Had to cancel todays shoot as still not well at all. Damn this is frustrating !

Heres the zombies from the courtyard scene. Nice one people.

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Just a short day this one but it just about killed me! Has a bad bout of illness coming on and stupidly carried on with the planned filming. We’ve so much invested in this that its hard to so no when everones allready lined up and ready to go. A simple shoot with the camera pointing out a window as a person attempts to escape from the facility. Grabbed the shot, came home, collapsed.

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Dark Waters Entertainments very own Kris Tearse writes in the current issue of Gorezone. Monte Kristo reviews Argento’s conclusion to his Three Mothers trilogy Mother Of Tears, with the issue cover asking “Has Dario had his day?”. Find 0ut for yourself and check out this awesome magazine.

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Any free stuff has got to be good to low/no budget film makers so check this out:

In a post a while ago while creating a funding document I was getting frustrated by Publishers lack of exporting to pdf without buying a pdf export plug-in. After a search I found a freeware version CutePdf but the experience made me search out a possible alternative set of desk top applications which were free. OpenOffice is a great freeware alternative to Microsoft Office. It is a fully-featured office suite which is compatible with leading office products. The main components are Writer, Calc, Base, Impress and Draw which are a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation creator and graphics package respectively. While it doesn’t have a specific desktop publishing programme Writer appears to have much of Publishers functionality – and has an export to pdf function built in. As for Mac users I believe there is a port of the programs – which is nice.

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Screen Goblin ( formerly The Big Movie Review ) visited set today to record the days shooting. Check out the visit here ; its a site well worth a visit not only for the Zombie Undead stuff!.

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Another cool days shooting. After last nights panic it all went to plan. Cast and crew were assembled at a secret location by the leisurely start of 9:30. The location was sorted by a member of the crew who shall remain unnamed and myself and Neill hadn’t seen it before the day. After a choice of two rooms we settled on the boardroom which suited us perfectly. Matt took a photo so we could replace items as we found them, then the room was cleared. Both Alex and Sandra were untested for us as this was there first scenes. Alex did a consummate job and held his own in the shooting environment. Sandra’s performance was stunning – she nailed her character off the bat and gave a powerful performance which shone on camera. Expect to see more of these actors as they both deserve to progress in the film world.

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Just before Day 05 filming starts I’d like to thank Keith Allott from Line Out (an East Midlands film making organisation) for his 11th hour help. Due to unforeseeable circumstance we were without any sound equipment. After much frantic ringing Farid accessed a mixer and Neill a Beachtek adaptor to input XLR feeds to the FX1E. Still without a mic and boom I phoned around on the scrounge. We had a great bit of luck as Keith had a boom, XLR lead and mic which he had been using for shooting that day. Nice one brother! So anyone in the East Midlands looking for any film making help be it a course, equipment rental or general advice then check out Line Out.

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Looking forward to shooting after a long break! We’ve got an interesting day ahead. A 10 year old lad, Alex Sell, is shooting his scenes with his screen grandmother, Sandra Wildbore. Not gonna tell you what the scenes are about but it will be goresome!

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Last Sunday i went to see Neill Phillips ( Epic Dream Productions ) who, as cinematographer, is the man behind the look of Zombie Undead. We now have a Brevis 35 mm adapter as well as the M2 and we wanted to see what it could or couldn’t do.

The picture here shows Neill’s awesome lighting which goes a long way in creating that ‘film’ look. This is an in-camera still using a Sony FX1E with the Redrock M2 adapter. From the outset we planned on shooting in as cinematic way as possible with a distinct visual style, high production values and a cinematic appearance. For me shooting on film is not enough to make it look like ‘film‘ – camera moves, framing, shot transition and lighting are all vital to this. If you use a 35 mm adapter than this helps enormously and both the M2 and Brevis do the job. So … go buy a 35 mm adapter!

The fact its a zombie film to me is irrelevant. The quality of the film needs to be so high that it could be a thriller, comedy or horror. Myself and Neill Phillips, DP, had many discussions prior to shooting on how to get the look we wanted. We did a lot of camera and post-production tests. Also making Zombie Undead – The Short Film was indispensable as a learning exercise.