I’m not sure what it is about zombies but they’re very accessible.

I bought a new camera (replacing the Canon XM2) this month; a Canon 550D DLSR so it doubles up as a stills camera too (check out some photos taken with it on Flickr). To get stuck in shooting some video with it we decided to do some test shots which weren’t really connected narratively but would look like they were from the same film. Naturally, we chose a zombie outbreak as the background to our “film”.

Since it was at late notice we didn’t get a great amount of zombies but we did get some conventional footage that looks great and we can definitely use. Hopefully we’ll be shooting some more zombie action this weekend, and maybe there’ll be some way we can stick it all together for everyone to watch. Who knows!

Last week we did an interview with Christy and Dave at DAM Productions for their latest venture MannIN Shorts (also follow them on Twitter) which, to quote their bio is “a platform for hopeful filmmakers, young or old, to develop skills, ideas and make films, right here on the Isle of Man”. It sounds great and I hope loads of cool things come about because of it.

Needless to say we’re so brilliant at RDF they just had to get an interview with us, so we obliged. It will be shown along with a bunch of interviews with other brilliant local filmy bods at their Grand Isle of Man Film Makers Show-Down on 9th September. Check out their website for more info on that.

As for our own project, well we’re gearing up to get the next film off the ground. With only a month to go before the deadline for submissions for this year’s 2 Days Later competition we’re cutting it finer than last year (I think I was editing by this point - cripes) but we are working on a much smaller scale so hopefully that will work in our favour.

We, pretty much, have all our gear sorted for the shoot, you can see a couple of photos to the left and right. That’s my MacBook. It’s what I’m writing this post on and what I edited Get Dead on too. This will be used (along with Final Cut Pro 5, Cubase 4 and various other tools) to put the final film together.

This is our camera. It’s a Canon XM2 on a swanky Manfrotto tripod. Since we spent all our money on these items there was nothing left to buy anything in the way of lenses, so we’re making do with what we can get for a reasonable sum. Initially we just tried one of those ridiculously cheap and obviously rubbish wide angle lenses you can get off eBay for buttons but their limitations soon became apparent. Visually not bad, my main issue with them was the terrible vignetting that occurred. That and the fact there was a macro lens you had to always have attached, which just didn’t sit right with me.

Now, as can possibly be seen in the photo, we have a bigger and better wide angle lens (this is the extent we’re going to with lenses for now, they’re a whole other money-sapping beast entirely) and since we couldn’t afford the Canon-branded one (WD-58H) we picked up a decent one from Digital King for about £60ish. It’s a 0.7x wide angle for those who are interested. Not enough to really cause obvious vertical line distortion (shame though as I’m a massive Terry Gilliam fan) but enough that we can get a decent amount of stuff in shot and not rely on lots of panning or tracking.

Aside from these main things we also have a nice light reflector to go with the lights we’re hoping to borrow for the shoot, some condenser mics from a drum mic kit we’re using for overheads and some other miscellaneous bits and pieces we’ve managed to lay our grubby mits on.

I hope this has interested you! We’re looking at meeting up next week to discuss the shoot then will immediately begin shooting. Hurrah!