New Behind the Scenes Video

This is the behind the scenes video for The Book of Zombie that I made for the Red, White and Dead Zombie walk in Seattle.  It premiered after the world record setting zombie walk to thousands of zombie fans.  Watch the whole video below and see lead actor, Brian Ibsen along with Scott Kragelund, Marcel Banks and Erik Van Sant talk about making the movie.  Of course I’ve also added some scenes from the film along with plenty of exclusive behind the scenes footage.



4,920 Zombies came out with 4,233 verified which makes Seattle once again the world record holder for largest zombie walk.  Stop by my photoblog in the coming days to see my pictures of the event.

Week 16 - Zombies Invade Puyallup

Saturday
The weather reports were dire. A monsoon was predicted to hit Puyallup the exact moment we were to begin shooting and then last all night. We went ahead with the shoot anyway and defied all odds to a glorious success. Only mild sprinkles fell, the zombies were happy (as happy as zombies can be) , only one car was seriously damaged.


The scene that we were working on was David and Jenny's exit from their backyard and stumble upon a literal horde of zombies. There were zombies in the driveway and lining the streets. Scott staged his car to look like it had plowed into a tree in the yard. There was even a dead body hanging out the passenger window. Most of our lights were hidden behind the car to light the zombies in the road. A smoke machine was hidden under the hood of the car and billowed smoke for every take.


We finally did an epic jib shot as our heroes run down the street, dodging the zombies. Adam built the jib early in production and we finally had the chance to put it to good use. The shot is amazing. We also shot David and Jenny running, using Scott's van as a dolly. I shot steady-cam out the side door, while Paul held a light out the front window. How they managed to out run us once is still unknown.

The monsoon didn't hit until the drive home.

Week 12 - The End is Nigh

Friday
Action all took place at The Drunken Dragon on Friday. We're at the end of shooting at the bars in Auburn, so we concentrated on pick-ups that we still needed. Everything we shot takes place near the end of the "montage of death". We needed shots of David and Jenny exchanging glances down the length of the bar while killing zombies. Jenny also needed to be seen taking one more machete swing. Erik sits just out of frame spitting blood at her. The battle-axe has seen better days. It appears to be held together almost exclusively by duct tape.


The biggest shot of the night was David running past the bar to lend Jenny a hand. This short action was shot to death... We managed to pull off three different high-speed dolly shots. Paul pushed me on the wheelchair over and over again without one sign of slowing down.


Saturday
Again, the theme of the weekend seems to be pick-ups. Somehow we managed to shoot until about 9am on Sunday. The end of the Linderman's scene still needed to be shot tonight.


Here's some guerrilla filmmaking in action. We needed a shot of David and Jenny entering Linderman's while "braining" Bob Zombie in the process. We managed to get the whole company moved outside, set up the shot and get in a few good takes in about twenty minutes.


We're done at our bars in Auburn... almost. Erik, Marcel and I will be back to shoot one more effects shot on Wednesday. Set deconstruction happens on Thursday. We get locked out on Friday.
To be continued...

9th Weekend

We started shooting at Linderman's today! The first shot was the low angle shot of David and Jenny walking into the store looking for Harry. I had to get low to the floor to avoid seeing my reflection in the door.


The most fun shot of the night was a dolly shot of the couple walking down the aisle. The wheelchair was totally worth it! The third shot is a view from behind the monitor during one of the dolly takes.



Paul stands in front of our custom-built walk-in cooler while directing David and Jenny's entrance into Linderman's. To prepare for tonight he created some killer storyboards.

Third Weekend on The Book of Zombie

Welcome to week three! We started Friday putting our break-away doors to good use. We're going to have some zombies punch their hands through and attack one of our lead characters. This was one of the coolest things I've seen yet. We ran two cameras on the whole scene. "A" camera was the 100A locked down and "B" camera was the XL2 on steadicam for close-ups. Very fun to see someone ripped through a door. Great shots of zombies Alex, Gered and Elissa.


Took some time off after the door shot to set up the blood effects.
While Marcel and Jenn were building the effect, Paul and I started shooting wild shots of the bar in disarray. We got blood dripping from the sword in the wall, the destroyed pay-phone, blood filled shot glasses and the beer taps.

...Getting close to shooting the blood squirting neck appliance. Can't wait to see it... We did three takes with both cameras. First take did not go well. Reset the effect. The next takes looked much better.

Another long break to reset for the next scene. Paul says we're only 2 and a half hours behind schedule. We only have one version of Piper's shirt, so we have to wait a while for it to be cleaned and dried.

The next scene was a continuation of something we'd shot last week. Piper at the bar taking the bucket back to Linderman. We did a cool wide shot where we put the camera on the beer taps and shot down the length of the bar.

Next we did some shots of the characters "arming themselves" at the pool table. Good follow-focus shot of Jenny and her machete.

Saturday - Crew call, 5pm

We're preparing to shoot the gang looking out the windows at Darwin. It's great to finally have Bob and Paul as grips. They take a huge amount of work off of my shoulders. They blacked out the windows (it's still day and we're shooting a night scene), ran cables and hung lights for me. We did some side shots first where the camera couldn't see the glass... We took a break to scrape all of the green paint off the windows so we could shoot through them. Child labor at it's best... We did a dolly shot from behind.

Scott was dolly grip and Bob pulling focus. We moved outside and shot everyone looking out the windows. Good looking shots. Finished the night earlier than expected. I feel much better not having consumed any rockstar today...

Production Photos - First Weedend - "The Book of Zombie"

Cortesi made us CDs of our first TBOZ weekend yesterday. I was looking forward to seeing these all week. You can click on the photos to get larger sizes on Flickr.

I love this one of Marcel, Jenn and Andy as Darwin. They're working on a blood spurt effect.


Here we are working on our romantic "Sixteen Candles" scene with David and Jenny on the pool table. That's Larissa as Jenny and Brian as David. That's Paul, the director, looking at the monitor on the floor. I'm in red shirt setting up the shot. Chris is getting sound with the boom mic.


Here's our "dolly" shot of the handle of the Drunken Dragon cooler. By dolly, I mean Mike pushing me on a wheelchair while I shoot with the steadicam.


This is us setting up a shot at the door of the Drunken Dragon. Our heroes are preparing to barricade the door to keep the zombies out.


Mr. Linderman - Steve Cortesi - exiting the cooler in the back of the Drunken Dragon.


I'm setting up a shot of Linderman coming out of the cooler.


Marcel and Jenn
Our amazing make-up and special effects team.