Human Root ~ My Zombie Short Film

This is the reason I barely made any new "Audfaced" makeup videos this entire year so far:

Ever since the beginning of January 2011 this has been a project that I have been working on. If I wasn't writing down ideas on paper I was typing my fingers away trying to write the script or sending out countless messages to potential crew and cast members.

I took on my first of what I count as a "big production" short film this year and it's eaten up all my time for practically this entire year. It was the reason I chose to not apply for a job in for the spring semester and the reason why I chose to get classes only 3 days a week. For 1 and 1/2 months I worked non-stop on pre-production, rushing to simultaneously write a script, find crew & cast, a location, permissions and dates to schedule auditions, crew meetings and actor rehearsals as well as days to go out and shop for the needed costumes and makeup supplies and go location scouting. In a line, it was expensive, stressful and tiring and I met many new people and had to depend on more people than was normally human in my comfort zone.

I will save the whole story for another day but, I just want to express how for 5 months of my life, this was all I did and all I thought of and everything I worked on. The weekends when we filmed I barely slept and was up late doing last minute planning, making call sheets, trying to make sure we had a schedule to follow to get everything we needed done in time the next day.

This project was originally just my final project for a film production class that I was taking at my small community college. But I wanted to make it something bigger, more special and as professional as it could be. I wanted it to be an environment where people could experience a little of what it might be like to be an actor or a crew member on a small film set and what it asked of you.

We had 7 total days of filming over a span of 4 months. For the end of the year school film festival we did not finish the movie in time or even a rough cut but, I edited this trailer to screen.

Now things have calmed down a bit and I cannot express how relieved I am to not have to worry about working around numerous people's schedules to get them to show up in one place on the same day at the same time. So we are officially in post-production and I will be honest and say I want to take my time with this since it took so much work to make the actual product. The trailer itself was a lot of work in itself ~ it's ridiculous how long it can take to make something as simple as a 3 minute video!

However, I am proud to share it with you today :)

WATCH THE TRAILER:

There is also an official facebook page for it where you can view behind the scenes pictures and more, but I will post some right here as well as some of the movie posters I've been able to edit so far for the movie :)

Behind the Scenes photos:

action shot on set

action shot on set before we started filming

action shot from the hospital set

Our lovely nurses. Can you tell where the character inspiration came from?

A truck taking our zombie dancers back home! I met all of them when I worked at Fright Fest.

Pizza was a common lunch on set ... and it always disappeared very quickly.

We asked permission to use a deserted hospital wing for some scenes in the film. Score!

Me ... through a hospital window.

Jess, the ninja photographer! He took all of these behind the scenes photos. Isn't he cute! Him and I went to elementary & high school together and he helped film my behind the scenes photoshoot of Pretty Little Liars.

The main tech crew and I leaving a location on set.

Me taking a moment to do some quick makeup on the nurse. The other girl doing makeup is Heidi, she found me on YouTube and met me for the first time on set! She happened to live nearby ... ish.

One of my best friends from childhood was a zombie extra on set. Here she is smearing blood on another friend's face!

My trusted and lovely main zombie makeup artist, Mellie :) I met her and the man she's doing makeup here on at Fright Fest :)

a zombie extra on set. She also helped with makeup!

Mariel! She also found me through YouTube and met me for the first time on set. She was countlessly an amazing help on set along with the man next to her. This was the last day I got to see her since :(

Two excellent zombie/human extras. I met both of them at Fright Fest. They make me happy :)

The crew and some actors waiting for their cue seeing how the shot turned out.

About to film a narrow hallway scene in the hospital. That's me :)

And now, for some movie posters! 

Main photography credit to Jeremy Bagnol & Jennifer Marie. And all edited by me :)

With that said I hope you enjoyed the large update on my experience working on my short film up to this point. It'll be a long road finishing the actual film but it'll be worth it in the end, i'm positive :)

See the official movie website here: http://humanrootmovie.webs.com/