Things That Make You Go Boom!
So the locations are sorted and the days are scheduled, I still had a whole lot of other stuff to sort out and it wasn’t nicely compartmentalised like these blog posts. All of pre-production happened in an incoherent blobs of panic, enthusiasm, genius and happenstance but something’s worked out nicely. I got introduced to the friend of a friend who did make-up. Not only was she really good, but after only 5 minutes of me frothing at her in a pub she came on board. Mark’s already posted photos of Sarah’s work on this blog so I don’t get the honour, but go and check them out, they rock!
With make-up effects sorted I had one less thing to worry about, the next pressing matter was CGI. Peeps over at Beacon were still muttering about the fireball. I could talk the talk, but could John walk the walk? We had a brief chat about the fireball, John’s first question ‘…But what if I can’t do it?’ I had no doubt he could, but we needed a test. Digging around in his archives John found some crappy old video footage from an LRP event a number of years previous. A simple shot of some people running down a corridor with guns, it was perfect. A couple of days later I received an ecstatic email from John full of smillies and a small video attachment. I played it and my jaw dropped. He’d done it! A beautifully blossoming fireball raising up from behind the runners and overtaking some of them! I played it again, then again, pausing it, trying to catch John out. It was perfect. I posted it to the Beacon Yahoo group and the muttering stopped. I posted a couple more things, then I got a telling off for spamming the group. Mental note, musn’t post stuff to the group in future unless I’m trying to sell a sofa. You wanna see the test footage? Ok but only if you promise not to tell me off for spamming!
On the plus side Beacon have now set up a specific writters room yahoo group, which is set aside for discussion relating to the show's production. It's very useful and I've posted numerous times and not been told off. Only people who want to be bothered by regular posts about the shows production join, so I'm not annoying any of the more casual members. Which is good.
CG sorted and on to costume, which was the easiest thing of all to sort. A dig round in the walk in cupboard, and a little chat with a nice chap called Ed and voila costume for zombies. Nicely divided in to 3 sub-sets, flecktarn camo and SAV’s for security zombies. Boiler suits and hi-vis jackets for mining zombies. Shirts, ties, lab coats and ID holders for admin/scientist zombies. The principle cast who weren’t regulars got Tac gear and shooters. Dickey even went above and beyond the call of duty by acquiring a truly horrific Hawaiian shirt to complement his body armour. Kind of makes me regret killing his character first. The final piece of costume was a plaster. A bog standard garden variety plaster. With the exception of 1 scene this plaster would be a principle characters costume for the entire shoot. How much trouble can one little plaster cause? Well I’m labouring the point - that should be some indication.
As for the props; mostly shooters, well we just have those lying around the house. John built a fantastic little glowy thing to use as the ‘Bloodhound’ A little tracking gizmo with some relevance to the script. A large bag of cash was also required as that had significant relevance to the plot. Finally a baseball bat, every zombie show needs one of those (or the stalwart English equivalent the cricket bat) and it just so happened that a friend had a rather beautiful LRP safe one kicking around. Picking it up a couple of days before the shoot I found that it had deteriorated quite badly. At the last minute I almost pulled it for a real bat, luckily I didn’t, but that’s a production story!
Of course while things were going well in some departments, other things weren’t shifting along as sweetly as they should have…
With make-up effects sorted I had one less thing to worry about, the next pressing matter was CGI. Peeps over at Beacon were still muttering about the fireball. I could talk the talk, but could John walk the walk? We had a brief chat about the fireball, John’s first question ‘…But what if I can’t do it?’ I had no doubt he could, but we needed a test. Digging around in his archives John found some crappy old video footage from an LRP event a number of years previous. A simple shot of some people running down a corridor with guns, it was perfect. A couple of days later I received an ecstatic email from John full of smillies and a small video attachment. I played it and my jaw dropped. He’d done it! A beautifully blossoming fireball raising up from behind the runners and overtaking some of them! I played it again, then again, pausing it, trying to catch John out. It was perfect. I posted it to the Beacon Yahoo group and the muttering stopped. I posted a couple more things, then I got a telling off for spamming the group. Mental note, musn’t post stuff to the group in future unless I’m trying to sell a sofa. You wanna see the test footage? Ok but only if you promise not to tell me off for spamming!
On the plus side Beacon have now set up a specific writters room yahoo group, which is set aside for discussion relating to the show's production. It's very useful and I've posted numerous times and not been told off. Only people who want to be bothered by regular posts about the shows production join, so I'm not annoying any of the more casual members. Which is good.
CG sorted and on to costume, which was the easiest thing of all to sort. A dig round in the walk in cupboard, and a little chat with a nice chap called Ed and voila costume for zombies. Nicely divided in to 3 sub-sets, flecktarn camo and SAV’s for security zombies. Boiler suits and hi-vis jackets for mining zombies. Shirts, ties, lab coats and ID holders for admin/scientist zombies. The principle cast who weren’t regulars got Tac gear and shooters. Dickey even went above and beyond the call of duty by acquiring a truly horrific Hawaiian shirt to complement his body armour. Kind of makes me regret killing his character first. The final piece of costume was a plaster. A bog standard garden variety plaster. With the exception of 1 scene this plaster would be a principle characters costume for the entire shoot. How much trouble can one little plaster cause? Well I’m labouring the point - that should be some indication.
As for the props; mostly shooters, well we just have those lying around the house. John built a fantastic little glowy thing to use as the ‘Bloodhound’ A little tracking gizmo with some relevance to the script. A large bag of cash was also required as that had significant relevance to the plot. Finally a baseball bat, every zombie show needs one of those (or the stalwart English equivalent the cricket bat) and it just so happened that a friend had a rather beautiful LRP safe one kicking around. Picking it up a couple of days before the shoot I found that it had deteriorated quite badly. At the last minute I almost pulled it for a real bat, luckily I didn’t, but that’s a production story!
Of course while things were going well in some departments, other things weren’t shifting along as sweetly as they should have…
posted by Steve at 10:40 PM
3 Comments:
Nice, but I thought the director does these things at the last minute. ;0)
Looks real cool !
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