The Opening Credits Are Complete

The opening credits sequence for The Book of Zombie is complete. I finished rendering the last shots late last week and sent it on to the rest of the zombie team for viewing. I'm hearing that everyone loved it. Just this morning I passed it along to our sound team to begin the sound design and scoring process. I'm hoping to be able to post the whole open soon. In the meantime, enjoy some stills that I've pulled from it.












Click on that last one to see a cool work in progress comparison with the final product. It came a long way. The whole process took a little over three months and clocks in at four minutes. I know that I promised a making-of post a while back, but that's going to wait until I post the finished product.

Opening Credits Still

I've been spending most of my waking hours working on the opening credits sequence for The Book of Zombie. It's been such a huge project that I've recruited many volunteers to do the actor rotoscoping for me. The actors were shot walking on treadmills in a makeshift studio in a friend's carport. Thanks Brian! The smoke is dry ice shot over black in my basement. The background art is by my wife, Leah, then colored in photoshop by myself. Look closely and you'll notice the business in the background. Squawking Vultures Records is named after the studio where the film is being scored, Squawking Vultures Studio. When this is finished I'll be sure to write a lengthy post describing the process for those of you that are interested . As of this writing the sequence consists of 30 shots. I still have quite a bit of work left, but I wanted to share the first fully lit and rendered shot.

Fire Part II

Here's the behind the scenes video of the explosion shoot that I promised!

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...

Behind the Scenes Video #1 - Shaky-Cam

We just finished our second weekend of shooting "The Book of Zombie". I'll write about that tomorrow.
I just bought a new hard drive to edit the movie on today and wanted to make a quick production video. My favorite shot that we did on Friday was the "shaky-cam". It's basically just a camera bolted to a piece of wood. I'll tell you more about that later. For now, here's the video:

Don't forget to click on the ad at the end of the video. Your clicks help us pay for this monstrosity...

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.

Grand Central Station

Grand Central Station
Originally uploaded by PrestonDave

Leah, Steve and I had to stand still for about 4 seconds to get this shot. We're at Grand Central Station in New York. I wanted to get as much blurriness with people walking around in the background as possible. It turned out a little dark, but I still like it.
Check out the rest of the set here.
We were in New York to visit Dan and Corinne for Christmas.