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.

New Studio Title

This is our new studio title which will feature at the start of our next film, The Lowest Majority

The Lowest Majority - Filming Update

Me and Mr Burton went out and started shooting some of the opening footage yesterday. We arrived on location with Oliver Clarkson, Jonathon Moore, and Lauren O Brien, James waited for the rest of our actors and team, while I went to get to more actors from town who agreed to help shoot the scenes we needed. However when I went to meet the actors it was dicovered that one of them had recently just had a broken foot, so walking back took longer than expected which was a problem, as time was up against us in terms of the sun going down. We only had around an hour tops to film before it got to dark. When I arrived with Stuart Ellis and David Barrit (the actors I went to meet) the rest of the people had already arrived, William Crawley and Ellen Bradshaw. With only limited time left to shoot before it got too dark, attentioned turned to the actors make up, where another problem occured, we needed water to apply the make up. I then ran to the nearest shop to buy some where another problem occured and the only water I could get was sparkling and flavoured. With that said I returned to the sight with two bottles of sparkling Mountain Spring Water, and a bottle of still Lemon and Lime flavoured water. We then applied the make up to the "zombies" with help from Lauren, our make up lady for the day. With Jonathon, Ellen, Stuart and William all made over, we set to work filming what we could in the very little light left, because at this point it was close to being total darkness, but lucky the area, in which we were shooting, had alot of street lights going along it so it gave us enough ligth for the camera to pick things up. We managed to shoot some footage, but in the end with it being so dark me and James decided it would be best if we used this time as filming test footage, which we managed to gain some good results in terms of light and camera angles we could use. But also some of the footage we did film can also be used in the film itself, so we were happy with what we got. We then decided to call it a night after it got really dark and the filming kept getting constantly interupted by passers by but the nigth wasn't a total waste in our opinion and me and James are both confident we will have all footage shot by the deadline. x

The Lowest Majority - Final Project Report

Me and James, have been working hard to get all the filming and technical work done. So far we have shot all the newsreports that will feature in our film. However due to multiple problems, we havnt been able to shoot anything else :( However! we are confident and happy that we will film everything needed by the end of next week, if not this week. The biggest problem we may have to face is the make up needed to make the zombies look scary and realistic or as close to that as we can achieve, but luckily we have a couple of people who have voluntered to help out with that portion and ill role up my sleeves and give it a bash aswel. Once filming is complete we will be editing it altogether and giving it the effects needed, for it, but for now we are just working on the annimations of production and film logos, aswel as the title and credits. So fingers crossed all will be filmed next week :)