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.