Update - The Missing Blog - The Lowest Majority - Final Project

After scanning over my last few blog entries, I realised that one of my previous entries isn’t there. I’m guessing Blogger pulled off its usual trick of losing entries as soon as you post them claiming there was a problem, I guess I just didn’t realise if this was the case. So here is what the missing entry was about. Basically we spent an entire Saturday at the end of January filming our entire project. After our first attempt at filming was foiled by light and actors arriving late and other interruptions, we just decided to film the entire thing in one long session that lasted about 3-4 hours. We started completely from scratch with a whole load of our actors and a couple of new ones, and just started again. We went to the same sight as before but we discovered this brilliant little woodland bit next to the cycle track which worked really well for what we could do. So on the day we made numerous changes to what we initially had written in the script but we feel that it made the movie a lot better and easier to pull off, so expect a newly written script with all the changes in shortly. I’d just like to thanks all of our actors: our zombies – William, Ellen,  and Martin who got all covered in make up, blood and mud, you guys were awesome! Also Oliver for kneeling in the cold wet mud for about 20 minutes till we got the shoots we needed, you were awesome too, despite complaining the whole time! And finally I’d like to thank my Outlaws – James, Craig and Lewis, especially Lewis as he showed up to work with a hangover and still managed to smash some zombie heads! So that’s basically what the missing blog was about, everything went pretty much smoothly and we are happy with all the changes and expect that re-written script soon :) x

Update - The Lowest Majority - Final Project

So far the editing phase of the project isn't going according to plan. Me and James are having numerous problems with editing as every comupter we try to use with the Adobe Premiere Pro software, we use to edit with. James and I have used it with all our past projects without a single hitch, however this time, when ever we try to use it it just keeps glitching and turning off. We are tying to find away around this, but for now we are going to use Windows Movie Maker to do a rough version, until we get everything sorted out on the other software and try and discover what is causing all these problems. But from what we have managed to edit together, it looks like we won't have to do much re-shooting, if not none at all. Despite the editing problems, we are confident that we will have it all done in time for the final deadline.

28 Days Later - Research





28 Days Later is writer/director Danny Boyle’s take on teh zombie horror genre, but gave it a very fresh and terrifying new look. Whereas zombies, before this film, were portrayed as slow and bumbling creatures, with decaying features, and missing or injured limbs. Whereas here they are portrayed as quick running, always aggressive creatures, that look pretty much human like besides the change of eye colour and blood splatter and stains. It is easy to see the changes made by Boyle, here, he took what was already a scary and feared horroe creature and injected it with more fear, aggression and terror, that would go on to be copied or have certain aspects used in future zombie creations, from films to videogames. The opening to this film is very fearful and suspencful, opening in an animal testing facility with monkeys locked away in cages, with various televisions dotted around portraying clips of violence and terror. The facility is then broken into by 3 animal rights members, who free one of the monkeys from its cage, despite a scientist warning them not too as the test subjects, have been injected with ‘rage’. The monkey then bites one of the rights members, cauing her to collapse to the floor clutching her bleeding throat but then stands back up again as a zombie and attacks the other people before fading to the title of the film.

Dawn of the Dead - Research

Romero’s second film in “The Dead” franchise, Dawn of the Dead is probably one of the most famous zombie films and probably the most well known, next to Night of the Living Dead (the first in Romero’s franchise). This film follows the events as a zombie apocalypse starts and continues on till when zombies have virtually taken over America and as far as we know maybe even the world. The film follows 4 survivors who escape the chaos of the city and end up hiding out in a shopping mall, something which would constantly be reused, remade, satire and become a cliché with anything zombie related, let alone movies. The opening minutes of the film mainly centres around two different scenarios. The first one, being centred around a news room, shrouded in chaos, as everyone one is trying to keep up with the broadcast and keep up with the amount of reports flooding in and also having to deal with staff walking out. The second scenario is the more interesting one, this one following a swat team sent to clear out a building of zombies. The zombies here are very typical, in that they are slow, show very little emotion (if any at all) and due to low the budget of the film just have very pale skin and a few splatters of blood on them, however there are a few others throughout the film that have had more applied making them look a little more menacing and decaying.



Land of the Dead - Research



The Land of the Dead is the 4^th film in George Romero’s “The Dead” movie franchise. Similar to Day of the Dead, this one takes place after the zombie apocalypse, where zombies have pretty much taken over the world and there is only a small amount of humanity left, who are basically just trying to survive and find away to return things to what they once were. The opening few minutes of the film, is very clever and different from most zombie films. Rather than build a suspenseful opening, Romero has opted for a more slowed down, chilled and haunting effect with a few hints of comedy thrown in. Here there are various close ups, medium shots, long shots and panning shots which go throughout a small town showing zombies doing everyday activities, as if they were normal people again e.g. there is a zombie teenage couple holding hands, a band stand with zombies wearing matching suits and holding instruments attempting to play them. In this film Romero has tried to make the zombies seem more human, rather than portraying them as evil monsters, he makes the audience sympathise with them more, as well as making them feared.