ZOMBIE MOVIE-OPENING SCENE CONTEST!!! -PLEASE READ!

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Permalink Reply by John McDonald on April 12, 2010 at 4:35am

This sounds like a really neat scene on paper, and with about 20 people both in front of the camera as well as full cooperation from the local neighbors, town and police, it could be pulled off. However filming this scene outside of a Hollywood back lot poses a lot of challenges.
While I like the concept there’s a number of logistical problems with filming this scene. Depending on how cooperative the local police department is you would have to register the prop weapon used with them before shooting since it takes place in a residential neighborhood. It would be easier to move the scene to private land. That way you just need the landowner's permission to film there in most cases.
You can bypass all of these hassles entirely through the careful use of green screen effects, but that takes a really good and expensive (over $400 new) effects package or professional video editor (like Sony Vegas Pro) to pull off. In this case you simply film an empty street from multiple directions. You then set up a large green or blue screen on private land or even inside a large room somewhere. You then shoot the action in front of the screen and carefully line up the camera angles to match the street scenes you shot earlier. Then you composite the two scenes and it LOOKS like the action took place outside. This is a lot of work, but it looks cool and takes care of a lot of logistical headaches.
In addition, to keep from getting in trouble with the division of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms never use a real weapon, even one loaded with blanks, unless you have an off duty police officer or officer of the ATF load each weapon and certify that they are loaded with blanks before shooting your scene. It’s much easier to use an airsoft weapon with electrical tape applied to the end of the barrel just before and removed immediately after each shot. While post production CGI muzzle flashes don’t look as real as blanks it saves the filmmaker an incredible amount of legal headaches. I personally use Visionlab Studio by FXHome for this type of effect.
The final hurdle is getting together more then a handful of people together on the day of the shoot to act as the zombies. If you can get your crew people to double as zombies then its much easier to do. Just remember that while the camera person is chasing the main character someone else has to be running the camera. So plan the zombie dispatches accordingly.. with the most important crew people getting killed off early so they can get back behind the scenes where they belong.
I hope that this proves helpful. When I first started out I didn’t think about a lot of these things and I almost got into a lot of legal trouble.
For more information on low / microbudget horror film making I suggest the following two books: "The Filmmaker's Book of the Dead: How to Make Your Own Heart-Racing Horror Movie" by Danny Draven and "Splatter Flicks: How to Make Low-Budget Horror Films" by Sara Caldwell. The first book is more expensive, but in my opinion it is worth the price. Both are available at discount on Amazon.com.
I hope this has been helpful. I wish you luck in this and all of your future endeavors. Film making is a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun as well. Don’t be discouraged if at first you don’t succeed. No matter how many difficulties you run into there is nothing quite like seeing your finished product on the screen with your friends and family and having everyone love it!

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Permalink Reply by FreAkSh☭w on April 14, 2010 at 11:54am

thanks for the advice. ill see if i can find those books. a good one that i have read is "make your own damn movie!". and the gun issue i had thought about so we have already used air-soft guns. thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Komrad Sunyak on April 14, 2010 at 12:29pm

I read that book, too. LLoyd Kaufman is a real pisser.

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