The cinema is booked, the guests invited, and the fat-lady gargling
in anticipation.
Despite my natural pessimism, it turns out that
the 17th November is very much on for Zombie Resurrection’s debutante ball. Three hundred people from the
cast, crew, hordes and their significant others, gathered back in Winchester to
reacquaint themselves with the zombie apocalypse. It’s going to be an
inordinately silly evening, and I can’t wait.
Just under three weeks away. Tick tick tick.
There are still the last few bits and pieces to nail down, but
in a break from tradition I am actually allowing myself relax a smidgeon. The tricky stuff is now done, and the potential to be unpleasantly surprised by
what we have yet to receive is greatly reduced. At the moment that we signed
off the last of the CGI shots we allowed ourselves to believe that home and dry
was a formality.
Such hubris, Phelps. Surely there must still be plenty of
opportunities for it all to go catastrophically wrong?
Ah – the unknown unknowns. The only constant in the life of
a filmmaker. Those arse-biting moments that come out of nowhere to
test the resolve and challenge the best laid plans. All you can do is keep your
eyes peeled, breath bated, and double the amount of time that you expect every
task to take. It’s going to be an interesting three weeks.
But until we get told otherwise, we get to enjoy that rarest
of sensations – quiet confidence.
In fact, the mood in Charmed Central is currently so
unflappable that we’ve turned our attention to that other outstanding body of
work: the making-of documentary for the DVD.
Regular readers may remember the extraordinary
aggravation that we had at the start of the process – digitising 21 hours
of behind-the-scenes footage, and then struggling to find the most sensible way
of getting them so they played OK on a PC. It was an unwelcome distraction from
our efforts to get the movie finished, but one that I’m glad we persisted
through. Because last week the finished cut of the making-of documentary
arrived in our in-boxes from the mighty Chris Marley, complete with intercut
footage from the film, actors giving earnest interviews while caked in
honey-blood, and some wholly awful chat from Jake and me holding the whole
thing together.
And it’s terrific. Terrific in the way that only something
that doesn’t have Jake’s and my fingerprints all over it can be.
All those moments from the shoot that I’d forgotten: Danny
sitting on a balsa chair and instantaneously turning it to kindling. Shaun-the-boom-op
getting wrapped across the back with another stunt chair to celebrate his
birthday. Jade losing it mid-interview when a naked pair of buttocks appeared
at the back of her shot. Our lovely horde getting painted and gored up. And
long sections of various crew members sat around waiting for everybody else to
get on with it. One quick re-working from the ever-dependable Dale-the-tunes to
lay an authentic Zombie Resurrection
musical vibe over the top and we are in business.
And, after watching it back, I genuinely have no idea how we
managed to get a film shot at the same time.
But shoot one we did. Better get those RSVPs in for the 17th
November if you don’t believe me. Unwinding.
No comments:
Post a Comment