2. 28 Daves Later
Summary: A flittering solar eclipse causes a worldwide zombie pandemic, and our story focuses on a small group of survivors failing miserably in their attempts to stay alive. One by one they fall, and it doesnt end well
Best Bit: The last stand, with a tractor, in a car park http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFZ_e-aKXuI
What I Learned: First, a bit of important background. Every Christmas, every year group in our boarding house had to produce a short, humorous video known as a house sketch- our house was renowned for them, so there was a lot of pressure. They were always very stupid, very crude, and very funny. But the first year our year group came up with nothing, the next year our Dar Knight spoof failed and our replacement was even worse. This year, I vowed, wed do something amazing. Something different. Some ambitious. And, oh god, we did. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat reliving the torturous two-and-a-half-week shoot. Everybody was used to these simple sketches you could plan, shoot and edit in under a week. The whole idea for the film came about from the title, a scrapped idea from the previous years effort based around one of our group called David. 28 Daves Later was a tremendous effort- nobody supported the idea, and I faced an uphill battle to get it made at all. Everybody who starred in it thought it was a stupid idea (they still starred in it), and it took so much longer than I thought because of that. But boy, did I have fun! In one scene we handle a live rifle, a massive colt pistol, a hunters knife and, er, a potato gun. We were using a golf cart, a van, studio lights worth a fortune (we ended up bending one and the bulb of the other exploded when we set the lights up in the rain), stealing whole tubs of ketchup and waking up younger boys as extras in the early hours of the morning. But the most challenging part of the shoot was the last stand scene, where myself and a co-star held onto a tractor and drove around in circles in a crowded car park chased by zombies (why I thought that would make thrilling, kinetic cinema Ill never know) And the lesson learnt? I could be big, I could be ambitious but I needed support and I need to slimline my efforts. The cut shown was bloated, at 25 minutes (it was not interesting or engaging enough to warrant such a running time), and rather than focus on the zombie story, I included a film-within-a-film and a dream sequence it was all over the shop. I did pull a Ridley Scott and come out with about 3 subsequent cuts trimming everything down. But I was mixed with a surprised response from both participants and audience that made me think it was all worth it.