Sunday, October 28, 2007

Day 03

Heres some pictures from the third day of shooting. The shoot covered Sarah's journey and arrival at the evacuation centre and is one of only three days of external shooting. Luckily the forecast held and there was no rain until later. As we all met at the Hawthorn building at DMU we shot the car pulling up and Sarah, Mark and Steve getting out first. Then we were off to the countryside. On the way the majesterial Neill Phillips, DP, took the internal shots in the car of the rush to the evacuation centre. A great dying scene with Steve Bull, Ruth King and Barry Thomas was caught.

I'd also like to gve a warm welcome to Farid. He jumped in at the last minute for Carl Homer who's wife has just had a baby ! Congratulations Carl and welcome aboard Farid. His first day invloved squashing himself in the cars boot to record sound. Thats dedication. Hopefully we'll have both Carl and Farid for the next days shoot.

As usual some lovely camera work by Neill Phillips who somehow manages to operate the camera and also takes stills - see the awesome shot above. Rain put paid to the car mount we were hoping to use but we still got the coverage.

info@zombieundead.com

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Day Of The Undead

Zombie Undead - The Short Film opened todays Day Of The Undead festival at the Phoenix Arts. The films for the Day of the Undead went from absolute classics to short indie 'no budget' zombie frighteners... The features were Day of the Dead, Dead Meat, Versus, The Zombie Diaries and finishing with Peter Jackson's Brain Dead. Zomie Undead - The Short Film opened the festival to a fantastic audience and press response.

info@zombieundead.com

Monday, October 22, 2007

Day 02 Pictures


Here's some production stills from Day 02 of Zombie Undead. Some awesome behind the stills shots from Dp Neill Phillips.

info@zombieundead.com

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Day 02

We were outside the location for the second day of shooting at 8:45 - a fairly civilised time. As location high on security we have to be assembled and in by 9 with no stragglers but….most of us there on time. A no show from one person but luckily they’re not vital to the shoot. Neill and Carl, DP and sound respectively, were stuck behind a crash on the M1 but arrive safe and sound on time.

As we are shifting stuff inside find out
that Alex + 1 have gone off to get some breakfast. Cant hang around so head on up. As Adrian, Conran Zombie, has to leave by 1 PM we need to shift to get his shots done.

First shot on the log was SARAH coming out of the room after she has woken up. A tough shot to light as we are 2 floors up and cant shine the lights through the windows. Apart from that a pretty standard shot and we were on to the first zombie shot of the film. Gav had spent the first 2 hours making up Conran Zombie and he looked goresome. With the first zombie shots in the bag its on to the zombie attack.

This is the first big SFX of Zombie Undead and involved a machete attack to the zombies head. Gav did numerous tests for this one and came up with the idea of using a polystyrene head with a whole cut out and stuffed with a blood filled condom. Put a wig over it all and smack, when the machete hits the 'head' gore flies everywhere. Only had a couple of chances at this one due to time and supplies. First one worked ok but the second nailed it. Trouble with the polystyrene is that the machete bounces, We'll cut sharp before the bounce and get a pick up close up of blood splatting Sarah's face. A tense shot as well as Ruth had to hold the head above herself as the machete ( a real one ) was smashed into the head. A pressure shot for all and every cast and crew member was lined up to watch this one.

With that nailed it was onto the start of the dialog between Jay and Sarah. We kept pretty much to schedule through the day, a couple of Douglas Adams deadlines went wishing past but we did catch up.

We shot listed and storyboarded for more than we shot. The reason for this is two fold. Firstly events may have transpired that forced us to shoot in a different order than planned. For example on the Zombie Undead trailer shoot one of our two make up artists failed to show. With no warning it was too late to find a replacement so Gav, our SFX lead, had to do all the make up plus special effects and scenes were shot out of planned order. Secondly we may have shot faster than expected - hey miracles happen. However this has to be countered by the fact that you don’t want people hanging around for scenes that wont be shot that day. It’s a tricky compromise and one which I hope will become easier as the shoot progresses. Time to check out the rushes.

info@zombieundead.com

Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Day Before

Tomorrow we shoot Day 02 of Zombie Undead. While its the second day of filming its the first full day for Zombie Undead. Also first dialog and first special effects. Its gonna be a big big day! One good thing though its all internal so don't have to worry about the weather. We've got a big shot for a machete in the head so that's the one we need to nail. Chronologically that's the first zombie shot so its got to count. Nothing more to do now apart from wait .. see you tomorrow.

info@zombieundead.com

Friday, October 5, 2007

Script Rehersals

For a while we have known the principle cast members so the time for script re-throughs has come. This is a great part of the film making process its the first time you get a physical representation of the project. It comes to life before you as what once were words are now actions, feelings and emotions. Even at this early stage what actors bring to the table is enormous. They breath life into the characters and transform the script into a film.

The initial read throughs concentrated on the three leads - Jay,Sarah and Steve. Kris led the session with movement and action taking second stage to the cast finding their characters and seeing what works and what doesn't within that. We skipped over action scenes to concentrate on the words and their delivery. A big smile was never far off my face today as this great cast tweaked out some great aspects from a great script. It was great to see Barry's depiction of Steve with its restrained comedy delivery. The interaction between the cast was great to see with each bouncing off the others to create, even at this stage, a fluid dynamic.

We picked up some on errors such as Jay referring to Sarah by name even though they haven't been introduced. Previous to this we had trimmed and condensed plus combined and removed a superfluous character. Also a characters lines were increased as there role shined and benefitted from more lines.

Awesome work people!

info@zombieundead.com

Monday, October 1, 2007

Frank Cast

The last major character was cast today in the shape of Rod Duncan. Although not one of the main three leads it is a substantial part and the character of Frank carries the movie in the middle section and required an actor who could provide gravitas to the role. And Rod has this in spades. Rod came to my attention a while ago and after meeting him in person i knew he could do the job.

In addition to acting Rod is a respected author. If you haven't checked out his work yet then what are you waiting for - The Riot Trilogy.


info@zombieundead.com