Not A Blog™

It’s been a while since I’ve done any short film projects for fun. Like I’ve reminisced about before, it’s something I enjoy, but it’s not something I put much of a priority on these days. Fortunately in the case of this one, the priority was imposed by a looming deadline so there wasn’t much time for messing around.

Two weeks ago, Mike from Reel Splatter asked me to help out with a project he was doing for George Romero’s Diary of the Dead contest. I haven’t read all the details, but the call was for 3 minute entries with a zombie related theme, and the best were going to be judged by Romero and end up on a DVD. Mike’s idea involved a faux-news feature about NAALI—the National Association for the Advancement of the Living Impaired—protesting the negative stereotypes of zombies perpetuated by the likes of Romero and horror author Brian Keene.

See it here, and if you have a Myspace profile you can vote, as well.

When Mike called me, he said, “You’re the only person I know who can possibly pull off a reporter!” Excellent—typecast again! All those years of playing newscasters and hosts for the TTT are finally paying off.

No, in all seriousness, it was awesome. Even though this wasn’t necessarily the best shoot I’ve ever been on (that honor still goes to the Zombie Commercial shoot), it was one of the most fun.

Somehow, Mike got Brian Keene to play a cameo in this short. It was a very interesting experience. We were over at Keene’s house for the shoot and Mike was trying his best to not go all fan-boy on the poor author while I didn’t even know who he was. I had the vague feeling like it was something to be excited about, but it didn’t feel much different than going over to anyone else’s house to shoot. Until we had a chance to talk it was a little formal. He did have a great assortment of beer, though. And I got free autographed books, meaning he’s going to be reviewed sometime in the upcoming weeks. (Devilish laugh.) Anyway, having a moderately famous author yelling obscenities at me and waving a .357 in my face was, I believe, a first.

Even more impressive, although the planned shoot date was two weeks away—with a forecast of freezing rain—Mike managed to wrangle an even larger crowd of people to appear in this short than we had for the zombie commercial. There were less zombies because most people were protesters, but the number of extras was still quite impressive. Fortunately it didn’t rain during shooting. Unfortunately it was only 30 degrees the entire time. Without a doubt it was the coldest shoot I’ve ever been on.

Overall, I had a really good time. Mike did a great job considering the ambitious nature of the shoot and the time frame involved, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to help.

-Ted

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