UNDEAD: Essay response

Pre – Production

Undead is a low budget film about the unknown regular occurrence of the continuous wave of zombies attacking innocent civilians in Australia. With such a low budget they had to create many different ways of producing the criteria needed in the script. Everything had to be planned according to their budget, from sets, costumes, cameras, props etc. Production Designer Matthew Putland and Costume Designer Chintamani Aked along with Director of Photography Andrew Strahorn worked extremely closely to create interior designs. The interior locations were built from scratch, many created for practical purposes such as the staging of the many action and gore set pieces. The team worked non-stop for 10 weeks to create the zombies and unique creatures.

Production

During the production phrase they started to work with everyone during the production crew to produce what was needed in the script. The film showcased a number of up and coming Australian talent including Felicity Mason who plays the film’s lead Rene. During filming, the cast and crew fought freezing cold condition shooting at night while in the rain during winter.  After the photography phrase, a second group would continue shooting for 19 days.  With the smaller group, shooting became long and extremely difficult.  A number of different scenes and action sequences still had to be shot including a car crash at night. However, the most difficult wasn’t filming it was the visual effects.

Post – Production

Over 305 visual effects were created for the film taking over eight months. Many of the effects were created on Peter’s and Michael’s laptop. The processes in creating these effects were slow and extremely frustrating.  The end result was a film that was created with low budget, and given the image of a high budget horror film.