First off please take 2 seconds out of your day and go “LIKE” my above film here: http://26th.abcsofdeathpart2.com/entry/m-is-for-madness/ – It’ll go a long way towards helping me get where I’d like to be. Thanks!!! Now on to the behind the scenes story….
You probably can’t tell, but the above film was highly influenced by Stanley Kubrick. That’s where the seed of the idea began. A few months back I re-watched 2001. It’s a film I have a difficult relationship with. I find it extremely well made, highly thought provoking, but also deadly boring. I always say that I love the short highlight version that plays in my head, but actually sitting through it is close to cinematic torture. I was watching it with a few movie geek friends and I was seeing it with fresh eyes. The very end of the film where Dave has been taken in by the Monolith, he sees the rest of his life play out before him, through a sequence of ingenious shots where he looks upon himself and sees into his own future. Afterwards, I realized that I hadn’t seen this technique used in any other film. (Not saying it hasn’t been done, just that I can’t remember seeing it.)
I believe in the saying “Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal” and I wanted to figure out a way to use this technique in one of my future films. The first thought I had was that it would lend itself really well to horror. The scene in 2001 is creepy. So I thought, what would lead a character to trip out like that, why would they see themselves in the future that way? It took a little while for me to connect it to the changing into the zombie idea… but once it did, the film jumped almost fully formed into my head. I wrote a quick outline and filed it away with all my other brewing ideas. There it sat for a few months.
It’s always tough for me to push something into production. Once I commit to a project, I’m in 100% and it tends to dominate my life and thoughts until I’m done with it. With two kids and a busy life, these things only add to the chaos, so I never tread into them lightly. I’ve spent the last few years chasing filmmaking contests, it gives me purpose; there’s a goal, usually a cash prize, guidelines that help my aim and often most importantly a deadline. Without a deadline, I can tinker with something forever. So when I read about the ABCs of Death sequel looking for 3 minute horror films, this idea jumped to the top of my list and I quickly moved into pre-production. I dug up my outline and scripted it out, it was only 2.5 pages long, so it didn’t take long. I struggled a bit with the ending, I had a couple of other ideas of her coming across a loved one after her change, but ultimately stuck with it being something that all played out in her own head. I struggled with what M word to use as well, but once my friend and cinematographer Levi Anderson suggested Madness, that helped nail down the script’s ending as well.
Then I started contacting my usual filmmaking friends, seeing who was down to help. I’m not sure if this is happening everywhere, but here in Southern Oregon there is a ton of filmmaking happening, so it’s fairly easy to find semi-experienced crew, the hard part is getting people to commit to specific dates and times without any promise of payment. As my productions have gotten more ambitious, needing more cast and crew, scheduling has become my biggest nightmare. It’s come down to which of the key cast and crew can I get together for the most concentrated amount of time, and I’ll figure out the peripherals on the fly… it’s just impossible to get 10 or so people to show up at the same time.
I focused on makeup and my lead actress, I’ve never done a film with makeup this ambitious, so that was my biggest concern. Mez Roberts was my first call, she did the makeup on my last short Self Inflicted. She been studying and working on more horror related stuff, so she was excited to try something in this vein. She was key in helping me figure out how we were going to pull off a lot of these shots. But she’s not big into gore, so I wanted somebody else who had done that stuff. I talked a lot about this stuff with Randy Granstrom a local director and makeup artist (I’m Not Jessica), he had some great ideas on how to make it happen, but the faceless scene and her cutting off her own arm, still seemed out of reach. A call out to my local filmmaking friends helped me dig up Matt Hendrix, he worked at a local special effects makeup store for years and had done some gruesome makeup on on a couple of local shorts… the kind of stuff that I was looking for. With 3 makeup artists now at my disposal I felt like we could pull it off.
Director pretending to think during a makeup break
Meanwhile I was also searching for a lead actress. My first thought was Danielle Kelly who starred in my short films Self Inflicted and Robot Love, however I wanted a new face so decided against it. I talked to a couple local actresses, but landed on Mig Windows, who I had worked before with on Self Inflicted in a bit role. She was excited about it, and fully committed… I knew it wouldn’t be an easy role, not a lot of glamor, no dialog, just a lot of screaming and enduring the makeup process. She probably didn’t know what she was in for, but she was a trooper.
I’ve got more pre-production troubles to tell, but this is already getting long winded, so I’ll move into shooting. Saturday morning was the biggest production. We had two local filmmaker friends on set to play zombies. Matt and Randy started making them up, while Mez concentrated on making Mig look beautiful. We also had a double for Mig to show up in a couple scenes to make her seeing herself more convincing. I had a really tough time organizing the shooting schedule, trying to figure out the best way to get the most out of the double. I only had her for one day, when I really needed her for two. There were moments when I needed Mig fresh and clean with the double faceless and visa versa, also some shots with them both clean, plus I only had two outfits. I was trying to figure out the timing of the makeup, the timing of the double leaving, the timing of how to get the most needed shots done. Usually I can edit a film in my head while we’re on set, but I had trouble figuring out the logistics of it all, and ended up screwing it up a bit… more on that later.
Back to the two zombies, they’re made up and waiting around while the girls get their opposing looks. It’s a hot day and the zombie makeup starts to melt off their faces and we’re still more than an hour from getting our first shot off. The next couple hours was a juggling act of whose face was going to melt off and can we get a shot off before it does. We shoot about 10 takes of the girl running away from her double and the two zombies… at the time it was an extremely important shot, it had a lot of moving parts, and I wanted to make sure we got it right. Which ultimately I didn’t… at least for my first intended cut of the film.
After that we moved into the house, lost the zombies and it started to get a little easier. We mostly worked in sequential order because we needed the lead actresses make-up to get increasingly more zombie like. From the start I had a specific cut off point that I wanted to reach before we called it a day. Which was right before the scene where she cuts off her own face. I knew that would be a major makeup job, and we should probably make that its own day. We got through most of the 1st day pretty smoothly, but it took many more hours than I’d hoped for. I thought I might be able to send folks home before dinner, but we shot until 11pm. We slowly lost most of the crew along the way, until it was just Mig, Mez, Levi and I left.
Figuring out how to cut off her arm
The garage scene was draining. It was late and over 12 hours into out shoot. Poor Mig had to pretend to cut off her arm many times, screaming over and over. I felt bad, but hoped that her real pain would play into the scene, I think it did as her screaming in that scene is very convincing. We were two shots from being done with the day, but we still had the final make-up to do and Mig had to get her zombie contacts in, which turned out to be a real pain, it took her almost an hour to do so. But once Mez had finished her zombie makeup and the contacts were in, I wished I had more time to figure out how to get a few more shots of her in this stage into the film, it ended up being my favorite look. But we were all pretty exhausted and had another hard day of shooting a night’s sleep away, so we got the two planned shots and called it a day. I also wish I had the foresight to take some more photos of her, this probably would have been the poster… if I decide to make one. We got some iPhone shots, which I’ll leave the best of with you now.
I’m breaking this into a part 2, I’ve got a lot left to say, especially about the editing process.
Zombie Mig
XRATS Productions 