SHORT: Bay of the Dead

The very high levels of pollutions from the Chesapeake Bay cause a zombie outbreak.


The plan was to shoot for longer with more actors and locations but it didn't quite work out that way. The FX and zombies were booked. I was not about to cancel the shoot. The house prep / pre-production as a day and the production lasted about 4 hours and I used almost 2 gallons of blood. I was still finding blood a week after the shoot. Originally there was location sound but during post I decided to go in a different direction.

I was not able to shoot the entire film as intended so I chose the small pieces that I could pull off. I hope this boost local support to more productions like this.


Among many things, here are a few that I experienced during the process.


1) I am not an island. Film is a lot more fun as a community event.


2) Get more technical help. I really wish I had another technical guy or two on set. I had a ton of volunteers but by the time I explained what I needed I could have had it done already. This was not their fault. Granted I had many helpful hands move things around for me by it was just not the same.


3) People really love zombie. I had a lot of people ask me to be killed off or covered in blood. You don't get asked that every day. I had several passersby ask to be in the film. Okay the group of nuns that walked did not seem thrilled to see a yard full of zombies on their daily stroll.


4) Get someone else to handle F/X. I could not slow down to wash my hands every 20 minutes. Let it go and hand it over to someone with more skill.


5) I had so much fun. I am talking "a kid chasing down the ice cream man" fun. You may not be a zombie fan or just be sick of the genre. That's okay. For me, I am like a heavy metal fan when it comes to zombies. I was a fan before it hit mainstream and will be a fan afterwards. I got to do exactly what I wanted to do for the day with an entire house of awesome people. Some I just met that day.


I hope you enjoy.
 
if you do a pan without a stand, do it mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooore slowly... And yes that will seem like it's to slowly and not good for the story... But it will be better

There are some "newbee" kinda "mistakes" like:

-we see a beach, so what ??? I don't care there's a beach for now... next shot is at a house somewhere... so for now if that's at the beach or not....not important
- it seems the girl slept in the car, so what ???
- nothing is happening the first minute... not interesting, boring...
- check focus
- the music is annoying.... not fitting at all...boring
- suddenly there are zombies
- I miss sounds.... not music but sound... the sounds that you don't notice when you watch a movie because the sound is unnoticible but still it's there...and if it's not there....there's something missing
but you don't know what it is...
- 2:30, the person being bitten in the arm is not struggling...that's weird...strange..
- You had a "soundguy", but ok..as you said...friend...not knowing how to do...probebly distorted, not usable sound...etc...
- when I see a zombie I would just run and not wait for it to come closer...

But ok, there are some good things to. Like the blood is nice. The creative idea when they eat intestines
The framing is ok also... not the best but not to bad.
 
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