Help with our zombie flick.

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kene555
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Help with our zombie flick.

Post by kene555 »

We film Saturday. I am only the filmmaker, so I have no idea if this is good or not, but this is our basic script. Can it be improved, and if so would you guys be willing to make it better, so I can let the scriptwriter know?

Thanks
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UNTITLED



[It’s dark and looking down a road only light by one streetlight]

A dark figure is seen walking down the sidewalk in a dark hoodie with the hood up.

[View changes to from through a bush]

The figure walks by and a groan is heard

The person walks back still in shadows and looks in the direction of the bush and the groan

[Back to the original camera angle]

The person just stands there trying to look into the bush on what made the noise when suddenly another figure wearing a tore up shirt and groaning jumps out and knocks the original person to the ground and starts a struggle till the hooded person stops struggling and you se the groaning figure rip out what looks like entrails and start to eat.

[Credits start]

With small clips of produce stands and produce racks with signs about the produces growth with a new fertilizing product near the end of the credits you see a person watering a plant standing next to a bucket with the fertilizers name on it. You see the water draining off the plant and onto the ground and into a sewer drain, which is zoomed into till it’s black

Zoom out of black out on another pipe draining into a lake

The water is scanned till you see a small boat with two boys in it fishing

Zoom to close to the boys but close to the water [the view changes multiple times from different sides of the boat] they are talking but it is inaudible and garbled.

From the boat you see a large amount of bubbles rise to the surface of the water.

Both boys look.

As the look to see what is in the water three figures emerge from the water behind the canoe and opposite to were the boys are looking. The closest is wearing a suit and is skeletal covered in moss and seaweed. The second closest wearing a jumpsuit and is dark around the eyes. The third is wearing a bloody t-shirt and has a large gash across the eye.

The zombie wearing the suit gets close to the edge of the boat

[The camera changes sides as the boy turns to see his attacker the switches back to see the zombie pull him under]

There is a struggle in the water till the jumpsuit wearing zombie approaches and helps pull him under. After a bit a splashing the water goes calm and a large amount of blood rises to the surface.

During the struggle the other boy jumps and tries to swim to safety toward the shore the t-shirted zombie chases after him

[View from the dock]

The boy climbs up the ladder and runs toward the shed

The t-shirted zombie is climbing onto the dock as the other two zombies, who are now covered in blood] start to approach the dock after their kill.

[From the shed]

The boy runs up and pulls on the door, but it is locked. He searches for the keys in his pocket as the zombies approach. He finds the keys and opens the doors.

[From behind]

You see him look around for a weapon. He picks up a baseball bat and turns to face the camera and moves forward as the first zombie grabs for him.

[Side view]

He swings the bat

[Close up of the ground]

The bang of a metal bat is heard as a zombie's head falls into the frame gushing blood

[View from the ground up at the boy, you can see thee zombies body on the ground]

He looks at the 2 approaching zombies

[Back view]

He runs toward them hitting the closest in the side knocking it down, he thinks it is dead.

He starts toward the 2nd zombie but is pulled back down by the one he just knocked to the ground.

[Overhead view]

The second zombie jumps on top of him and bits a chunk out of his neck while the other bite his arm

[Close up]

The boy is holding his neck and blood is squirting out

[Back to the overhead view]

The zombies continue to rip at him till one start to pull out entrails

[Close up]

The boy is dead and mouth is open with blood coming out of it

[Zoom into black in his mouth]

________________________

This is the first of three scenes.

I was thinking of having the kids on the boat talking about their favorite book, the Zombie Survival Guide, while floating about. That way, the kid that survives longer has a reason to go to the shed and get the bat. What say you?
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Zacatac927
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RE: Help with our zombie flick.

Post by Zacatac927 »

as not to be too cliche... all the zombie bits of ripping out entrails and after the inital attack should be slowmotion... i don't know it has been used... but its always beautiful


(oh yeah, it has been used in 28 days and weeks later)
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kene555
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RE: Help with our zombie flick.

Post by kene555 »

Alright, I'll keep that one in mind. We were thinking of having scenes with no zombies bright and maybe a little oversaturated, but scenes with zombies low saturation with the red sticking out...sort of like Sin City, but not as much black and white and red as less color and bright red.

How can I get that effect? Anyone?...
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RE: Help with our zombie flick.

Post by Raptor »

Just a couple of comments.. no dialog, no character development, so we really don't care what happens to the kids in the boat. I think you have some good ideas in background...
1) We seem to have a slight zombie problem in the neighborhood
2) I like the scenes relating the fertilizer product to the re-animation of the zombies. However, this is about the point that it seems like a good back story becomes nothing more than an excuse for a body count.
Since you are younger, the antagonists are pretty much throw away characters, the same actors could presumably be reused in different makeup.costume to play multiple zombies. The kids in the boat? At least one, and I would think it would allow for better development if both, survive the attack.
3) Questions to answer... you have three seemingly unrelated zombies, based on the varying levels of decomp - how do we end up with three unrecovered bodies in a lake?
4) Now with your 1 or two protagonists surviving, having witnessed the re-anim of the zombies, and being 'young people' it becomes their mission to warn the world of the impending disaster of the zombies of unknown origin.
Wait what is this, the world doesn't want to listen to a couple of teens? No one could find any indication of any zombies near the lake? ( maybe they killed one or two if you can really kill a zombie maybe not, either way there is no indication of any unusual occurence at the lake.
Darn kids anyway, probably out there doing drugs and hallucinating, or made up the lame zombie excuse to cover why they sank the rental boat/ dad's boat whatever.
Now their mission becomes, finding proof - and finding the cause. and of course as mutilated bodies slowly start turning up around the area the teens start to become suspects....
Ending....
They find out the truth, the big bad evil fertilizer corp has also become aware of it before the boys are, and have actually captured several of the zobies for study, to see why and how their fertilizer has this effect and othe potential applications based on this ability. The boys show up to confront the evil corp type suits with their evidence and threaten to go to the media/government and Wal-Mart with their proof.... the evil corp suits tell them we can't allow that to happen... here is your blood bath as the captive zombies now feast on the kids.... the evil corp type burns their proof as he says something about... can we get this place cleaned up a little? fade to black - fade from black....
Tight shot on two maintenance guys talking some thing along the line, that didn't take long get it all done... through the conversation pull out to wide shot... they maint guys are in a cemetary, one holding a jug of the offending fertilizer who says... yeah lets get some water on this and see if it helps this poor dead grass any, second maint man turns on sprinklers, and they walk off through the cemetary with the fertilizer spreader.....
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Post by kene555 »

Defintely good comments, and we will totally take that into consideration for the rest of this movie.

What you are commenting on is simply a scene from a half of the movie - so we are still working on the story and the movie as a whole.

I am going to redo the dialogue, and try to add to the story. The scriptwriter is pretty firm on the two boaters dying, but maybe a we can have kid was watching the whole thing...

I really like what you have written, and I will do what I can to add it to the film. Great paraphrase.

Thanks!

EDIT*

Oh yeah, here on MH, Darzeth was kind enough to write us a dialogue for the boat scene.
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Post by Raptor »

If you do it that way, then you need to bring the kid on the shore into it during the lake scene. You have one shock death of a character we really don't care about that establishes that we have this pesky little zombie issue... more pointless carnage early in the movie, without involving the protagonist(s) will simply have the audiesnce wondering when the story starts. Also, having both survive allows some interaction between those two characters in solving the mystery, no one is listening to them, so they can bounce ideas and issues off each other, rather than having the one character who has to do it all himself. would make it a lot toughter to continue to develop the plot IMHO.
I understand this is one scene, and it may make more sense if presented in context of the entire script, but the first question in my mind was, we've killed off three people so far, haven't met the 'hero' character(s) where is this going to go? You have pretty much established the back story by following the water from the fertilizer, the opening scene on the sidewalk has established that the problem has already surfaced. I guess what I'm trying to say is how do the boys in the boat getting killed up front contribute to the story other than gratuitous gore? It's sort of like the almost plots of a lot of pornos LOL.... does nothing for the movie, but by gawd we got that trapeze shot in......
Like I said, this is one scene and pretty much out of context, but it just seems like when you come to this point, you really need to get the protagonist into the action, whether it is the brothers who survive, or another character... an intersting point, I missed on the read thru of the script that they were brothers, again, we don't care about them, they are a non issue in the audiences psyche if they die at this point. Let's face it, even in Shawn of the dead, it became first a question of who was next, the secondary consideration was how... why was who the first thought? We learned enough about the characters to at least start to identify with them......
OOOps you said boaters not brothers s- sheesh
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Post by kene555 »

Well, I thank you profusely for your help on the script. I personally am a videographer - not a scriptwriter - but I took your basic premise and have worked with it to make it work with our resources.

What I have so far is the opening scene, when one zombie appears out of the bushes, then attacks the kid walking...we now have two zombies, and the audience knows that this is a problem.

The next scene is opening credits, with the camera going around all the produce, with signs about the new fertilizer that makes this food great. The fertilizer is washed off some stuff when the veggies are watered down, and the mix trickles into the drain...which goes through the pipes into the lake, where we of course have the second zombie attack.

Like you said about a scene "well YES we got that one in", is pretty close to home.

The scriptwriter basically is writing a bunch of random violence scenes together. With your help I am attempting to make a plot.

Continuing...

While the second boater is being taken, the camera pans up to the house - 2nd story window. Looking through it is a kid (for our purposes I'll call him K1). He has been watching this for some time (perhaps he could be a bystander when the first attack at night happens). He is startled by the proximity of the attack and lets the window slam down, thus alerting the zombies. He dashes through the house, making the escape to his car whilst the zombies shamble from the back yard after him. He drives to town hall and pleads with the mayor for help. As you said, he is belittled and is sent away in disgrace.

K1 drives home in frustration and parks on the road next to a friend's house. He rests his head on the driving wheel for a second to gather his thoughts, then opens the door - to see a zombie lunging at him from 6 inches away. A struggle ensues, and he manages to get out of the car, but falls to the ground.

As the zombie looms over, a noise is heard. The zombie slumps over, revealing Kid 2 behind with a smoking pistol. K1 and K2 team up after discussing the events. Now a montage takes place, with scenes of the kids researching on the 'net, checking the lake water, taking photos, etc - along with scenes of dead bodies being found, reports coming in to the mayor...with the kids turning into suspects.

Then as you said the kids find the truth of the fertilizer company, confront them, and ultimately are killed off by them.

So with some luck I can finish a basic script, and maybe someone here can tidy it up and work with dialogue.

Thanks for your help on this. :D
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Post by Raptor »

That allows more potential for some decent devlopment, the only thing I might change is the traditional concept of a victim being turned into a zombie... I would probably have the re-animation occur only after exposure to the fertilizer. Zombies kill ya, you're just plain dead LOL....
One thing to keep in mind with any script development, amd from the director's chair as well, is to be able to project our understanding of the characters to the audience. We work with them in our minds for weeks or months, and start to attribute certain personalities to them that endear them or at least give us enough insight to understand them, even tho they really don't exist, and we have to be able to communicate that to the audience, as well as the entire story in which they are involved. In a feature you have 90 to 120 minutes to get that whole personality across, in a short if you are lucky you have 30 minutes to tell the story and make the audience care... a definite challenge! Good luck with the project, looking forward to seeing it progress.
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Post by Darzeth »

kene555 wrote:
Oh yeah, here on MH, Darzeth was kind enough to write us a dialogue for the boat scene.
thanks for the credit im happy to help as much as i can. Even if the stuff i wrote wasnt actually spoken but used as a basis. In the end you ended up just using a few lines near the end of the boat scene. Also i think you used the ending lines after the boat scene. but i can see my dialogue idea vaguely in there. It still makes me happy to know im a help in some way.
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Post by kene555 »

Yeah, I really appreciate all your help on this one. I gave them the script and their general thoughts were "We've gotta memorize lines?!?" So I had them go off the basic premise of 1 kid making the other go out. However, they were not so great at ad libbing, so when we reshoot the dialogue, I will have them memorize, word for word, so they don't stumble along making stuff up.
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