So, let’s just take a moment to consider where we currently are
with Zombie Resurrection. The first
pass of the music is written, the sound is tidy, and everything has been
coloured in. The current best copy of the film still has a long way to go
before it’s finished, but it does finally look and behave like a film should.
Prospective horror festivals will accept nothing less.
Zombie Resurrection
is open for judgement.
With our eyes on an early September finishing line (to hit
the first of the possible festival screenings), this is now the last moment we
have to make it better. Over the 150 times that Jake and I have watched the
latest cut over the past few weeks, a couple of moments have jumped out at us
that need work. Tweaks. Nothing drastic. A finessed edit here and an extended
beat there.
But, really, what do we know? 150 viewings later
and the jokes aren’t funny anymore. The jumps don’t shock, the gore doesn’t
offend, and the emotional moments don’t move. For us the film exists as a
series of moments: shots needing light balancing, dialogue needing replacement, bludgeonings needing a coating with digital gore.
Gone is the big picture. Gone is any concept of whether the
film actually hangs together as an entity.
And now is the last moment that we have to sort that out.
So, now is also the perfect moment to get a bunch of people
together who have no previous attachment to the film, and ask them. The great
British zombie-loving public. These are the only people we can trust to let us
know where the problems are.
Time to organise a couple of screenings. Get in a load of
beer and pizza, sit a panel of people that we’ve never met before down in front
of the largest telly we can find, and watch them watching it. Our first
completely dispassionate audiences.
And it’s as daunting a prospect as we’ve had to face since
the shoot wrapped. Well, more specifically, since I had to deal with the unwelcome
stains on my girlfriend’s floor after the wrap party.
The first session was last night, hosted by hero-zombie-Ross
in his Winchester cathedral of technology. Having taken a slug to the head over
the course of the shoot, he isn’t allowed to have an opinion, but his pals are.
Grab a beer, sit down, and get comfortable, Simon, Louise, Row, Daren and Ormy.
Please don’t underestimate what a painful evening this was
for Jake and me. Sat to one side, the film suddenly seemed to race by without
ever catching its breath. Wasn’t that last moment meant to be funnier? Did
anybody actually find that last jump scary? Can anybody understand Mac’s Glaswegian accent?
And the biggest laugh of the night? An overly-graphic sound
effect that Tom had added to his foley reel to accompany the premature ending
of some woodland coitus. It’s an immediate answer to the question that Jake and
I had been wrestling with beforehand – is that squelch just a little bit too
much? No, it turns out.
A braver man than me would have looked at the completed
questionnaires by now, but I may save that moment for a stiff scotch later in
the week. We have another screening in Winchester University on Tuesday,
bizarrely back in the same room within which we shot all our Chapel footage
last year. It’ll be interesting to see whether they’ve managed to get all the
blood out of the floor tiles.
So, until then, I’ll content myself with the nagging
butterflies, and save the analysis until all the votes are in. But in any case
it’s a big Charmed thank you to Ross, Simon, Louise, Row, Daren and Ormy for
giving over their Friday night to make two grown men nervous. Suddenly I
understand where all the worry-lines on Andy Murray’s mum’s face have come
from. Tweaking.
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