UNDERWATER TEST #1

Zombie #1 learning to walk underwater! Thanks to puppeteers Jim, Stephen and Chris.

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Overall the test is pretty good. There are a couple of goofy parts and we learn a lot about puppets but the concept holds up pretty well. One thing I wonder is how much facial articulation we could get away with.. I am starting to wonder if it would be crazy to do eye and jaw mechanics...
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Zombie Parts

 I cast my first actor the other night!  He's been in a lot of movies but I'm not going to mention any names until things are a bit further along. 




One of the main things you think about with an independent film like this is where the money is going to be spent. So I've been thinking about sound design, and color correction. Seems reasonable to just edit the film myself, but professional color correction and sound design seem like finishing touches that could make this a sellable product.  So I am in numerous phone conversations this week to put actual numbers to all of these categories and actually nail down a budget... to whatever degree is possible at this stage.

Meanwhile, zombie puppet parts are coming together, one bolt at a time.  Here, zombie #1 has his underskull cut up and jawed, and the silicone skin glued on. I am starting to think the paint job will need to be more contrasty to compensate for being underwater.

I'm trying to balance the materials in these zombies to make them neutrally buoyant in the water so we're not struggling with the rods. The first idea was to make them more floaty and weight the feet down but we'll get the most natural performance if we're not fighting that. The skins are mostly silicone (heavy) but I am building up areas underneath with epoxy dough (floaty). 

 Spent a couple hours yesterday making puppet rods and thinking about movement. You realize little things along the way, like the fact that for good arm movement, the collarbones must be able to shrug. If the shoulder is just ball and socket, it will move like a halloween prop. I'm also putting pick points for the rods in lots of spots on the puppet. It will be interesting to see what works underwater.

STORYBOARDING WITH TOYS

I de-molded the zombie heads today and I'm getting ready to airbrush them and continue work... I'll post pics of that over the weekend.  Meanwhile, back on the conceptual front, I'm working on the problem of planning underwater sequences.   I'm storyboarding, with toys, and photoshop.  I messed around with a storyboarding program, but for me it just seems easier and more intuitive to just shoot storyboards with my Canon, and some toys. I ordered a scuba diver toy online and a shark to go with and I'm using a stop motion skeleton armature to represent the zombie in each sequence. I also have a scuba Stickfa, who is more posable than Scuba Steve or whatever his name is, but scuba steve photographs better.  So I shot scuba Steve in about 500 poses and angles and I am photoshopping him into screencaps from dive video I've shot on various dives.  So you might wonder, why the hell not just pencil draw the storyboards.... I could do that too, but using real images for backgrounds is helpful because it makes you think about the realities of the shot in a more concrete way.

SEPT 23 2012
Here are some photos from this week. I sculpted a couple of zombies for the underwater puppet tests. They're pretty different designs and I'm going to try a couple other ideas as well.  I slammed a quick fiberglass mold over each of these, and blah-blah blah- this is not a how to article but in the next couple pics you see some processes happening... creating a core which floats perfectly in the center of the mold creating the skin thickness. and then the molds are bolted up and injected with silicone  to cast up the skins. Then the core is copied in a fiberglass shell (the green thing) that will be cut up and mech'ed  before the skin goes on...  in the next few days the skins will go on and be painted, teeth and eyes, hair, etc.  I have a couple of meetings coming up this week to sort out some key issues. I am hoping to work out a deal to shoot some of the main underwater action stuff in a giant water tank, and I'm meeting with some dive experts to discuss some finer points for the ocean shoot. Safety divers, insurance.... fish food....

DEAD WATER.
This is the blog about the making of the first underwater zombie film of this century. 


Sept. 20, 2012
This whole thing started on a dive.  I was about 45 feet down in a kelp forest off of Catalina island on New Years day, and the water was murky, a little surgy and frankly, dark and cold. And as we pushed through the kelp I thought, 'wow it would suck if there were zombies in this."  Hell, you've probably had that same thought. Right?  And zombies, that I can remember, have only been shown underwater a couple of times.  There's  obviously "Shockwaves",  Lucio Fulci's "Zombie" and I suppose a few bits n pieces from "Pirates".   But no one has really taken advantage of the idea and no one has put them in a kelp forest, which is a really atmospheric, unique environment.  So I wrote this film.  And now, I'm trying to raise a bunch of money on Kickstarter to make this eerie movie a reality.

The title of the film is probably not going to be Dead Water. First, it sounds eerily similar to Dead Snow,  and also even more eerily similar to a film called, um,  Deadwater. Dead Water/ Deadwater... See the similarity?

Another thing I realized is that to really reach out to all the fans out there, I have to have some test footage that makes the case that this idea can work. So I've started building a couple of the zombies...
And each day as I go, I'll put up some progress pics of these.  So, I've been storyboarding, building test zombies, and having lots of conversations with various people regarding dive logistics, boats, zombies, puppet effects, visual effects,  and starting to make deals. People say the best Kickstarter campaigns are up for 30 days. And we're seeking a pretty big budget here, so its going to have to be a blitz. To me, it means there has to be some creepy zombie test footage....   So this blog is partially the lead-up to Kickstarter day.

So first, who am I... I'm Allan Holt, a special effects artist in LA. I've been here about 12 years working in film and tv, with many of the best in the special effects business. Here is a link to my IMDB page. Although it is far from complete, it's a decent representation. I'm also a diver,  a writer, and I was that guy in film school who made cyborg puppets and blew up cars.

 This blog will be a chronicle of this saga, its success and failures before, during and after (hopefully) the KS campaign. I'm going to share storyboards, behind-the-scenes photos, details about the production and the plans, and it will be a great chance to see whether or not reality veers way off the planned course.