Editing Continues

Kris, Matthew Gyngell and myself worked on transferring the Panasonic footage to Final Cut Pro last night. All the steadcam shots were taken with the Panosonic HVX 200. We've been having problems as although v. 5.01 has the menu choice to import P2 footage when you click on the link nothing happened. A quick web search later and we found that FCP 5.14 was needed. In stepped Matthew with this version and imported the files no problems. After flipping the images - due to the Brevis rotating the image 180 degrees - we are ready to edit. The titles are complete and ready to put into the opening sequence.

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Funding Document Complete

Finished the document which hopefully will help us gain completion funding for Zombie Undead. A lot of work went into this as it was vital we get it right. Looking at it now its looking darn impressive and I'm happy with it especially as its the first work of this kind that I've done. Thanks must go to Rod Duncan who proof read the copies and made some great suggestions to enhance it. Thanks Rod!

We're holding back on distributing this as work is currently afoot on an innovative way to access funding.

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Planning for Day 05

Busy in the middle of trying to sort out Day 05 for 9th March - props list, script breakdown, effects list, shot log. Been a bit of a break so everyone is chomping at the bit. The day is going to be scenes which are self contained - Mary and child, a courtyard scene and a goresome zombie attack. Unfortunately we're unable to access De Montfort University on this day so are trying to source another location. Just need a room or two so fingers crossed. Even if we cant film then it'll be good to have everything in place for when we can.

As we speak Gav is working on the zombie death for this day. Its gonna be a tough one to nail effectively but iwe'll see what happens.

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Technorati

Just a note to say the ZU blog has joined the Tecnorati site. Technorati is basically a blog portal where people can search for blog content in one place - well worth subscribing to if you want to raise your blogs profile.

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Gordian Knot And Post-Production

A Gordian Knot is a historical legend of a knot tied by Gordius, king of Phrygia, held to be capable of being untied only by the future ruler of Asia. The term has come to refer to an intricate problem, especially a problem insoluble in its own terms; a question that keeps leading you endlessly in loops, circling back around to the origin.

Does this sound familiar to those of us who have tried to export our movies to different formats ? The endless options and check boxes ? The bitstreams and bit rates ? You've made your film, spent countless hours shooting, editing and grading not to mention the dark art of colour correction and now you want to get it on to the web. Well fear not as whereas Alexander The Great had to cut the Gordian Knot with his sword to solve the problem you can rely on Auto GK.

AutoGK is a simpler version of Gordian Knot. It is an integrated package for DVD to DivX/XviD/x264 encoding which combines multiple free software packages to perform the various tasks needed to rip, demux, encode, multiplex and split to size. It thereby attempts to combine most tasks with a single frontend and is largely automated.

This is great for creating files for Stage 6, You Tube etc and takes away a lot of the pain. Jamie from Whiteroom Productions recommended it to me and passed on John, his colleagues, formula for usage.

total time in seconds x 0.16 = size in MB

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Producers

As you may all well know as well as directing i've produced Zombie Undead so far. Well thats fine but the film is becoming too big for me to produce alone. To that end a while ago i asked Martin Hargreaves at De Montfort University for any possible candidates for the role. His colleague Marie came back with a short list and from there we narrowed it down to two names. Sunny Matharu and Matthew Gyngell have been working with the funding proposal and brainstorming completion funding ideas. Matthew has also designed some awesome web banners so keep an eye out for those.

Great to have you on the Zombie Undead team lads.

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Kit Cox Art

The Tony Hart of our generation Kit Cox has come up with the goods again. Asked to produce a one shot picture of the three main leads in the film he's come back with this awesome picture. From left to right - Steve the Paramedic, Sarah and Jay. Kit always comes up trumps with his art and is a talent to watch out for.

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Funding Inspiration

Had awesome meeting earlier in the week with Karl Craig-West. Karl runs a training and advice consultancy, is a professional speaker and, just in case he's got a minute spare, a website designer. Karl has come on board in order to help Zombie Undead with PR and fund raising and i can tell you that in just this first meeting alone Karl came up with some exciting ideas to push the project forward. Karl provided a brainstorming session around the film and how to secure completion funding. Conventional avenues were explored as were some out of the box ideas so watch this space.

One thing Karl said was a must was the film getting a PR agency on board who will be willing to get involved in exchange for free advertising. So any PR agencies or individuals wanting to push the project get in touch.

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Script Writing

Further to previous posts regarding script changes heres something else thats occured to us as the script devloped. This is one thats always bugged me when i see it in on low/no budget films so i have to rant about it here.

To me something that always emphasised the lack of budget in a low budget film is plot exposition. Not only is this poor writing ( show don't tell ) but to me it telegraphs the viewer that you don't have the money to back up your script ideas. Having 2 men in lab coats looking at a computer screen does not make a high powered nuclear bunker scene. The average cinema goer is very film literate and we shouldnt fool ourselves otherwise. The audience subconsciously understands the narrative conventions of cinema in an extremely advanced way so it was important we didn't patronise them.

Lastly it also has the effect of slowing the pace down for no reason. Sure moments of calm are needed but use them to create tension, develop character and push the film forward.

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Blog Changes

After residing elsewhere the ZU blog comes over in new updated form. Entries are being posted back to July last year so expect out of order entries on the rss feed while we catch up. Thank you for your patience as normal service is resumed shortly.

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ZU On Stage 6

"A place for people who love video to post videos, share videos, download and watch streaming videos. Free videos downloads available." Thats Stage 6 in a nutshell. The Zombie Undead team are putting up the teaser trailers and watch out for Zombie Undead - The Short Film. Shot last year ZUTSF showcases the style and format of the feature all in a 7 ish minute package. Watch the blog for when its online and download it for free. Search Stage 6 for 'Zombie Undead'.

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