Pre-production- ZOMBIES

COSTUME + MAKEUP

I put together a slide show of the topics covered, meaning the points specifically about the zombie makeup our group talked about with our teacher and the improvements and additional points that were discussed thereafter, I will go over them in depth underneath.
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(Slide 2) The test and influences have been covered in recent posts so a summary is:

We have heavily intertextualised elements of Shaun of the Dead, where some elements are close to a simulacra (Baudrillard) following a postmodernism theory, anchoring the preferred reading because if it is left as a polysemic reading, following many examples in the film industry, the preferred reading will be lost as the primary and secondary audience will have no anchorage to access it.
One of these elements is the makeup and therefor we are drawing heavy inspiration from zombie characters in Shaun of The Dead, especially Nick Frost's

(Slide 3) The Improvements from the first makeup test are:

- Firstly to include more blue and purple makeup, in the bruised areas of the zombies face's. This will make the look clearer on screen anchoring the fact that it is a zombie, not someone dressed as one.
- The hair wasn't worked on but we are probably going to add talcum powder to make it look more scruffy and dirty
- More white face paint needs to be used to make the character look pale, which is symbolic and connotes zombies as they are cold and dead, however in the example above that wasn't as clear so to anchor that we are going to use more white face paint.
- We didn't use the contacts we ordered as they had not arrived at this point, but they have now arrived so in are next makeup test we will get a completed look for the makeup.
- We also were unable to use liquid latex due to only spikey films and scope productions being together for the first test and neither of them had liquid latex with them.

(Slide 4) Additional points about the Zombie look 

- One of the zombies will have the pleasure of eating a dead corpses guts and we are going to attempt to achieve this using shallow field of focus and focusing heavily on the audio in post production editing.

- We need to use blood capsules for the zombies but we don't know how the effect will appear so we are looking to test that soon 

- We have decided to not film Sunday as we feel we need to test more points 

Pre Production Zombie make up, liquid Latex

Following the liquid Latex post, now I have an understanding of how to use the product I did follow up research about what effects you could create with it.
Our teacher had said that one of the key aspects, that will perfect our ruin our film opening, is the zombie make up. So we want to have the challenge but we don't want to go over board or get too ambitious because we don't want to ruin the piece.

These are some examples I looked at:

Now the first three do look cool, however they do raise questions regarding the issues they may cause. This first being whether it is possible for either myself or our group as a whole to create something to this standard, or even learn to produce something to a similar quality in the amount of time we have until we start to film the opening. The second is if this is possibly too much for our target audience, referring mainly to the middle example. We don't to loose are target audience by either loosing their interest and not appealing to our primary audience or having the scenario where a group such as the BBFC to raise the age limit on the film similar to This is England (Obviously this can't happen however we will treat this dilemma as if it could). If this were to happen it would cause a polysemic reading instead of anchoring the preferred reading.
However if we pulled the look off I think it would perfect our piece

These examples on the other hand are more likely to be our influence towards creating our own zombies, although they are likely to be extremely similar to this. As a group we prefer this kind of look because of the higher focus on the make up yet effectively using the liquid latex to create wounds that help make the zombies look realistic without an expensive amount of make up. 

The example on the right is the make up for Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead, which is the main influence of our piece and therefor the influence of this zombie make up intertextualises Shaun of the Dead

However the challenge for this is either over doing the make up or under doing the make up as it won't show on screen or it will show unclose and look terrible 

Location finding

These are some videos of possible areas to film, in our film opening, however it is not necessarily going to be filmed in these locations, this is just part of the pre production.

LIVING ROOM

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Benefits of Filming-
- Space to film in 
-Lots of mise en scene already available 

Disadvantages of Filming- 
- Lots of removal in order to place correct props and create mise en scene, as to get preferred reading 
- Not the best as far as social class, it doesn't fit the middle class stereotype
- awkward for group members to get too

BATHROOM

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Benefits of Filming-
- Space to film in 
-Lots of mise en scene already available 
- has mirrors we wanted for certain camera angle 

Disadvantages of Filming- 
- awkward removal of items in order to place correct props and create mise en scene, as to get preferred reading 
- Not the best as far as social class, it doesn't fit the middle class stereotype

- awkward for group members to get too

KITCHEN

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Benefits of Filming- 
-Lots of mise en scene already available 
- fits the social class

Disadvantages of Filming- 
- not a lot of space to film
- challenge to avoid filming balcony window 
- awkward for group members to get too

Liquid Latex Zombie Make Up

I’ve been looking into zombie make up and ways to create a convincing look for the zombies in our film opening.
One of the products our teacher generously got us was liquid latex. However none of the members of our group have experience with liquid latex so I’ve looked into how to use it and what effects can be done using it.
1 video I liked, for the tutorial as well as the end effect.
The video:
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So knowing how to use the product, I will try and test it on the people who are going to be zombies as it will work differently on different people, as far as how much to use as it will last longer time periods, and it may need a thicker layer as it may not show as well, especially when on the face.

It is important we get it right as if the zombies look bad it will clearly look fake and a lot of the effect is lost. Therefor the more practice we get the better as there is a lot of pressure on the zombie look.

A Wipe, in media terms

A wipe is a type of transition on screen, it moves through shots by pushing one shot out by another. This creates a smooth flow of shots that can be used as establishing shots for the opening of a film.
The example that I would draw inspiration from is in Shaun of the dead
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After the conversation with the main protagonist, the film continues to give more detail as to the location and social standard of the film using a series of shots that wipe from one to the next.

Pre-production points

Characters:

• Main protagonist - Danny Romero - Intertextualising genre directors (Danny Boyle, George A Romero)
• Love interest - Mia Jones
• Best friend - Fred East - intertextualises Fred West, a serial killer
• 3 to 4 zombies 

Extraneous points: 

• Cornetto trilogy + Shaun of the dead - Cornetto ice cream, like in Shaun of the dead
• Shallow focus (zombie eating body from far away)
• decaying title
• slow zombie movement type, unlike 28 days later