days of Night (2007) and The Lost Boys (1987). The former features an Alaskan town besieged by a horde of blood-thirsty vampires at the time when there is no sun for 30 days. There’s impressive imagery almost lifted straight from its graphic novel origins that’s worth watching for alone. The latter is an 80s pop culture masterpiece involving a terrific soundtrack and director, Schumacher on top form.

Trick ‘r Treat (Dougherty, 2007)

Three tales intertwined around a thread on one Halloween night. There’s ghouls and monsters galore in a frightfully funny series reminiscent of the Twilight Zone. It took a while for this one to be given a release in the UK. On finally being given the green light, I snapped it up on DVD, allowing me to watch it with gleeful pleasure once a year.

If it’s a monster mash you’re after then two films in particular strike a chord with me, first, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), and The Monster Squad (1987). Both features bring together the classic monsters like no other films have managed. The former is a laugh-riot, and if you’re not familiar with the comedy duo then give them a try. As for the latter, it’s very much a recommendation out of my love for classic monsters. Does wolfman have nards? Watch it to find out!

Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)

Alfred Hitchcock delivers arguably the first ever slasher film. There is of course that memorable shower scene, but the film truly delivers the shocks because of Hitchcock’s ability to draw on taboo subject matter for the time-period and builds suspense and anxiety through his camerawork. The film follows an unscrupulous woman on the run who turns off at Bates Motel only for it to be her final stop in life.

Hitchcock's signature is very much rooted in German Expressionism. The film style was developed by filmmakers such as F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu and Sunrise) and Fritz Lang (Metropolis) who explored the mindset of an oppressed society in Germany, which began before the First World War. The aesthetics involved distorted sets, optical illusions and low-key lighting. True horror lies within the mind and German Expressionism is an artform that taps into a world of people petrified by the autocratic rule that has them conform. Horror is truly indebted to the pioneering filmmakers who fled Germany to set up camp in Hollywood.

Honourable mention to Vacancy (2007) for harking back to Psycho in a film about a couple who’s relationship is on the rocks before having to stop off for a night at a motel, which is when their real troubles become a living nightmare.

Header photo by Andyone on Unsplash

What horror favourites would you recommend for a Halloween night film fest? Let me know on Twitter by replying to this thread:

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