Week 5 • Before All Hallows

It's Halloween, and that means Zombies -- THAT was the inspiration this week. But, as with most things, plans that we made were changed and changed again. On Wednesday I put out an open call for zombies extras and got great response, but when I told people to prepare to film on Saturday, I discovered that almost everyone had previous plans -- my turnaround time is too quick. Many asked if I could wait a week or two, until they were free. I briefly considered it, but waiting a week or two meant missing Halloween.

Extras or no extras, it had to be Saturday.

With fewer zombies, the script needed to be altered; for example, the first draft of the script contained a lot more dancing. To keep the script valid no matter how many zombies showed up on set, I came up with 2 possible paths. If I had lots of zombies, they would form a zombie horde. If I had only a few zombies, I'd choose a 'hero' zombie and create a 'zombie clone army' with one lone actor.

On Saturday morning, we woke up early with a big list of jobs to do. Filming would start at 1:00 PM, and by now, we had three zombies confirmed, so I decided we'd go with the clone army version of the script. We headed to town to get blood-making supplies, a bit of make-up, a box of donuts, zombie clothes, and wood to make a portable green screen. Once we got home, we spent almost an hour creating a 4 foot by 6 foot green screen - many thanks to Jeff for his assistance! I wanted to isolate the zombies with the green screen to make the compositing process easier in post-production, but once we started filming, we discovered this wasn't going to work smoothly. With such a small crew and in such a busy little village, the green screen proved awkward. Without it, I was going to have to do a lot more work to create the zombie horde, but we could also film much more quickly.

I find the first element of a project, whether it's a song or a film, always takes the longest. As long as I push through that resistance, things generally improve, and this shoot was no different. I'd planned to do a bunch of deserted street shots to establish the tone of the film but Cumberland was hopping on a warm, sunny, autumn day. Shot after shot was either delayed or ruined by a car, bicycle or stray group of villagers wandering into the shot. I considered that I might have to just 'fix it in post' but instead, we got creative and moved to a side street that had a older building currently being restored. It was much easier to wait for a quiet moment here and get a good establishing shot! After that was in the can (or more accurately, on the memory card), things sped up considerably.

The reaction to our filming was pretty amazing. Everyone was happy to see us and quite amused by our zombie presence, especially two boys who desperately wanted to be in the film. I have to thank Jen and Jeff for all their hard work as crew and actors. I also want to thank my Dad and Laura for minding the kids while we filmed the short. Final thanks to Kim for being our lead even though she REALLY hates seeing herself on screen.

Musically, I was aiming for a 'Day of the Dead' kind of feel, with wind chimes starting things off and then bring in the ominous strings. I thought the accordion and choir would add the right balance of scary and fun.

PS For more information about the blood, the Toyota Echo and the bear, visit Kim's Blog.