The day formerly known as Monday

Today Jake and Andy have been mostly grumpy.

Don’t get me wrong, we are so very over St. Joseph’s College by now. But it has cast us back into location limbo.

I have already mentioned that I suffer from location angst, haven’t I?

So, on the one hand Jake is pretty relaxed about moving directly back to the haunted RAF base, zombie bar and all. But Andy-the-brat has been spoiled by other venues. I just can’t quite believe that it’s a psychiatric hospital anymore. And where else would you find the risen-Christ-turned-zombie other than in a psychiatric hospital?

So, we have spent the majority of the day scouring the inter-web for anything else vaguely appropriate. There aren’t too many options out there. And that has made us grumpy.

While Jake and I see mostly the same movie in our respective minds’-eyes, there are inevitable moments when our opinions diverge. This used to happen every once in a while when we were writing and re-writing the screenplay, and it turned out that once we’d found a mutually agreeable third solution it was invariably better than both of our earlier options. But it's still a painful process, as we bang our heads together until we both see the light. And that has made us grumpy.

Sure enough, another possible location did emerge through the gloom. Early indications weren’t great for boosting the office mood: 'the site manager cannot guarantee that this location will still be available for filming in September as it is going to be developed at some point', but a little additional prodding has alleviated those concerns a bit. We’re off for a gander tomorrow. Expect late photos and a solid plan of action borne out of six hours sat in the same car together.

Six bloody hours. Yeah. If we like it, we’re going to need to spend a whole month in Essex.

And that has made us grumpy.

So, all in all it’s been one of those days. It’s what used to be called Monday back in the working world, but it needs a better name now that we’re doing something we actually want to do. Suggestions on a pay-slip to the usual address. Truculent.

Just Another Day of the Dead

And as a way of getting past the heartache and breaking you in gently for another week at Charmed Central, a 1:44 slice of zombie life from 2007.

 

The day wound up with one of the more colourful post-filming pints that I can remember, and we allegedly made Mark Kermode laugh.

I’m tempted to drag ole’ Green and Blue into Resurrection somewhere, regardless of our eventual choice of zombie design. That said, I’m aware that it could be a very niche gag. Whatever we go for, it might still be possible to explain them away as a couple of post-infection Na'vi in differing stages of decay.

Oh, and you could do plenty sillier things than go check out Blue’s blog. He gives good read. Punchy.

Meeting the immovable object

So this is what it feels like to be a Spurs supporter. Today we found out that we won’t be going to Wembley after all.

Nope – somehow Resurrection is going to have to happen without St. Joseph’s College being part of it. Computer says no. Well, not so much no, more that they’re not going to accept anything less than my first born child and a testicle each to hire the place out.

The maths of it are thus: we were given St. Joseph’s day rate way before we even saw the place, a fairly robust £1250 per day, plus VAT, plus their security costs. OK. If we were doing a 1-day photo shoot, or if we were the BBC, then this would be the figure. But we’re not. It’s not unreasonable to expect a huge discount if we hire out the place for 3 weeks solid. And if we’re not the BBC.

So, we did easy Jake and Andy maths. We’re shooting for 18 days (in 6-day weeks) – let’s offer them £18,000, and they have to let us in a day early to prep the place, and they can take care of the VAT and the security guards (they have to pay for them to be on site whether we’re there or not). An eminently reasonable offer, we thought.

And then the reply. St. Joseph’s will accept £27,500 plus VAT. And we will need to pay for their security costs.

To save you grabbing for the calculator, I’ll break it down. They want £1250 a day, for seven days a week (i.e. even on our day off), and another £1250 for the preparation day. And we are still responsible for the VAT and the security.

I’m certainly not having a crack at the Location Agency. I mean, all they can do is pass on our proposal to the owners. But, come on, St. Joseph’s – how is this a sensible riposte in the negotiation process? I mean, the cost has actually technically gone up from their initial quote.

We got in touch. We outlined all the factors. And the word came back that there is no scope for budge. How about we defer the excess costs until after the film is sold? No. How about we just give them Jake’s testicle and my girlfriend’s cat? Again, no.

So that’s that. A bye to Brent, and a serious re-think about the RAF base. Heartbroken.

Talking out of my art’s hole

That sweet Mr. GhoulFool. He’s done it again.

Not his real name, thankfully – think more the Milk Tray man, but circa 1750.

So today while Jake and I fought through funding strategies and risk management proposals, little nuggets of GhoulFool goodness starting popping into our FTP account. And thank God they did, because now we’ve actually got something interesting to blog about – I was winding up to a detailed statistical analysis of the expected returns on DVD sales vs. Video On Demand. And I know you’re all going to torrent it anyway.

A few weeks back we sat down with the GhoulFool and chewed over our immediate artwork needs. Some new zombie designs, or some classy Resurrection font, or poster art. All very helpful.

And then the discussion moved on to drawing the screenplay as comic art.

Not the whole script, of course. And certainly not a story-board. Just a couple of key action sequences, which we can show to potential investors to give them an idea of how the movie is going to play out. Everybody understands comics.

We go home into the period of radio silence – the sound of a creative mind at play. Jake and I forget all about it, and get on with the important business of walking around broken buildings and looking at Excel.

And then pages one and two came. And then I did too.

To set the scene, what you’re seeing is what happens immediately before the party meet their first 'ripe' zombie – fast, strong and utterly terrifying. It’s what m’pal Dave calls the 'Crass Blow-job Scene'.

 

I was expecting Viz, and he brought me Neil Gaiman.

Tomorrow we all celebrate the start of the weekend by taking The GhoulFool out and buying him beer till he is so sated that he forgets how to say no. We plan on taking advantage of this impressionable state by asking him to just keep drawing until he arrives at the end of the screenplay, and then Jake and I won’t even need to film it.

Oh, and he brought us new zombie designs, and some classy Resurrection fonts, and some poster art as well. But that’s for another time. Sullied.

Echo Tango. Bravo!

You can drag the boy away from a life of shameless tarting, but you just can’t take the shameless tarting out of the boy.

As a bit of Charmed Apocalypse back-story, m’colleague Jake’s former life was spent in Search Engine Optimisation, providing expensive tricks and techniques to help companies to float up through the Google rankings. Type 'Shooting the Dead' into Google and see how high up this blog appears. That’s not by accident. It’s an unsavoury world of anchor texts, targeted links, referred traffic, tweeting and re-tweeting. Shameless tarting.

So of course I left him in charge of managing our profile.

Today, an otherwise un-bloggable day spent digging out budgetary information and writing copy for the investor package was cut short by a trip to meet Xan from the Southampton Daily Echo. And I think we can guess who set that one up.

Yup – sometime over the next few days the paper is going to publish a short piece on two local boys that packed in their day-jobs to bring #zombies to the region. Xan is also a reader of the blog, and it’s quite strange talking to someone you’ve never met before that already knows all your dirty secrets. Hello sir, if we haven’t put you off tuning in.

Brilliantly we ended up meeting in the ArtHouse, Southampton’s premiere vegetarian café. It’s difficult to imagine a less appropriate venue to wax lyrical on brain consumption and the recipe for fake blood. We may have also interrupted the placid vibe by bringing in a couple of axes as props for the photos. I feel an obligation to apologise to everyone that was put off their vegan snacks, and to warn them away from the finished movie.

I also feel an obligation to let you know that Jake is currently available for small SEO commissions (evenings only). Check out Cake-SEO, for all your Hampshire SEO needs. Whoring.

The numbers racket

Today Jake’s nervousness finally lifted.

Regular readers will know by now that while I get all unnecessary with location anxiety, Jake’s darkest fears are all about the money. So, today we worked the numbers through.

Ah, sweet Excel. Where have you been all week?

Right – who are the essential crew? Add in the cast members, location costs, on-site bogs, security, catering, hotels, equipment, etc., and a bloody big van to drive everything around in. Then all we need to do is figure out how many pages we can shoot each day.

And after much Googling, mild butchery of Bruce’s 12 in a Box constituents, and just a little bit of old-fashioned educated guess-work, we came out with a number.

Not the final number, certainly, but a pretty good first estimate. Good enough to take out to investors and stand behind.

£158,000.

Oh – wow.

Yeah, it’s a lot of money. More than the wholly un-justified £100k estimate that we had up to now been loosely banding about to each other. And Jake and I are getting paid absolutely nothing from this sum.

But here’s where the choice of genre is going to pay off. Zombies sell. Everywhere. Even the home-page of the low-budget UK undead splatter-fest The Zombie Diaries proudly crows that it has been successfully sold in 'every major territory'. More Excel magic, and bang! A hefty 23% return on investment, and that’s before any piecewise DVD / Video on Demand / etc. cash is included.

Now that’s decidedly more handsome. I checked the adding-up twice.

Inspired as we were then by the power of maths to make us happy, we decided to pick a start date. Ladies and gentlemen, principal photography on Resurrection will kick off on September 24^th. Don’t worry about not remembering this, as we have spared no expense to provide you with an aide mémoire to print out and stick to the fridge.

 

Now we’re just left with the simple task of figuring out how to get the money. Potential investors, friends of potential investors and people with upcoming trips to the dentists should make themselves known now. Has anyone got a tie that I can borrow? Shaven.

Getting Lost

Bloody YouTube.

So, a little later than planned, here’s the video of the third recce. I had hoped to send it out this morning, but YouTube saw fit to disable the Misfits backing track on Jake’s first upload for the rather petty reason that we had neither the rights nor permissions to use that tune.

Pedants. Johnny Cash is fine with it, it seems.

Rather than post it up naked, we have been forced to re-cut the video to a song that we do own the rights to. Your virtual tour will now be conducted to the accompaniment of a band that I was in with my brother when I was 14.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to introduce you to St. Joseph’s College in Brent, and to Lost Jonny playing Mosh Machine.

Please understand that we did everything we could to spare you from this – best you take it up with YouTube directly. Sorry.