MattHawkins Online - Film Making Forum

Ok I had this idea a while ago, about making a zombie flick, and I was trying to come up with somthing diffrent so, I thought well what if, I told a bunch of short storys from a kind of Mass comunication point of view, home video, web cams, news reports, etc. And as a story, I had drawn up that this guy had been in a bunker, and, had for postarty recorded tons of stuff off the TV(with satalite feed) and the internet filling up hard drives, and the like.

Well when I was driving home from work today, I had an idea of how this idea could really work well and be that colabritve movie that people kept talking about making. since he was collecting video and reports of the zombie outbrake from everywhere, we could have each person shot one or two little zombie shorts that would fit into the whole sceame of the flow, and such, and then put them together, with the idea that these commandos are shiffitng through the remanes of all of this old video. And it would be not only cool to see that much work form lots of people but it would give the flick a very multi national feel which many zombie films leave out, forgeting that it would probably effect the entire world.

I don't know if this is a do able idea, but if anybody is interested, we could really come up with some good ideas and strate zombie rules, I mean the shorts would be nothing that couldn't be filmed in a weekend, and I would do the stuff with the commandos and a bunch of news reports etc.

So who ealse thinks this is a cool idea, and would want to join in?

Hmmmm.

This sounds interesting, i'm may be up for it. Sounds good!

cool thats one person.

I'm in! I've got like five friends up here who are super-hardcore zombie movie fans! (Me included)

I am in New York City, Queens. I'd do some stuff but things should be patched up between everyone who gets involved. The continuity of the looks of the zombies should all match. Because then you might give it a campy feel. I really like the idea and Schismatic Films (http://www.geocities.com/schismaticfilms)would like to get involved, I've never made anything pertaining to zombies but I am up for the challenge I know some special effects people who want to give this stuff a try. You write up all the stuff and guidlines should be given out so everyone has an itinerary to follow so the continuity is cool. Keep in touch with everyone who wants to get involved: Meade87@aol.com

we would defenetly, come up with guildlines and everything like that once we get people involved, so that there isn't to much in the way of contunuity errors in the zombies. Any body ealse interested?

a second post just to send this back up to get more reactions.

If you even need fake news reports I can duplicate the screen layout of Fox News Channel exactly w/ combustion and PS. Just a random useless video talent i guess And making up really funny news stories for the ticker at the bottom is the best part, so that would be a reason for me to help in itself. One issue that will arise is how are people going to upload DV footage for editing, even a few min is several hundred MB's, and you need major hosting for that. Also, There would need to be conversion between PAL and NTSC, which can cause imperfections on the image when rendered.

Count the SIP crew in!

Also, I think, we should steere clear of using any copyrighted things in the film. I like U.S. Amateur Filmakers Idea as long as it doesn't actually say FOX lol. And I think, we should all mail our DV tape footage in to Foxwood who seems he would have the job of editing everything together.

cool, more people, what I was thinking to deal with the diffrence in video layouts, was to have people send their part finished on disk, in eather mp2 or avi, (really despending on your disk, or the dv tape if its compatable with my american cam. Also some of them would work better sent compressed, because in the plot that I am drawing up they guy is pulling them off the web, so in therie they would already be .wmv, or .mov or whatever, and diffrent compretion ratios I think would add to the strange charm of the flick.

As for continuty of the zombies, I figure we just upload pictures of test makeup and try to get it to look the same, as for rules, I am a fan of the slow dumb zombie, with maybe one of two runners, but I think it might be interesting to have a segment where they coment that the zombies never look quite the same as you move around, because if people can phyicaly be told apart my nationaly why wouldn't the zombies.

as for the fox news idea, I actualy was going to do this, (of course not call it fox, but have an american news with a very fox twist, then do one with a CNN vide) Also I was hoping for lots of news casts as segments becuase I think lots can be melded and done with that idea.

A few other ideas I had, were a group of red necks go on a zombie hunting party
one of the love stripper web cams is attacked (and actualy shot with a web cam so that even uncompresed it would still look kind of grany).
the two news casts.
maybe a presadential address to the people.
A montoge of reactions form forums, maybe a thred on matt hawkins about how to safly shoot zombies, etc.
Eather doing a video, or audio log of the guy who was collecting the footage, and his death, or have it done as a blog that the commandos are reading until the very end when we eather hear or see his death.
Then of corse the commandos, who are the linking storyline, their finding the guy, and coments, and through them we find out how the world is coping with the zombie infection. (I will most defently be shooting the commando sequences, and the news footage. ) Any other ideas for little parts send them in. I will slowly start working on a script, as I finish editting the film that I was suposed to have finished, and then probably feb start full force on this picture.

Oh yes! The sip crew is involved! This is going to be priceless! Really good idea you have here foxwood. I'd love to help edit if you wouldn't mind, just doing my part if you wanted. I would also like to help out in the discussion of the film, the zombies , ect. We should all go in the chat room at some point. Let me know how I can help.

Should also the individual film makers be allowed to edit their own scenes?
Yes the SIP crew are keen for a bloodfest lol and brain eating of course

That actually gives me an idea. Each group in additon to yes haveing zombies roam freely , have their own uniquieness in each one, for example grants can be zombies sucking brains, while we can have another of zombies getting their assess kicked by a swat team trying to hold a position in a warehouse or something. I think we should all deciede on a location, and make them all different so that we don't see lots of repetivity. Mabye someone can do city/town streets, mabye another can do a forest, mabye another an inside of an office building. This is going to work out great, can't wait to talk about it some more.

Neverdead are in

well my oringal idea was that most it it was going to be stuff that a guy had culled from the internet so that it wouldn't toataly have a "This is a movie" feel but this is real life feel, but much of the stuff would be put into new reports, and the idea can be changed, where he references a story, and we then show it, would also would to have movie like segment. As for people editing their own segments that was always the idea, and then I would string much of it togher since I was going to shoot the story line that binds everything toghter, I hope to have a ruff script at some point, will work on it between editing. As for the zombies, I know a makeup major who is really into this maybe have her come up with a few test corpes and post pictures, but I really like the idea of unique zombies running around the world. Hopefuly I can convince my deadbeat brother to make a quick and durty little forum to dedicate to this project.

Also I was thinking we could use this as a way to not only get ourselves seen but get publisity for this site and all our little sites as well. Well off to finish my other movie so I can work 100% on this.

This sounds like a cool international collaboration film. You can count my lot in.

Yeah, I like the idea of unique zombies as well. Depending on the location, mabye the zombies can be different becuase people are different in different locations? Well, we should first figure out how the hell the zombies got there, EVEN if we arn't going to tell the audiance, becuase it will help us put things together. Do the zombies mutate from a host? Do they just resurect somehow? If we figure that out, we can figure out how to do the diversitiy as well.

I figure that in a few areas the dead started to rise and as they bit people they died fell over got back up and started eatting people.

As you come up with ideas for the vignettes post them up, or even throw down a script, so the ideas start to flow.

Well, for one, some of us are from similar areas. For instance I3lade is from Long Island NY and I am from Queens New York. Pretty close, but still he has the bigger suburban area. I am more city he is more suburban. Therefore, if he and I both work on this then our zombies have to be similar so they can't be too far apart. Also, I had an idea for a clip I could work on. Two brothers are traveling through the New York area in this piece and the footage is from one of their video cameras. One brother grabed the camera and caught all of this on tape. Which can give it the shacky, grainy, crudy feeling.
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Also, have you thought of wether zombies will be true zombies and not biological sideffects. The bilogical sideffect has been done to some extent lately. I.E. 28days later. I think it would be very cool if we went with the somewhat classic view of zombies as slow. However, I think it would be niece if they were very strong, and maybe a spin could be done on how they are killed. Maybe not a trypical shot through the head. Maybe haing to get the directly in the heart would do it. I never thought of zombies as being creatures that needed much mental power to follow out their tasks. Maybe the idea of a shot to the head as not killing them would be a cool twist. Just some stuff for thought.
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Gotta agree with the post above. I like all your ideas a lot, as well as the fact that the zombies should be tradtional style, not resident evil style ( Which is being done way to much latley - where theres a viruis cuasing it. Lets do something else! , Something more supernatural! ) And prehaps we can have the zombies get shot in the head, and absoultly nothing happens, they stagger and keep moving.

This remeinds me of UDDS , where there were all the countrys and groups fighting UDDS lol.

Lets go with old school zombies, don't tell where they came from just exsept that they are there. keep them good and slow, but a runner here or there might just throw the audeance off balance for fun, and I am in favor of keeping headshots as the kill methoud.

These vids wouldn't necessarily be "edited". Being a distaster, chances are it would be all one continuous take, panic and confusion, people running and stuff. Have a look at some of the tsunami videos on the web to get an idea for what I'm talking about.

Ya most of them wouldn't be editted in any way, shape or form the most editting that you would get would be turning the cam off and back on, stuff, like that, but some of the storys can be done in the way that, the commandos come across writen documentation of the even and through the power of film we see it done up in cool movie style.

Yeah UF, but to make it look like that requires editing. Since this is a zombie flick, and not reality, it's going to require some editing for say head exploding or something. You can edit the raw footage to cut out the bad takes and put stuff together.