Zombies on a shoestring
Eastern Cape-born filmmaker produces movie for only R50 000
I’M A romcom movie kind of guy. I avoid horror movies like the plague – zombie thrillers even more so.
So it took a special kind of stoicism to present myself for the Cape Town premiere of Last Ones Out, a full-length flick about zombies, by young Eastern Cape-born filmmaker Howard Fyvie.
The movie follows the lives of four survivors of a viral outbreak and chronicles their journey through dangerous landscape.
It helped that the screening took place in the open air on top of the Castle of Good Hope, with stunning views of the cityscape and the last rays of the setting sun peeping out from behind Table Mountain – no real-life zombies were going to get to me up there!
More importantly, I was there to support Fyvie’s latest project, which was also one of the South African films screened at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
What got me through the scary parts was convincing myself that the swarm of bloodthirsty zombies careening across the screen was simply a metaphor for one or other African health epidemic. Aids and Ebola might be less frightening than zombies, right?
However, Fyvie’s intention with his script is more rooted in the real world. Last Ones Out is a simple relationship story, he said.
“It’s about a foreigner who learns about African culture – about ubuntu – when he is thrown together with locals. It shows people working as a team.
“The zombies are there as an antagonistic force and don’t really feature that much. Like in the Jaws movie – you seldom see the shark.”
He recognises the zombie theme is a parallel with other menacing African realities, like the Aids/HIV pandemic.
“When you make movies you construct different layers so the audience can pull it apart and draw their own conclusion.”
Apart from Fyvie, who grew up in Port Elizabeth, the cast have strong Eastern Cape roots, including supporting actor Vukile Zuma (no relation to the president), whose parents still live in Alice.
Fyvie said a number of the actors, including Zuma, had gone on to major film projects since shooting Last Ones Out. Greg Kriek went on to play one of the main villain roles alongside Morgan Freeman, James Purefoy and ex-Bond girl Olga Kurylenko in Momentum.
And he acknowledges that while the filmmaking is excellent in this, the first full-length film he has directed, there are shortcomings, especially inconsistencies in the script.
“That’s one of the realities you get from a first-time director. I’m surprised it even works as a story and didn’t fall apart,” said Fyvie, who was also the writer and coproducer of the movie, and took over behind the camera on days when cameraman Timmy Henny was not available.
The constraints on the film were enormous from the start, as Fyvie and co-producer Kriek spent more than a year trying to source funding of up to R5-million to produce their movie.
Following numerous shut doors, they threw all caution to the wind, re-configured the project – including re-writing the script – to produce it for a shoestring budget of R50 000, with Fyvie taking to social media to “crowdsource” funding from family, friends and supporters.
When telling film buffs in Cannes that the movie was shot on the equivalent of $5 000, Fyvie said they laughed, perhaps apologetically.
Despite that, the film is brilliantly configured, shot during a “window period” last year when Henny was between other shoots.
“Technically, this film stands on its own and can match any Hollywood film. You need a camera man with a good eye. Timmy has that and I also have that.
“You need good equipment and need to know what you’re doing with that equipment to tell a story with a camera,” Fyvie said.
I was struck by the scenes of zombies running wild in deserted township streets, an aspect Fyvie described as “the biggest miracle” of the movie.
He said that while a typical township street set could be built in a Cape Town studio, that cost on its own would have been three times more than the money they spent in total on the movie. After deciding that 11am on a weekday morning was the quietest time in a Cape Town township, Fyvie said the crew moved in and managed to secure deserted streets for an hour-long filming session.
Although there were still people going about their daily business, some “friends” ensured they didn’t photo-bomb the scene.
Fyvie said his objective with the full-length film was to produce a calling card for the future.
“A lot of people want to see if you’re capable of making a feature film before they will take a chance on you.
“We decided to just go and make movies. When people said there was no funding, we said let’s do it without funds. It was an open door we could cut our teeth on.”
He and Kriek intend to sell the film to local, African and US television channels and secure cash for future projects. Having premiered in Cape Town this past weekend, it will be screened in other venues nationally.
“Success for us [from Last Ones Out] is to secure the budget for our next film.”
He said Cannes was “a crazy and eye-opening experience. Our film was showing right next to other movies made in South Africa with big budgets but ours was something new and different”.
While he downplays his youth, pointing out that he has been “making movies on the side for at least 10 years”, Fyvie acknowledged that most of the filmmakers who flock to Cannes each year, are established.
And, despite opportunities to work in niche filmmaking in South Africa, he stated emphatically that he wants to work in any medium.
“All the world is my audience.”