Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
A love letter to Hounslow
DIRECTOR GETS BIG BREAK WITH FILM SNAPPED UP BY AMAZON PRIME
HOUNSLOW born and bred Simba Masaku helps children with special needs get to school safely by day.
By night he is a film director, actor and screenwriter and he has just had his first big break.
Hound, his first feature film, has been snapped up by Amazon Prime and is available to stream on the service.
This huge milestone has clearly been a long time coming.
“As a kid I always had an interest in films,” he said. “I used to take my mum’s camera, a VHS camera, and get in trouble making my own little Kung Fu films.”
His new movie was filmed entirely in Hounslow in just 31 days, with a budget of £3,500. The money was raised on Kickstarter, an online platform for crowd-sourcing funds for creative projects.
Of the budget, £2,000 went towards the camera, and Simba and his team were left with little to produce the feature-length movie.
“You have to work fast because time is money,” he said. “And the actors and the team all need feeding and watering.
“I come from a working class background and I found it hard to compete against rich boys. Its a rich man’s game so I just had to do it off my own back.”
Hound was made from the ground up by a small team of resourceful film makers, who all took on various roles and worked from 5am, often through until after midnight.
Simba wrote the script, directed the movie and plays the lead villain, Raj Singh Dhillon.
Jimm Stark, who co-owns SimJimm Films with Simba, is normally a stuntman, but took on the lead role as Hound and doubled as a make-up artist, producing the prosthetics for Simba’s character.
Team member Aiden Largey plays Hound’s father and also played a key role in editing and post-production.
The other actors were Simba’s friends from Hounslow and former colleagues from his days as a scare-actor at Thorpe Park’s horror attractions.
Simba even had his partner hold the boom and fill out call sheets.
Locals from in an around Hounslow appeared in the movie, having seen Simba’s mock-up trailer or his requests for extras on Facebook.
“We had a motorbike gang,” he said. “I asked for four motorbikes and we ended up with 14 and they came from north London.
“I’d never met them in my life, and they came down to the mechanics where I’d told them the location was. I was like ‘bloody Nora.’ I couldn’t believe it and we got the best shots ever.”
The Hounslow community got behind the project, with locals allowing Simba and the team to film on their property.
“The local community and business were really behind us,” he added. “The people made this movie.
“It was my love letter to Hounslow and the people saw that.”
Locals will mainly spot Hounslow West in the background of scenes, and might recognise the Ace Cabs gangway, Kingsway Indian restaurant, the Ivory Bridge Estate, Beaversfield park and Best Foods supermarket.
Hound is a violent thriller about an introverted alcoholic who seeks revenge on a local gang after they killed his best friend - his dog. The movie was chosen to appear at London Comicon in 2017.
SimJimm Films was then approached by a distribution company, which helped get Hound onto Amazon Prime.
Now Simba, who studied media and drama at school, hopes to give back to his Hounslow community by involving local students in the making of Hound 1.5, a five-part spin-off series which will be available for free online.
“We want to carry on expanding, getting more local talent on board,” Simba said. “So if there’s a kid that wants to write there is a chance for him to write an episode.
“I want to get as many students and local people on board as possible, because that’s something that I would have liked to have access to.
“I’ve been approaching a lot of colleges and local councils, so maybe as part of their dissertation or coursework students could come and work on a feature film.”
Hounslow helped Simba to fund his first movie, but he has his sights set on the bigger picture, with the Hound 1.5 series, Hound 2 and expansion into the rest of London in the future.
“We want to create our own Marvel where we can expand into other characters and broaden out into London,” he said.
“I won’t stop until I’m at the Oscars.”