INTRODUCTIONS

Welcome to my blog, “8 1/2 Short Films about Zombies”. This blog is about filmmaking, and more specific, making zombie films. I’m at about 5 1/2 short films about zombies currently, with another 3 charted out and a radio play script in development. I’m not obsessed with zombies, but I am with these films. They are my bastard children, which is the only thing a zombie film could be. Don’t cha think?

I need to start out with an explanation of just what 8 1/2 Short Films About Zombies is, or at least the original intention. They are for me experiments in style, and practice filmmaking. They were always intended to be my film school. And they started back in 1999.

I was living in Edmonton, Alberta, working as freelance shooter (mostly in TV) and just hanging out. A group of friends, the Zombie Collective, shot a zombie spoof on VHS tape called Blood Red Canada Dead. It was a, try to guess now, collection of short films about zombies. I got asked to edit the thing. It was a fun venture.

Some of the material in BRCD really attracted me. I was also at a stage in my life that I was moving away from art house film and back to grindhouse and drive-in films. When I was a kid King Kong and Frankenstein were the impedious of my fascination with movies. I wanted to play around with a monster film and here was some great stuff that I could work with. And zombies really hadn’t been done at that point (That was eight years ago remember).

I’ve always been a fan of zombie films, but never very hard core. Now I’ve acquired quite a taste for them, preferring the seventies era European films, with a special affection for the 40’s White Zombie and of course Romero’s ghouls.

So I sat down with Rob and Jay and we charted out a zombie film in 3 acts, comprised of short films with characters that overlapped. We had a basic structure, and only really wrote the shorts as we came up to shooting them. It’s a hell of a way to build a railroad. Start with a strong script kiddies. Since 1999 we’ve shot 5 1/2 films. They’ve been rough-cut for years, but now I’ve made the push to finalize them a do something with these films.

So this brings us back to the blog. It’s a chronicle of what I’m up to with the zombie films, and maybe I’ll get some input from readers. We haven’t spent a lot of money on these films, but we have spent a bit. I’d like to get them seen, and in some ways I need to exorcize them so I can move on.

The blog won’t just be me rambling along. Over time I’ll include some first looks and insight into this rambling, crawling zombie thing.

So the first look; I entered the Steven Spielberg/ Mark Burnett Production On The Lot. Looks like they’ve made their choices and I’m out. But here’s a link to an earlier zombie film, Awakenings. Love some feedback! Thanks.

http://films.thelot.com/films/20832