Captured the last scenes today – a milestone and a relief… Nearly finished the visual edit – down to sound now.

After the nightmare of blogger a recent switch to WordPress has finally let us allow comments on the ZU blog. So feel free – fire away…

The penultimate day went off in fine style. The morning saw a variety of shots form earlier scenes we didn’t have time to do on earlier shoots. By lunchtime we were spectacularly on schedule – nice. Lunch also saw the departure of Chris Herbert -Phil. Chris had just come back for one pick up – on his birthday as well. Nice one fella and happy 31st. We were also finished with corridors at this point, thank god.

The afternoon went like a breeze – helps again as we were shooting outside so no lighting time. Some great zombies this time with my brother, Gwyn, and niece, Millie, fellow director Darren Cook and Terror4fun’s Zombie Ed. Tired now and shooting tomorrow. THE LAST DAY!!!!!!

Tomorrow is the start of the last weekend of filming on ZU. Principle photography ends on Sunday people. Snowed under with last minute prep. Lost a couple of days as a location pulled out – and pulled back in again. But we’re all ready to go -wish us luck!

It has come to our attention that one of the scripts that we were running on the previous incarnation of the site ended up running a malicious code.

Google informed us of this fact by placing a bright red warning label on our .co.uk domain name and emailing us about it. This problem has now been rectified and the site layout has now been changed as you can see.

ZombieUndead.com would like to appologise to anyone that has been effected by this malicious code running on their system, and would like to inform all readers that they should check their systems immediatly for any spyware, trojans and/or viruses that could have been installed without their knowledge from their visit to this site.

While we appologise and sympathise with anyone infected by this script, we would like to point out that we knew nothing of this problem until google informed us of its existance, where apon the problem was eradicated immediately. Both Rhys and the Web Host have been working on the problem and have identified the script in question as coming from a third party software with advertising that had been compromised, and not one of the ZombieUndead.com pages itself.

While every effort is made to ensure that all the content you see on our pages at least is malware free, this does highlight the fact that other sites are not so lucky and highlights the importance of checking your systems weekly for any infections. If you find that your system has been compromised from any site, we recommend emailing the webhost or the owner/admin of the site and informing them immediately.

We thank you for your time and understanding with this problem and would like to appologise once more for any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

Plans are afoot for the last two days of shooting as Barry, one of our leads, is off his crutches and physio’d nearly fighting feet. Sweet. Day 18 will be the last scene in the evacuation centre and 19 we’re back on the farm and also an awesomely gruesome sfx set piece. The later will be at The Art Organisation Leicester. We are booked for 20th and 21st May.

The big one!!! Well what can I say. Supendous! Stunning! Fantastic ….Goresome!!!! The zombies invaded Leicester city 17th April 2009 and fun was had by all. There was a bit of pressure on today – firstly we had to get up at half five and secondly we were going to have a mass (gaggle?, flock?) of zombies around the centre of Leicester.

I set up a Facebook group for this and by a few days before we had over a hundred signed up. With extras i usually ask for twice as many as i want as often you have a ratio of no shows. Well …. just under 100 dedicated zombie fans turned up. Couldnt believe it – awesome! And you know what – we loved them all. Social media dont you love and hate it?

After the madness we vacted to Aylestone Meadows and a quick hop and jump across a fence to an industrial estate and the jobs a good one.

Cant believe how lucky we were weather wise – both days it threatened rain early on, which thankfully never came – and also with all the extras – a great atmosphere, a great bunch, a great day.

Spending the next 8-9 hours transferring footage from camera to my hard drives. A laborious process but am getting a good workflow going. Heres how it goes in Premiere Pro :

1 play tape through until you find the first usable take
2 rewind to this takes start point
3 select scene detect
4 enter name as scene no and description
5 capture
6 pause at end of scene, deleting section of next scene captured by scene detect
7 go to 1

This seems to me the best capture method. In effect you are saving time in the capture/edit process as you are shot selecting in the capture itself. Saves both time and disk space – and with HDV this is a good thing.

Down on the farm. Jai Grant’s parents have allowed us free roam of their old farm out Ratby way. Its an awesome location and many thanks to them. A big day today especially for Steve Doulton who joins us late into shooting – a hard task coming in to a cast and crew who’ve been working together for so long.

Steve had to go by three so needed to juggle the scenes around with all his stuff first. Have to say I was impressed by Steve. His attitude was at all times professional, and he nailed his lines pretty much bang on every time. A short scene I wrote where he recounts a traumatic event in his recent past relied on the actors skill and boy did he deliver.

Not sure if it was the pressure on the big shoot the next day but there was a touch of friction on the set. Nothing that stopped us nailing shots or spoiled friendships but it was there. But hey – its been a long haul, we’re all tired so shit happens. We moved on and got some fantastic shots due largely due to some free lighting – the sun.

The upcoming weekend is going to be glorious. Zombies roaming the hillsides and the city.