Making a feature version of our web series was never going to be straightforward.
The premise of Zomblogalypse – three friends blog the zombie apocalypse – is pretty simple, but only when you’re making ten-or-so minute episodes for the web. You can start the episode, do a few jokes, meet a few characters, explode a few zombies, make some off the cuff comments and be back in time for tea.
Then there are the ‘feature’ versions of the shows, from the Season 1&2 feature on our DVD to this feature length version of Season 3:
They work because they’ve been edited to work, not because they were planned as features. Z3 more so, but mostly because we took a road movie approach; it’s still episodic and small in scale.
'Let's CG a thousand more zombies in there.'
What we want to avoid when making a feature version is simply doing a ‘longer version of the TV show’ but we also don’t want to make something that sells out the concept. And we have to make something for the people who have never seen or heard of Zomblog. Which is everyone except the 1600+ Facebook fans we’ve garnered to our bosom.
Yeah, when we said 'cinematic'...
We want to deliver something funny, fresh and new, not just ‘another Shaun of the Dead‘ which we’ve never felt Zomblog was, despite the zombies. Zomblog is its own thing but it’s been difficult to focus on knuckling down to write a feature draft for various reasons. Making Whoops! all summer being one of them. Hannah not living in York another. All the same, we had a go at drafting some ideas back and forth over the summer.
Zomblog 2: Back to the Sofa.
But now that Hannah’s back in the ‘hood and we’re deep into post production on Whoops!, us three Zombloggers finally managed to gather in a pub this weekend over some Sunday roast and discuss the Zomblog movie. Happy to say that within about an hour, we’d figured out a draft idea that we think is a goer. Very funny, very Season 1, very silly, pretty solid. The structure is simpler than the first few ideas we had. It doesn’t make everything different for the sake of it but it does expand the scale of Zomblog into something that allows for, we think, a fun adventure.
'That was mint.'
It also very much uses York as a feature, perhaps for the first time as a character in the story, even more so than in CrimeFighters. We’re getting excited to the point where location scouts, production sketches and a preliminary production plan are all on the cards…
That’s all for now but rest assured, Zomblog fans, we aim to make this film next year and we aim to make it good. Well. To make it good and well. If you see us around town, aiming imaginary guns at you, don’t worry. We always aim for the head, so you won’t feel any pain.
Going postal: 'He's tampering with the Royal Mail!'