Surviving trial by zombie film
Dunedin writerdirector Guy Pigden’s debut feature is finally ready. He gives James Croot the lowdown on his love letter to the undead:
WHEN GUY Pigden first got funding for his debut feature, Katy Perry was still a Teenage Dream, the Highlanders still played their home games in South Dunedin and the All Blacks hadn’t won a World Cup in 23 years.
Now, almost five years later, I Survived a Zombie Holocaust will finally make its debut on screens large and small this Friday.
‘‘Certainly at times,’’ Pigden says, ‘‘it seemed like it wouldn’t be able to be completed at all.’’
Apart from a desire to make the best film possible, he cites attempting to create an incredibly ambitious film for the small budget he had as one of the reasons for the delay. ‘‘We just ran into the problems that you do when making an epic zombie film without money behind it to support the weight of the idea.
‘‘With only $250,000 to put the project together, it was only the support of really talented artists donating their free time and giving up a lot that saw the film through.’’
Starring the likes of former Shortland Streeter Andrew Laing and Sione’s Wedding’s Ben Baker, I Survived a Zombie Holocaust is the tale of a young film school graduate (Pigden’s long-time collaborator and old Logan Park High schoolmate Harley Neville) whose first day on the set of a zombie film is marred by an invasion of real brain-munchers.
Filled with over-the-top gore and humour, it’s a love letter to a sub-genre from a massive fan.
‘‘It’s obviously inspired by Peter Jackson’s early stuff [ Brain Dead, Bad Taste], but also the zombie films of the 1980s I grew up watching. I’ve always wanted to make a zombie film, but I waited until I felt like I had an idea that would be original or a valid contribution to the genre. That’s
left, where this idea of zombies attacking a zombie film set came in. To me, it created a lot of room for comedy and original stuff.’’
So he hasn’t been worried about the wave of zombie pop culture stories that have arrived since the film was shot in early 2011?
‘‘Not really. Funnily enough I cited the original comic book of The Walking Dead as inspiration and started working on my script before the [television] series even existed.’’
With Dunedin always in his mind for the film’s shoot, Pigden says he was delighted with the support he got from locals.
‘‘The Dunedin City Council really stepped up. They let us shut down South Dunedin for half a day and provided all the locations and support. We also had the Leviathan Hotel provide us with accommodation for all our Auckland-based actors and let us shoot in their grand, old hallways.
‘‘Everywhere we went, there was a real spirit of community and everyone coming together to help us make our project.’’
Pigden pays special tribute to his zombie extras ‘‘who had to brave the cold and had syrup dumped on them take after take’’.
That leads to the obvious question of what makes a good zombie extra?
‘‘First and foremost, they’ve got to have the appropriate walk,’’ he reckons. ‘‘Then, one of the key things I don’t think people think about is they don’t blink. Also, they’ve got to try not to look at the camera – and rare is the zombie extra that doesn’t do that.’’
Pigden says his crew prided themselves on including as many practical effects as they could. ‘‘Shaky-cam and hyper-kinetic movement had been so well-worn at the time we started filming that we wanted to go back a phase in order to make things feel new again.’’
He admits, though, that there are quite a lot of visual effects in the finished product. ‘‘Our visual effects supervisor Sam Scott did an amazing job of integrating them in subtle ways. He had to do a lot augmenting – the practical effects that didn’t quite work on the day.’’
One day in particular was the stuff of a first-time feature filmmaker’s nightmares.
‘‘We were out in a swamp in early March doing a night shoot,’’ Pigden recalls, ‘‘and all these poor actors had to jump in the water, along with the camera crew and freeze there the whole night. It was a day [that] production had been dreading, but it all went perfectly – we even finished about 45 minutes early and watched the footage back, congratulating ourselves.
‘‘A few weeks later, we discovered only the first third of the day had been copied over, so we’d lost all the really complicated stuff. It was incredibly demoralising to have to tell the actors we’d have to go back. And when we did it, it wasn’t March any more, it was May/June and coming into a fullon Dunedin winter. The water had gone from a few degrees to zero.’’
After all the trials and tribulations, Pigden, cast and crew were delighted to be able to debut the film, appropriately enough at Dunedin’s DunDead Festival in August last year. Since then, it has been touring the festival circuit, getting great responses everywhere from Britain’s Fright Fest, to the US’s Scream Fest, Vienna’s Fright Nights Film Fest and the Gold Coast Film Festival. And on Friday it will be everywhere here, as Pigden and company try to maximise their audience by releasing the film in cinemas, on DVD and online all in the same day.
If you can organise at least 60 people, a cinema screening can be set up at a local theatre. One is already in place for Dunedin on May 25.
Filled with over-thetop gore and humour, it’s a love letter to a sub-genre from a massive fan.
I Survived a Zombie Holocaust will screen in select cinemas nationwide from Friday (or you can request your own cinema screening at tugg.co.nz), as well as being available on DVD, and video on demand, including iTunes and Quickflix.