It’s been two weeks since my last post.
Instead of talking about it, I went and made a movie.
Let me back up. About a week ago I was talking to Jeanette on YM, and she mentioned that George Romero had a contest on MySpace for “Diary of the Dead”. I went to the site, www.myspace.com/diaryofthedead, and saw that they were looking for short films under 3 minutes to put on the “Diary of the Dead” DVD.
I contacted my usual crew: Mandie, Mike and Lisa. Talked to Papersniffer about documenting the shoot. Called my friend James to bring the Airsoft armoury and some gear.
I knew that with the short time limit, the story would have to be fast and furious. The first thing I thought of was a news report on Z-Day. I knew my friend Lyra would be great for a haughty journalist. Lisa had messaged me about playing a zombie that would come back and kill Mandie for killing her in “Brutality”, and that sounded like a good ending.
I wrote the screenplay Weds, and had a meeting with James to knock out some storyboards and do a prop check. Saturday, Papersniffer and I went out and “pre-enacted” the whole movie, shot by shot. Sunday, everyone got together for the shoot at about 3pm.
I WAYYY underestimated how long Tomy and Beth would take to do make-up. We didn’t get started shooting into shortly after dark. The area we wanted to shoot had melted into a lake in the middle of the alley (a proposed panoramic shot of zombies in Union Park was cut because a. I didn’t get nearly the response to my Zombie call I wanted and 2. I felt James would attract less attention carrying a CAR15/m4 in an alley than in the park.). Then someone got mad our zombies were in their back yard. Things were falling apart. We finished up and went home.
The rest of the shoot went fairly smooth. I think I rushed things too much; I was worried that we ran so late. I couldn’t get Lisa to hit Beth (my replacement for an absent Lyra) or Mandie so that it would translate on screen. I hoped that editing and sound effects would make up for it.
I should mention that this was my first shoot with actual CRAFT SERVICE, courtesy of Papersniffer. 
I ached all over my body during post-production; not sure if it was stress or a cold.
The movie ended up pretty good, and I learned a lot about doing things by myself. In the future, I will plan ahead more. Instead of more shorts, I will work with Papersniffer to visualize shots and VFX, so I can experiment with them ahead of time so it’s not a big deal when they come up in a movie.
I am sketching out a “Wild Kids on the Run” exploitation flick to shoot out by FatDave’s this summer. Not much to say except Mandie, Jolene, and Lisa on the run, with James’s soulless bounty hunter in hot pursuit.
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Screenwriting class is almost over. This week I’m supposed to bring in a couple of loglines to flesh out in class. I’m bringing “Mars Murder Mystery” and “Hail to the Thief”. We’ll see how he likes those.
