Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Zombies and... More Zombies

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So, as usual I'm having trouble avoiding zombies. It's a knack, I suppose.

I just recently completed my first assignment for my Directing Workshop, which was to shoot an entire scene in one shot. It was tough to coordinate, especially since I'm an awfully big  fan of using a lot of shots. I do wish that I could exploit the benefits of deep focus photography, but at the moment, I'm too keen to cutting things up like a madman.

For my one shot, I decided to shoot a scene from H.P. Lovecraft's short story, "Herbert West: Reanimator" which I really enjoyed over the summer. I thought about adapting something from the movie at first, but when I moved to the short story instead, it gave me far more flexibility, and I really enjoyed writing the dialogue. Lovecraft doesn't have any dialogue in his shorts actually, so it made the screenplay particularly challenging.

Soon I'll be shooting the same scene over again with minor tweaks to the dialogue, action, and overall flow of the piece, especially since it will be broken into several shots, rather than this long take.

In the meantime, I'm preparing to shoot my event documentary on the Zombie Crawl through Manhattan tomorrow. If you're not familiar with the zombie crawl phenomenon, it's basically a day where people dress up in fake scars and blood to walk through the streets wildly, haunting anyone in their path. Afterward, there will also be a free screening of "Zombieland", which seems interesting, but I have my doubts.

For now, enjoy "From The Dark"



Sincerely,
John Morgan