The Epic Failure That Was 'Zombie Lecher'

Ha ha ha… well that was an unproductive summer.

So since my last post I’ve completely written 3 short films (and 1 feature). Almost finished with a 4th short.

How many have I actually made? 0.

Well if you’d like to hold me accountable for these one day, here’s a bit about each.

Zombie Lecher (27 Pages) ‘An old man is trapped in his house with 4 young women during the zombie apocalypse…most of them die’; Status - I tried to raise $4,000 to shoot this “professionally” (i.e. pay people) on Kickstarter. Boy did that fail miserably (we got to 5%). Had about half the cast down, there was a short list of actresses for the rest. I was looking at the storyboards the other day (I completely storyboard my films) and I still love this story. Maybe I’ll get to make it one day.

Dying Race (26 Pages) ‘Andy Schwartz has a crisis of faith amidst being kidnapped by a cult’; Status - I wanted to do this and Zombie Lecher together a la ‘Grindhouse’, but Kickstarter said it would be best to concentrate on just one short. I feel that after another draft this would have been EPIC. Another ‘maybe one day’. Oh and this is totally that short that I wrote the scene that is like a cousin to the ear-cutting scene in ‘Reservoir Dogs’. I was gonna have the person beating somebody strapped to a chair with a rock while singing ‘Rainy Day Women’. And since it’s technically a cover of that song, I totally could have gotten that licensed for pennies.

Four Miles From Buford’s (25 Pages) ‘Super-BFFs Rori & Cherry hunt for the infamous ‘Beale Treasure’ the day before Rori’s wedding’; Status - This was my back up plan, I had written it with the intention that it would cost almost nothing to make. The cast was small. But it’s too complex to just throw together and I don’t feel the script is quiet ‘there’ yet (I don’t think it’s funny enough), if possible, I could maybe do this in Mid-September. But that is a HUGE maybe, considering two of the three people I wrote the leads for are going to a college on the other side of the state this semester.

A Sideways 8 (9 pages?) ‘Ray is stuck in an infinite loop of breakups’; Status - If you follow me on twitter (I doubt it), I said I wanted to try to write something short, like 3 pages long. This is that story. It’s super contained, just two characters talking, in one room. Not finished with a first draft yet, but I just crossed in to page 8 and I’m halfway done with the final scene. If I make ANYTHING before the summer is out. This is it. Also wrote it for the two people that are leaving in like a few weeks, so I should get on that.

That’s how I spent my job-less/work-less summer. One of my good filmmaking friends is shooting another Sweded film, hopefully he’ll let me at least chill on set since the feeling of being on a set for a movie that you’re not directing is AMAZING.

What I secretly wish is that I had a really close filmmaking-buddy who’d like to take a crack at one of those scripts. Because I would LOVE to see what somebody can bring to some silly idea I came up with. And vice-versa, I would LOVE to direct something somebody else wrote, or hell if I just had a creative collaborator who I can build ideas with. Well a new semester is coming up in 3 weeks, so maybe I’ll meet this person.

Seesaw

So it's finally here.

This short film marked my return to film-making after something like over a year of just being fat and lazy.

Should I mention that it was a million degrees when we shot this? It also took 3 days of shooting (seriously). Oh and in between the last two shoots, Spencer had to shave his goatee for a play and it hadn't grown back fully...so we used black face makeup to make it look thicker. I think it worked.

Oh and if you're saying "Why didn't you just wait another week for his beard to grow back?" Well you should know that he had to shave for the publicity photos and that after those photos were taken he had something like a week before the play started. So we had a few day window where he could grow some facial hair out.

One thing I noticed is my framing and audio was kinda lousy, especially in the truck scenes. But I had never shot anything in a moving vehicle so it was a learning experience. The main thing to take from this was that it got me back in to the film-making mind set. Which led to the three Sweded films, and my next project (it's gonna be big)...

So enough bull crap, enjoy.

The Birds & Creep Show (Sweded)

Below is the Sweded Film that started it all. An old friend from college said he was doing a few Sweded shorts, and I was all for it. Helped out, even had my fat face in the flick. This was The Birds.

During the shoot, I learned of The Shadowbox.

Now The Shadowbox (www.theshadowboxcinema.com) is an awesome micro-cinema in Roanoke that I endorse 100%, and that day I learned of the Sweded Film Festival they were running. (I had just thought my friend was making the films for the fun of it) SO naturally I had to make my own. This lead to Reservoir Dogs (which crushed it) and The Evil Dead (also crushed).



You'll notice that I am credited as Jawn Ashe, and my friend credited himself as Temple Lee. (So we're clear, my name is Jake Wood. And his name is not actually Temple Lee) Also noted, Temple Lee was in my Sweded Reservoir Dogs under another alias.

I also included his entry into the Horror Sweded Festival, which is a segment from Creepshow.



I do have another short, which is LONG OVERDUE. It's been sitting on my computer for like almost 6 months now. I've just been lazy and haven't dug up some music for it.

The Evil Dead (Sweded)

Here's probably the end-all Sweded film from me. I just don't think we could top this.

It's The Evil Dead (with a few choice bits stolen from Evil Dead 2). We shot this in Ethan Cockerham's old house that is abandoned and it was SCARY AS HELL. There were HUGE spiders and rat droppings everywhere. The paint and wallpaper was peeling off and it was amazing. We absolutely trashed that place. We cut up a door so it would shut, the carpet in the main room we shot in was absolutely soaked in Karo Syrup.

Very tough shoot, it rained 90% of the time (over 2 nights of shooting). One cast member got drunk before the first shot, another was 2 hours late both nights. We also had half of the first days shooting ruined by a technical error (the video was all pixelated and the audio was messed up).

But we got it done, by the deadline for the Sweded Horror Festival run by the Shadowbox.

Check it out!

Reservoir Dogs (Sweded)

I told you I was working on videos.

So here it is, the first of atleast 3 videos I have been working on this summer. This all came about because an old acting buddy of mine was making a Sweded version of "The Birds" for a local film festival (which I have a couple cameos in, don't worry, I will post it here eventually). We all had a blast working on it, and dangit I had to Swede me my own movie.

For those of you who don't know. Remember that boring Jack Black movie? Where they erased a bunch of videos and started remaking them? Yeah that's what a sweded film is, remaking your favorite movies. With all of the heart, but none of the budget.

Project Zombies

This is my favorite short we've made so far. It was originally made for a Diary of the Dead contest where the top 5 would get put on the DVD...but of course Contests + Internet = FAIL. Technically this a recut of a recut, recently I decided to reupload all my old videos with better quality versions; but it turns out that I never saved an uncompressed version of the video so I essentially had to edit it all over again so I could render better copies.

Project Zombies (2008) from Drownin-Turkey on Vimeo.

A Ding Too Far

In early September 2007. John, Justin, and myself all watched "Shoot 'Em Up". I rather enjoyed it and thought "I want to make a movie where people fight with carrots" (as Clive Owen did a lot of badass things with carrots in the movie). The next night we shot this video...in the staff parking lot of Woodrow Wilson Middle School. We left an awful mess of fake blood, and broken carrots, I do apologize to anyone we inconvenienced. Also this is the first short shot on the camcorder I originally bought 2 years earlier when we made Mask of El Kabong (Which we actually didn't shoot it on...it's a long story).

It also got me a few connections.

A Ding Too Far (2007) from Drownin-Turkey on Vimeo.