ZOMBIES AND PIZZA (TM)

Here are a few stories about the first day of filming:

The night before I was scheduled for my first day of filming, Ed at Culinary Deliveries backed out and told me that I couldn't film at his pizza shop. He had to make an emergency trip out of town and so I had to find a new place to use as a pizza shop. Helen Campitelli, one of the actors playing a zombie, jumped in and saved the day. I was on the phone with her on and off about 5 times that night as we tried to figure out where to film the pizzeria shots. I had 7 actors booked to be regular characters and 9 actors booked to be zombies. Plus there were about 5 volunteers booked to do the zombie make-up that day. Plus David and Gary were booked to do the camera work and boom operating, respectively. So there were a lot of people counting on us to find a venue. Helen ended up finding us an apparel shop in Spring City for us to use as a pizzeria. She saved the day, and she helped keep things running smoothly at the t-shirt shop, which is why I'm going to be listing her as a co-producer in the credits. Thanks for saving the day, Helen!

The first day of filming went great! David Directed all the interior scenes in the pizzeria and filmed them with his HVX500, and I filmed all the exterior scenes on my (at the time) brand new Flip Ultra. That day of filming was only my second time doing moving camera work on my Flip. Before that the only moving video I made on my Flip was at the Zombie Make-up Tutorial video, which I had filmed at Pulse Beauty Academy a week or two before that. Here is the zombie make-up tutorial I filmed at Pulse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltFoOI9cjDk

Being my first time filming a real production, I was nervous that some of my key actors might not show up, but my worries were unfounded. There had been one cancellation from the night before, but I found a replacement actor that night, and everyone showed up on Monday. I even had more zombie extras than I had expected, because a few of the Pulse make-up artists came to Spring City and were zombies. David started filming before all the zombie extras arrived, so I kind of waited on the side-lines as the zombie extras trickled in. After all the zombies arrived, I shot a lot of footage of them outside of the pizzeria. Then we drove up the street and went to a local graveyard where the nuclear power plant - Lymeric - was visible in the background. This location was an almost totally spontaneous location! I had considered filming there months before hand, but had forgotten about it by the time the day of filming arrived. I passed the graveyard in my car on the way to the t-shirt shop earlier, and thought it would be really cool to film over there, since the back-story about the zombies is that they were created by a cloud of nuclear energy that escaped a nuclear power plant. Anyway, me and the zombie extras packed into a few cars and drove to the grave-yard. Cassie was leading the caravan and she found us a great view of the power plant that was nestled in the upper level of the grave-yard. So we filmed there for about 20 minutes or so, then went back to the pizzeria and waited for Dave to wrap up his filming. After Dave was all wrapped up, I ordered a few pizzas and brought them back to the set. Everyone chowed down... it was a great way to end the shoot!

Anyway, that first day of filming was my first introduction to directing actors. It went off without a hitch, too! My heart goes out to all the people who helped make it happen, even Ed at Culinary Deliveries, because without him agreeing to let me use his pizzeria in the first place I may never have been inspired to write about pizza delivery drivers in the first place! Thanks, Ed!