Story-telling, as we know it today, was born in the amphitheatres of Classical Greece in the 5th Century B.C.. Since Syd Field and Robert McKee wouldn’t be born for another couple thousand years, give or take, Euripides and his bitter rival Sophocles and even Aristophanes, the Woody Allen of his day, were on their own in figuring out story structure. At times they’d paint themselves into a corner in their plays and have to resort to ridiculous extremes to tidy up all the loose ends before the cows came home…and, believe me, when the cows came home back then it was no pretty sight!
The easiest way out of these dramatic cul-de-sacs was to have one of the Gods descend to the stage in a sling-like contraption and quickly sort things out to the satisfaction of the demanding audiences and judges. This technique of saving the day through the unexpected intervention of a deity being lowered by to the stage by ropes and pulleys continued on the Roman stage centuries later and became known in Latin as Deus Ex Machina, which means ‘God from a Contraption or Machine’.
Over the years, of course, this dramatic device fell out of favor, since it was entirely unrealistic. In real life, nobody ever actually descended from a contraption to save the day.
Or did they?
FORMAT WARS...
Perhaps the most significant decision facing any independent filmmaker at the start of a production is what format to record their story on. Affording 35mm film and the attendant camera/lens package is about as likely as getting a late-night booty call from Angelina Jolie. The more common options are 16mm--which my stalwart predecessor here on Movie Poop Shoot, Chance Shirley, chose for his wry picture HIDE & CREEP--and the nearly ubiquitous Mini-DV. This second choice is affordable on even the skimpiest of budgets, but DV limits your distribution options to DVD only, since that shit don’t blow up to no 35 mm at all and you ain’t never gonna get you no theatrical exhibition.
Since Z is a musical, a larger-than-average portion of our meager budget is going into studio time, with most of the rest taken up by Zombie make-up expenses. Meaning we’ve been staring DV in the face as the only realistic option with which to photograph the picture.
Then, quite unrealistically, an angel appeared out of nowhere, lowered to the stage by ropes and pulleys all the way from South Africa, to kick everything up a notch…enabling us to consider the final format option, the newest and most attractive medium for independent filmmakers all the way to the top of the food chain, viz., High-Definition.
More on HD in a moment, but first…
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR...
This week’s installment of “Lights! Camera! Zombies!” is presented by the Letter Z. Standing at the tail-end of the alphabet, the letter Z often feels lonely, even unappreciated. It’s got a bit of a complex, you dig? But we’re doing what we can to redress this dire situation, pimping the letter Z at every turn. To that end, we have another Z-RATED Trailer to distract you from your own personal vale of sorrows.
This Trailer contains naked members of the Living Undead community (actual Zombies, mind you, since we spare no expense for your audio-visual stimulation) and thus is unsuitable for anyone under 18 years of age and/or members of the 79th Regular Session of the Texas Legislature--who dropped the ball on passing a competetive Film Production Incentive Bill for the Lone Star State, but DID infamously find plenty of time to roll up their sleeves to outlaw High School cheerleaders from cheering in an “overly provocative or suggestive” manner!
This one’s for you, Texas Lawmakers…
CUE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER…
South Africa is a good 22 hours in the air from Austin and literally the most distant country on the planet from our bustling little village. Through a combination of events that could--and perhaps, one day, will--make a movie itself, Cheryl Adendorff made the trek here four years ago. Back home, she’d built a successful career as a university professor, but Cheryl really wanted to pursue her life-long ambition of acting. Her opportunities being rather limited in South Africa, she re-established herself in Central Texas and has been hitting the acting/audition trail ever since, which is how she came to our attention in the first place.
Cheryl was so bamboozled by the dazzling satirical brilliance of the screenplay--to which I can personally attest the screenwriter spared no synaptic expense and comedic legerdemain in devising--that she was also open to the idea of investing in the picture and coming on board as the Executive Producer.
And so unto them a business relationship was born. Yeah less than a week did pass before they found themselves formalizing their arrangement in the offices of the law firm of Arnie Reyes, an Entertainment Attorney and Independent Producer, upon which Yahweh looked down from above and pronounced their desire to take Z to even loftier heights to be good…and then the Big Dude in The Sky took the next day off to hit the beach with his new metal detector--a gift from that ultimate Suck-Up, the Archangel Gabriel.
DANCING ZOMBIES, LLC
If you haven’t dealt much with attorneys in your life, you probably ain’t missed much. Stepping into a law firm is like being called into the Principal’s Office--it’s always a bit intimidating, even if you haven’t done anything wrong…or been caught yet!
But Arnie Reyes himself is relaxed and easy-going. He didn’t even try to scare us off by using any of them there high-fallutin’ twenty-dollar words like abstemious or ululation or obstreperous. Arnie advised Cheryl and I to set up an LLC, a limited liability corporation that would, as the name suggests, limit our liability in the event anything catastrophic went down--such as one of the actors going totally Method on us and deciding to cannibalize the hapless cast and crew on the set one day!
This new entity is called Dancing Zombies, LLC, an appropriately staid and conservative name for a staid and conservative production. Here’s how it works: the corporation technically becomes the owner of the picture we make, while Cheryl and I are the sole partners in the company and will divide any profits--please, Vishnu, let there be profits!--down the road according to our own, separate agreement.
HI-DEF, BABY!
The most singular advantage of Cheryl’s involvement as Executive Producer is our newfound ability to shoot Z on High-Definition, which had been our dream format all along, but, as I say, was previously outside our rather humble means.
If we were shooting the picture straight through for 2 or 3 non-stop weeks, we’d just rent an HD camera package. But because virtually all of the cast and crew have day gigs, Z will primarily be shoot on weekends--the usual drill for low-budget features, eking out our Art in the cracks of our quotidian existences. (FUN FACT: Paul Bartel’s brilliant cult classic EATING RAOUL was shot over a period of 2 full YEARS! Whenever Mr. Bartel could scrounge together enough bank for another roll of film, he’d call Mary Woronov & Co. back together and they’d shoot for a few days until the film ran out, then go into a holding pattern again until additional fundage came their way to press on once more.)
Since our weekend shooting sked will carry us through the summer, it’s therefore much more economical to purchase the camera outright than to rent it. Sony just recently introduced two new entry-level HD cameras--the FX1, which was an instant best-seller--and, just a couple of weeks ago, the more advanced, souped-up Z1U.
Where the Z1U really distinguishes itself from its little brother is in the audio department, with 2 XLR ports and phantom power for your microphone(s), along with various noise-reduction features and a much-needed audio monitor missing on the FX1. We’ll have much, much more to say about the critical importance of getting high-quality audio on low-budget pictures when Principal Photography begins, but suffice it to say the enhanced audio capabilities alone on the Z1U are worth far more than the extra grand the camera costs over the FX1.
THE SUMMER OF HD…
And the stars just continue to align. Up until a mere fortnight ago, as of this writing, you couldn’t cut HD using previous versions of Final Cut Pro--my non-linear digital editing software of choice.
Fortunately the Propeller Heads at Apple pulled it all together and have just released the long, long-awaited Final Cut Pro 5 HD…which makes editing High-Definition a breeze. (If by “breeze” you mean carrying around the sleek, black box containing the FCP 5 software and manuals, which weigh in at something like forty-umpteen pounds, avoirdupois…or if by “breeze” you mean breezing through the FCP 5 manuals, fully 5 in number and running to a staggering 1859 pages! And that's not even counting the additional 1117 pages of manuals for the ancillary programs that make up FCP Studio!) (Guess I know what I’ll be doing with my Downtime for, ohhhh, the rest of my life!)
Turns out we’re not the only independent feature in the world looking to take advantage of this confluence of HD offerings. We’ve duly ordered the Sony Z1U through local gear shop, Media Tool Box, but it’s already taken longer than the 3-5 business days initially promised. Seems this baby is in big demand and the sweatshops where it’s manufactured can’t quite keep up. But sooner or later our new HD camera will arrive and then we can start kicking some serious ass with it!
IN BUSINESS…
So we’re moving now! We’ve got an Executive Producer on board and we’ve got full HD capability, both in terms of shooting and cutting. We’ve got a clever, crafty Director of Photography in Robin Lambaria. We’ve got our own dedicated company for the picture and Mr. Arnie Reyes, Esquire on board as the Legal Counsel to the production, which makes us almost sound important! And we’ve got an ever-expanding cast and crew who are passionate about playing on our little Zombie musical.
Several evenings each week see my fiancée Shawn O’Connell and I turn our house in South Austin into Z-HQ for department meetings to make creative decisions on Costumes, Production Design, Props, Make-Up and Choreography.
We’re also buzzing on Location Scouting, which will be a big part of the next installment…along with our only Open Auditions, which naturally aren’t gonna be auditions at all, in the traditional sense of the term.
Hey, if you have questions or advice or reactions on finally discovering the identity of Woodward & Bernstein’s Deep Throat, contact me anytime!
