It’s been quite a few weeks since we last posted a production blog, but rest assured we’ve been busy bunnies.
We’ve got to the stage with the script where we really needed to hear and see the whole thing acted out, albeit in very crude form. So thanks to our actor mates Arron Dennis and Jennifer Jordan, we gathered in a very lovely hotel room (way too posh for us scumbags) and performed an entire script read through, watched by Steve’s producery eyes.
The read through was phenomenally helpful. For starters, it gave us a new perspective on the dialogue and characters. Despite Jennifer and Arron having to read several characters each, we got a good sense of what does and doesn’t work in terms of interaction, action and interplay. And that little thing called story.
It’s often very hard, particularly when collaborating, to get a solid sense of cohesion, as there are so many voices within and without the script, all vying for attention. What works so well about Zomblog is that it exists for the very reason that it’s collaborative, so what works and what doesn’t work gets analysed and dissected to the nth degree, all in the name of trying to get the best outcome.
An acted-out read through followed by a table read made it obvious where the strong and weak moments in the script lie, and our debriefing was already full of ideas, changes and improvements for further drafts. We’ve never scripted Zomblog before and it’s a very hard thing to do, since most of the dialogue in the web series was improvised on the day of shooting.
The movie needs a script, that’s for damn sure, but we want to make sure things don’t feel scripted. Zomblogalypse is, after all, a show about a bunch of ill-prepared idiots who don’t really care about anything other than where the next can of beans is coming from. They’re not zombie hunters, they’re not heroes, they’re just slack idiots. Treading this line between heroism and idiocy, between web series wisecracks and movie dialogue and a city-shaking plot is where the challenge lies.
As the Spinal Tap guys said, ‘There’s a fine line between clever… and stupid.’
And so, ‘where are you with the film?’ you ask.
The answer is, in a state of extreme pre-production!
We have our sales agent, we have some great developments underway and we have a script that we finally feel we’ve got a handle on. What we’re aiming for now is to improvise, rewrite and hone that script to a state that we’re not just happy with, but delighted and proud of. This was never going to be easy but there would be no point in making a Zomblog movie if we didn’t feel it was worth making something special.
We’re working with a horror artist to create some production art to further suggest the vision of the film, and we’re consulting our horror make-up maestros about the look of the zombies. We’re bashing the script into submission and one of these fine days we’ll start thinking about when we might set a filming date.
But that’s all in the future.
For now, stay tuned to the Facebook page, look out for some big website changes and scan the ol’ social media for signs of life. Because there’s a ton of new Zomblog stuff coming…