BACK TO PROJECTS
In the summer of 2004 I made �my NIGHTMARE� with a couple of friends of mine (ECB and Knox) and having enjoyed the experience so much I decided that the following year I would put together a little zombie film. Originally the idea was to do a spoof of trashy Euro-zombie movies such as �Oasis of the Zombies� and �Zombie Lake�, so I began to break them down and list certain �mannerisms� to emulate. As time marched on towards Christmas 2004 I changed my direction and started to think about focussing on one person who had been bitten and was spending his final hours coming to terms with his impending death. Now fast forward a few more months to July/August 2005. After a somewhat trying planning stage I sat down to write the script for my new short film � combining the light-hearted nature of the original idea and the introspective aspect of the second idea to make �Trapped�.
The film opens on a guy attacking a girl in the middle of the woods. The attacker has wild eyes, pale skin and blood smeared on his face. Quickly he manages to overpower his battling victim and bites her before she makes her escape deeper into the woods. Meanwhile a guy is out for a peaceful walk in the country, stopping to admire a lake before heading further into the woodland area. He comes across the dying girl who clutches at her bleeding wound and before the guy knows it she has died. But it gets weirder for him as she suddenly leaps up behind him, re-animated with violent intent. He escapes and manages to find refuge in a nearby garage (in fact the locations are a few miles apart) and locks himself inside. Now cornered he begins to rationalise what�s going on before coming up with a plan of escape.
This time round I sought to inject some dialogue and dramatic acting into the script, which worked out nicely as my three actors had all either done drama in high school or had taken part in community theatre. I designated make up effects work to one of my actors who is into face painting as a hobby, which was one less task for me so I could concentrate more on working with my actors to achieve the performance I was after. �my NIGHTMARE� was an entirely hand-held affair, prior to the glory of image stabiliser too, so this time I wanted to get more involved with a tripod to see how I worked best. It was both a help and a hindrance, whilst making steps towards a more consistent visual style which I could edit to, I lost the visual fluidity I enjoyed on previous projects. I would have to say I�m more of a hand-held guy than a tripod guy.
Unfortunately the muse wasn�t with me through the majority of the editing process, so it took longer and was more frustrating than previous experiences, but it made me even more judicious with my footage. If a scene was dragging on I chopped out anything that was unnecessary and so the final product bounds along at a nice pace and feels its length, it doesn�t go on too much which I think was an issue with �my NIGHTMARE� where I�d often feature long takes that slowed down proceedings after a while.
In terms of the soundtrack I continued where I had left off the year before with a literal sound track, creating new sounds and background ambience which all followed a more �metallic� and �gritty/grinding� theme. But with the use of virtual keyboard software I was able to experiment further, piecing together some simple, but effective mood-makers � not bad for someone who got an �E� for music class eh? Another thing I wanted to play around with was the opening titles sequence, so I constructed a little set in my garage with a water tank, white backdrop and a series of lights. The final product is blood flowing down the screen gradually turning a white backdrop blood-red. And finally, having created my first DVD on �my NIGHTMARE�, I figured out how to get full quality video onto the format as I�d previously been unable to achieve this. The final step was putting together some extras for the DVD including a commentary and featurette. I will now be reviewing the film and picking out the areas of improvement I need to focus on, but also the aspects I really like and how I can refine them.
For the moment at least I�ll be taking a breather from making short horror films as at this time (September 2005) I have the pseudo-documentary �Manhunt Did It� to get hammered into shape, a competition entry for 2006 and am currently starting to think about my next film, which will be a conversation piece � possibly discussing the issue of media censorship.
Status: Completed September 2005
Info:
A light-hearted short zombie film about a guy who, while out for a peaceful walk, comes across a dying girl in the middle of the woods. But he soon discovers all is not well when she re-animates and begins to chase him. He escapes and ends up trapped in a nearby garage where he tries to figure out what the hell is going on and what the hell he's going to do about it.
VIEW BEHIND THE SCENES PICTURES
Latest News:
SEPTEMBER 26th 2005:
"Trapped" is now complete, finally finished editing the film about 10 days ago and then went about putting together a DVD for it, so that was completed about 6 days ago. Feedback has been positive thus far, which is great and now I am finally getting some more time to spend on "Manhunt Did It".
SEPTEMBER 9th 2005:
Today I filmed the opening titles sequence for the film, just a little idea I came up with which should look pretty cool in the finished version, you can see pictures from today's filming sesh in the behind the scenes picture gallery. Editing is beginning to progress, the first five-ish minutes is in a pretty stable situation, a rough format which has no colour correction or music, but aside from that process (which comes after the whole thing is in it's final layout) there are just a couple of changes to that first five minute section I'll be making. As for the rest of the film, it's in a very rough layout at the moment and I've taken a breather from it after the first chunk of editing went quite slowly, I've been in a creative lull this week.
So I've been furiously editing stuff for the soundtrack, going with the literal SOUND-track like I used for making "my NIGHTMARE", but the feel and general vibe is in a different direction. There was also plenty of dialogue to clean up and I've STILL got some more audio capturing to do - pretty much just getting some biting sounds and zombie moaning sounds.
There's plenty left to do on this film, but it's coming along nicely, if I'm not done in two weeks I'd hope to be in a near-completion stage at least!
SEPTEMBER 2nd 2005:
The second day of filming was on Wednesday 31st August, another ambitious day but it was just myself and Ben working on the film this time around. We started off my recording his dialogue, which took longer than I thought it might, but afterwards we moved down to the garage where Ben's protagonist gets stuck after being chased by zombie-ECB! It was a humid as hell day so working for a few hours in a confined space with no free flow of air got rather sweaty but we got some good shots. Then after Ben had done his part I continued to get the final shots of the film. The only thing I have left to do is film the opening titles sequence and of course edit the whole thing, which I have started - everything is laid out in a very rough format, but basically the correct order of events and shots. Now it's just all the precise cutting, colour correction and layering in the audio. Hopefully the film will be finished within the next four weeks.
AUGUST 27th 2005:
Yesterday was the first day of filming (August 26th 2005), this was the ambitious day with everybody involved (Sean, Ben, Emma and myself of course) and the most set ups to do. There was a total of 39 planned set ups, but when you discover new ideas whilst shooting this puts the actual number up. We eneded up getting around 50 set ups, some excellent footage including a fantastic 'blood-in-face' moment which proved to be the day's funny story. Ben was supposed to just squirt some blood on Sean's face, but when I asked for another squirt it turned into something from "Carrie" and poor Sean was utterly drenched in fake blood - a rather tasty mix of food dye and washing up liquid. But when capturing the footage this shot actually turned out really good, the 'gore' scene for this film.