"Last Zombie Standing" Screening: Croydon International Film Festival

Zombie rights minidoc "Last Zombie Standing," originally shot in Croydon back in 2009, returns to the scene of the crime for the 2014 Croydon International Film Festival on 25th October.

"Last Zombie Standing" Screening: Walthamstow Short Film Club

I am pleased to announce that Last Zombie Standing will be screened at Walthamstow Short Film Club's Hallowe'en event on 28th October, at Ye Old Rose And Crown, Walthamstow. For details see the Facebook event page.

Last Zombie Standing

Two films released onto YouTube in a week, and both have been a long time in production. Here's the final cut of Last Zombie Standing, my entry with Team Special Circumstances in the Movieum Zombie Film Competition 2009. Watch in HQ here or on the YouTube channel. I held off releasing this so that the screenwriter and I could re-edit and put together this shorter cut with completed effects scenes (a slightly longer version was entered in the competition.) I had great fun making this film - enjoy!

Killing The Dead

Here's the winning zombie film, Killing The Dead produced by team Bad Gas.



The Zombie Film Challenge website has links to this film and the winners of previous 24 and 48 hour challenges, as well as several of Johnnie Oddball's excellent articles on how to be a director: in retrospect I'm sure our team would have fared better if I'd invested in a baseball cap...

Last Zombie Standing is currently back in post-production for an unnecessary and highly indulgent Director's Cut - watch this space.

[update 8.11.09: embedded video is now the YouTube version]

Zombie Film Challenge

I attended the Zombie Film Challenge screening on Halloween along with three other members of Special Circumstances. Apart from the (compulsory) zombies themselves a number of trends were seen in many of the films, including the District 9 effect: documentary/mockumentary style used left right and centre, whether in the brief or not, and in addition to our film two others took up the zombie rights cause with gusto. There were several cats - directors of zombie films are also unafraid to work with animals - and I'm clearly not the only person with a love of dodgy decapitation effects.

A Night At The Movieum [photo: Brandon Butterworth] Zombie make-overs [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Congratulations to the makers of the winning entry, Killing The Dead. I can't tell you much about the team - they didn't make it to the screening - but their film hit all the right notes for me and was well produced while still clearly a low-budget amateur effort.

I'm happy with our mockumentary entry, Last Zombie Standing, and I think it made the grade and went down OK with the audience - although, having seen it on the big screen I have a number of minor changes I'd like to make, so watch this space.

Director, DOP, Screenwriter and Composer

[photos: Molly Brown, Brandon Butterworth, Sci-Fi Gene]

Unfortunately Sci-Fi Gene has had a significant data loss and I will be taking the next few days to get back on top of things. I'll be back soon with news of some future zombie-free projects, and links to some of the zombie films when they go up. Normal service will resume shortly...

Completion Certificate of the Dead [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Zombie alert

Zombies are the new robots. It's official - while we and other teams have been making zombie movies all over London, across the world people have either been participating in major zombie gatherings or in reconstructions of Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

Over the weekend we've been shooting and editing our Zombie Challenge film, the zombie mockumentary "Last Zombie Standing." As I was both directing and doing a zombie cameo I didn't get a chance to take any production stills - these are all taken by other team members.

Zombie high noon [photo: Molly Brown]

When zombies attack [photo: James Silverston]

When zombies defend [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Zombie!

Insert amusing zombie leg caption here [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Zombies Actually [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are undead [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Zombies rule! at least while the cats are away...

Final update: we completed the score a bit after ten o'clock last night, and I got the edit down to three minutes at around the same time. I spent most of last night having another crack at the CGI elements (some successes some failures), tracking down a few extra sound effects we needed and reworking the rest of the soundtrack around the score. I took the final cut in to the Movieum this morning on a mini-DV and it feels good to have finished, at least until the screening next weekend.
I'm now winding down and this post comes to you from the Robot Workshop cybercafe at the Trocadero, with their collection of androids and spaceships improvised brilliantly from kitchen utensils...

I feel positive about everything that went into this project - the script, the performances, the score, the camerawork, the general team spirit - which is another way of saying we had a really good team, and I hope I've done at least some of them justice in the edit. This has all been another step up from previous projects in terms of quality of picture and sound, which is what I wanted - did I mention we had a score? And we may or may not have the best film in the competition but I suspect that we may have had the best zombies. Some on-set pictures will follow later today.

The film will appear somewhere on the Internet in the near future, and I'll post a link when it goes up. I firmly believe that the reasons for climbing a mountain are both because it is there, and also that it's the best way to recce for the next mountain, so once I've recovered from the last two nights and allowed some blood back into my caffeine system, the question will be where to go next.

Movieum Zombie Film Challenge: update 4

The composer has left the building: now it's down to me. I have a rough edit that brings the film down to 3 minutes and I can assure you that was painful. Now working in the soundtrack and sound effects.

Movieum Zombie Film Challenge - update 3

No stills yet - yesterday was a success but trying to do the CGI last night was a different story. However I've got a rough edit (only about twice as long as it should be) and am ready to do some work with the composer in the next couple of hours before I start brutally cutting down to the final edit. The problem is our zombies were too good so there's too much cool footage - now I get what directors' cuts are about!

Movieum Zombie Film Challenge: update 2

T-Zero: four of us turned up to London's Deathtrap this morning at 10 and our youngest team member chose our title and genre from the lucky dip. We phoned this through to our scriptwriter who approved of the choices.

T+3h: Arrived on set, met up with scriptwriter and DOP, everything ready: started shooting in front of house to the amusement of those in the street.

T+5h: All members of team now on set. House full of zombified people.

T+9h: Wrap

T+9h 30m: Tidy up and set off home.

T+12h: It's 10 p.m. I'm back home, I've watched through all the footage - looks great. Still a lot to do - the edit, some voice-over, some CGI and the soundtrack. It's going to be a long night but so far so good: we've shot the whole script in one afternoon as planned, we've got some really fantastic performances - now it's my job to turn them into a great film.

More updates and some shots to come.

Movieum Zombie Film Challenge: update 1

The Movieum's Zombie Film Challenge takes place this weekend: if you're in an open space anywhere in London, watch out for large numbers of the undead. Our team is preparing for a film shoot this weekend and I have been researching fake blood recipes and gathering random props.

Where do zombies come from? The zombie concept starts from the Voodoo religious system, as a dead person revived by a sorceror and under their control. However over the years alternative origins have been suggested in films while the idea of magical control has been abandoned in favour of brainless hungry rampaging. A virus is a popular cause, for example the Rage virus in 28 Days Later or the BSE variant in Zombieland. In Shaun of the Dead there's a hint of some kind of alien contamination from a crashed satellite. In Steven King's novel Cell the zombies are created by mobile phones - also, interestingly, the brainless rampage is only the first stage as a sinister, organized behaviour begins to appear from the chaos. Of course zombiehood is the gift that goes on giving as in most film versions, if you're bitten and die you get to join the luncheon club.

They Lurk

The Sci-Fi Gene blog will be 1 year old on the 23rd October. It's been a good year. I'm also currently gathering a crew for an entry in the Movieum's zombie-themed 48 Hour Film Challenge next weekend - more on that story later.

For now, here's the result of slightly too much time with Blender and Voodoo: