Behind the scenes tales of Zombie Fight Club (Patreon)

Hi  Acolytes and Shadows,

First off if you have any questions about the shoot, let us know below and I will answer.

A while ago Robin and I had an idea to do a series of short films and Zombie Fight Club was born then.  What was originally just a simple idea of people punching zombies grew as I wrote the script.  The tone is  little hard to explain, it is not comedy, but has comic moments, it horror but absurd, the world in which the film is set also has disjointed feel with tribes of people.  I liken it a bit to Mad Max Fury Road in that respect.

Our zombies are kind of docile until they smell warm blood.  So before every fight the fighters are wiped across the chest with blood from the ceremonial skull.

With in the film we pay tribute to other famous zombies, some are more obvious than others.

The Ring Mistress wears the leather jacket from Micheal Jackon's Thriller.

This guy is inspired by Tor Johnson in Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Partly because it is hard to get people to work for free, as well as directing I got an extended cameo.  This made possible by our awesome fight choreographer who directed the fight scenes.

Robin also got a cameo, his body will be removed in post.

I pulled my 5 year old niece into the film, she had a great, loved the gore, and enjoyed being on set.  But when she goes to school and tells people what she saw my sister might get a call from social services.

Fingers cut off in low tech special effect, with blood pumped down sleeve to tubes behind her fingers.

The masks worn by extras were originally in the script  to show the difference between the classy people slumming it in the fight club and your regular bros.  To solve a plot hole we added an element that the fights were streamed online and therefore the anonymity of the punters became more important.   This also helped as it made background continuity easier to handle as everyone looked similar.

We had a colour palette for the different tribe.  The staff were generally browns, the punters black and white, and our main character blue,  As the story goes on he goes from light blue to black and ring goes from green to magenta.

When a lot of people are giving their time for free, you don't want to abuse that.  While core crew started at 7, everyone else came later, we would build up over the course of the day till we we had all the extras for the fight scenes.  We then wrap the extras as soon as possible as it can be boring.  Then we work through the actors grabbing shots we missed until we are down to 2 crew and one actor. This was one of the last things we shot.

Then it is all about packing up.   Day  One started and 7 and ended about 9:30, day two started at 7:30 and ended at 1:30 am the next day.

We have one more shoot day for the flash backs that all happen in a different location, but since it is going to be bloody we need to source it.  In the meantime, editing will start on this and while the film won't be finished for a few months, I hope to get a trailer out faster.

Graham