Pages

Saturday, June 12, 2010

TBOZ Premier

Last night was the premier of The Book of Zombie. The film C and I worked on. Principal photography commenced summer 2007. Every Friday night we would drive from Edmonds to Auburn (1 1/2 hours roughly), stay up all night and film, drive home in the early AM, sleep all day and do it all over again Saturday night. ALL SUMMER LONG. I have to say that after the first few nights I did not stay up all night. We brought down air mattresses and the girls and I would crash at about 3 AM.

This is an indie film. Our funding came from donations through our website & people we knew who believed in us, contributions by cast & crew and in kind donations from the city we filmed in, my parents and some luck. To view the trailer, click here.

I got involved when a highschool/college friend contacted me about doing costume for an indie project he was working on. I of course said yes (that was what I actually went to college for) and C has always been interested in film so he was on board too. Normally I am not in to horror and gore but it was actually pretty fun and interesting to work on.

Stroke of luck number one. In looking for a pool table, the directors stumbled upon an entire city block of buildings that were going to be demolished. We were allowed to film inside the buildings and do anything we wanted to them as long as the exterior walls were still standing when we were done. We used two of the buildings for two of our sets for acts 2 & 3. Being that this is a horror flick and a lot of karo syrup and red food coloring were involved, it was great that our final set could be "douched" with fake blood and left alone. To clean up and recreate that set every day would have been a nightmare. We built a store front on one of the buildings for our second act scene.

Stroke of luck number two. A gentleman from the Seattle Knights allowed us to use chain mail, armour and weaponry (our bar for act 3 has a medieval theme).

Stroke of luck number three. We got Elissa Dowling a prolific actress in California. She heard about our production and wanted to be involved.

Stroke of luck number four. While walking our dog one day, C and I came across an abandoned ice cream freezer in the cul de sac near our house. With some help from a friend with a truck we were able to bring it down to the set. It was used for a scene in act 2 and was GREAT set dressing.

Stroke of luck number five. My parents offered up their house for us to use for act 1 of our film.

Stroke of luck number six. While filming at my parents, a neighborhood cat ran in to the house. We have a white cat in the film that meets an early demise. The cat was white and we were able to film the cat running out of the house for one of the scenes.

Stroke of luck number seven. We got Bill Johns, a local actor.

After three years of post production, our film was featured in the STIFF festival. For a behind the scenes look at the production of the film. Go to the DP's blog.

We sold out the theater last night and they had to turn away 40 people. There was also a showing on Monday at noon and the theater was almost filled to capacity. That is a good feeling. The two shorts before us Friday night were Blue Moon Day and The Familiar. One of the main characters from the second short film, Torrance Coombs is on The Tudors. Great productions!

TBOZ will be showing at the Seattle Crypticon festival in a few weeks. If you are in the area and like horror fliks and can get a chance to see it.

This experience was so great and we met some really cool people. Quite a few of my family members were in the film. My brother and BIL were zombies and my dad had a speaking role at the end. The male lead from our film is working and another guy from our film is down in LA trying to catch his big break. He will soon have something out online. I will post about it when it is released. The guy who did our special effects is going to be working on a film in October.

This is truly what C and I want to be able to do for a living. We don't need to make millions of dollars or have paparazzi follow us around everywhere. We want to make a living working in the film industry. We hope to work on a few more projects in the next few years. We do plan on moving down to California but only after the kids have graduated, four years from now.

Follow your dreams!

3 comments:

its me, sam said...

Love the trailer! I'll have to show DD, as she and some of her friends are planning on doing a short film this summer! She's the make-up artist! I'd love to see the movie!

Moneyapolis said...

Congratulations! This looks great!

The Dirty Scottish Bastard said...

Glad we took this ride together luv. Can't wait until the next project!!!