“On The Set” w/ Filmmaker Wayne Slaten - Part II

In January 2008, Houston filmmaker Wayne Slaten found out about George A. Romero’s “Diary of the Dead” Video Contest on MySpace. Being a huge Romero fan he immediately set out to develop a script for the project. This script would become a short film called “Last Stand.”

The following is an excerpt from Wayne Slaten’s actual filmmaking diary. Wayne Slaten would never be heard from again….

Okay, well that’s not entirely true.

Wayne’s next project, ZombiNatioN, will screen opening night at the Indie Film Festival September 5th-7th in San Marcos, TX.

LAST STAND SHOOTING DAY DIARY SATURDAY MARCH 8, 2008

5:00AM: Woke up eager to finally get this project shot. SUV packed with all the filming gear last night. A bagel for breakfast, a quick look at the equipment checklist and look at the storyboard for the first scene – now I am good to go.

6:10AM: Arrived at the old, deserted house on Taft Street. I am startled by a homeless man sleeping under a tarp in the bushes in front of the house. Once I ask him to leave because we will be filming soon, he asks if we need any extras. Not today I tell him. He might have made a good zombie extra though. Cast and crew call time is 6:30AM. Jim (James T. Denton one of the producers) arrives and we get out the necessary gear and walk through the shots. A neighbor walking her dogs looks at us suspiciously. I talk with her and found out she thought we were undercover police or S.W.A.T. because we are dressed in black and unloading black bags she thought were filled with weapons. I tell her we are filming a movie. She smiles and tells me good luck.

6:30AM: Cast starts arriving. Only the four primary characters are needed in the opening scene - Matt Carter, Donna Calleja, Norris Thompson and Laura Schlecht. We are keeping the shoot small and simple. We only have an hour or so of soft light to work with. I man the Panasonic AG-DVX100B camera and Jim keeps a look out for cars and works the reflector screens. No boom man needed. We are shooting tight shots for dialog with the Rode microphone attached to the camera. We film the rehearsals just in case we get a great, unexpected shot. Why not – Mini-DV is cheap. I shoot many of the scenes from a ladder. I need tight, mid to high downward shots to avoid getting the new townhouses and city streets and sidewalks that surround the old house in the shots. I get the wide shot of the group approaching the house low and at an up angle with the tripod. We used this same house for ZombiNatioN last summer. The trees and large corner lot help give it an isolated look. A few neighbors stop to watch. We run a few rehearsals and then shoot the scene twelve times from various angles. It should all come together nicely in post.

7:50AM: The cast go off together to get breakfast and will meet us at the next location for their 9:30AM call time. It is the first time Matt and Donna have worked with Norris and Laura. It will be a good chance for them to get better acquainted. Jim and I head to Amy Smith’s house to film the interior shots. The old house is completely dilapidated inside and is too dangerous to shoot in.

8:15AM: Jim and I meet Kristi Boul (the make-up effects artist) at the house. Kristi sets up the kitchen as her effects studio. Marisol Treviño (my wife and the other producer) and Arielle Slaten (my 17 year old daughter and production assistant/zombie extra) arrive. We begin clearing out the two rooms we will use for filming. Leaving only a sofa, piano, table, lamp and a cabinet. (Later I will be asked why is there furniture in an old abandoned house. I use it to create visual interest, color and balance in the shots. If the audience is too focused on the furniture – then I have bigger problems).

9:30AM: The cast arrives and we begin to tape up large sheets of cardboard to the outside of the windows. This house is also on a corner lot on a busy street. We need the house to appear isolated and dark. The script states the sun is setting when the story starts. We block out all of the light entering the rooms. The first wave of zombie extras begin arriving for their make-up. We have them staggered every couple of hours since we only have Kristi and her assistant Domingo Baragan III to apply make-up.

10:45AM: We begin filming the interior scenes. Everything is shot linear (in line with the action in the script). Lighting is proving to be a problem. We normally shoot with fluorescent Wescott Spiderlites. I generally like the light from a Spiderlite and really appreciate that it doesn’t get hot. The problem is that the walls are a pale yellow color and the fluorescent lighting is just too blue and intense (I don’t want to fix this in post). It needs to be softer. We have an inexpensive $25.00 halogen worker’s lamp from Home Depot, which we use sometimes for rim lighting or to bounce off reflectors. It looks great against the walls and warms up the shots. So we do the opening interior shots with the cheap halogen, a Wescott reflector and Westcott 4’X4’ scrim on a frame (to diffuse light). The table lamp in the scene helps provide lighting depth and lights the back wall. Jim and Arielle work the light, scrim and reflectors. They do an awesome job! It’s always about the coverage. We shot an average of ten or more takes per scene at various angles.

12:30PM: We begin shooting the main dialog scenes in the house. Once again. multiple angles and lots of takes. Our first 63 minute Mini-DV tape is full. Second tape in and we are off. The second wave of zombie extras arrive on set for make-up. Jeremy Worden (“Jeremy” in the film) arrives. Domingo, Arielle and Jeremy go out in the neighborhood in West University to film the brief footage that will be played on the Mini-DV camera in the scene where Ashley (Laura Schlecht) is looking at Jeremy on the camera. The dialog scenes are great! The actors are completely on cue and the timing after several takes is perfect. We shoot the scene focused on each actor and the group. I will insert a close up of Ashley holding the camera with Jeremy’s message and all should pull together with at least five or more angles in post. The cast and crew break for lunch and Jim and I walk through the next shots.

3:00PM: We shoot the scene with Bruce (Matthew Carter) at the window looking outside at the sexy female zombie. We are not shooting the female zombie – only Matt’s reactions. We will shoot the rest later. We use the same small room for the next scene. We shoot it tight, in the dark and at a different angle. Now we have what will appear to be another part of the house. This is the scene where Ashley (Laura Schlecht) and Donna (Donna Calleja) are attacked by the zombie on the floor (Marissa Viso – also the Assistant Director). We get all of it done except for the can in Marissa’s eye – she needs Kristi to apply the can to her eye socket (about 45 minutes).

4:15PM: We go out to the backyard to film the brief scene with the zombies walking towards the house. This scene is important because it establishes the impending doom in the script. The fog machines are too small and do not put out the amount of fog originally intended for this scene. The slight breeze doesn’t help. We end up with very little ground fog and I decide to cut the scene shorter than intended. Not happy.

5:00PM: Still disgusted with the outdoor scene, I decide to take Jeremy and Arielle back to the old house on Taft to film a scene with Jeremy coming up out of the front porch as a zombie. It’s not part of the original script but we need to make up for the missing zombie footage of the zombies approaching the house. I tell Jim and Matt what I am about to do and they are concerned that we have twenty plus zombies in make-up and we have not started shooting the bulk of the action-oriented scenes. I tell them I will be back in 45 minutes (I was). The third wave of zombie extras arrive. We get to the house and remove a piece of loose laying wood covering a whole on the front porch. Jeremy climbs in the hole in the porch (with the spiders and God knows what else) and we get the shot in three takes. Jeremy has a great “can do” attitude. Then it was back to the other location.

6:00PM: Jim has got the next shot set up. This is the completion of the can-to-the-eye zombie scene. We go to the same small room we used earlier. Alan Hutton is the fight choreographer on this film. He walks through the scene with Donna and her hitting Marissa in the eye with the can of black-eyed peas. Marissa has the can applied to her eye socket (it looks awesome). Ten takes and we got it. The second 63 minute Mini-DV tape is finished. Some of the cast and crew eat dinner. Jim and I walk through scenes. I flip the wrong lever on the tripod and release the mounting plate. The camera crashes four feet to the floor – anamorphic lens first. After several minutes of fear, cursing and a few short prayers – the camera is fine (Panasonic rules). This long shoot is starting to catch up with me.

7:30PM: Up to this point we had a pretty tight and organized shooting schedule. We were only running about an hour and a half behind schedule. We used the Spiderlite in the final scenes to convey a sense of it being later. I also wanted to change the lighting to a cooler temperature during the zombie attack – it adds a different feel. The warm lighting earlier was great for conveying a sense of “safety” in the house. Now it’s changed. We start with wide shots of the action taking place in the room. I shoot from a ladder. Steve (Norris Thompson) holding off the zombies at the door, Donna and Ashley appearing to enter from another part of the house and Bruce with his gun by the window. The set was too small to effectively create the illusion of a larger room and made it difficult to shoot the scene as written. I can fix it in post (famous last words). I decided that I would cut the scene up more and cut back and forth between the various scenes of action taking place simultaneously.

9:30PM: Finished the wide shots in the room and the close ups of Steve (Norris Thompson) and the zombies at the door. Originally we had an axe in the scene and Steve was supposed to cut off the hand of one of the zombies behind the door. That would have taken another 30 minutes to accomplish and just wasn’t that important. Jim made it very clear that we needed to keep this thing moving. We were now three hours behind schedule. We decided to use the hammer and pan right once Steve caught it and begins to swing it (later in post I added the thud sound of the hammer getting buried into the arm of a zombie (Clare Whalen) – so we create the illusion of the hit without seeing it). At this point we had twenty plus zombie extras watching the filming. I explained that we were running behind schedule and we understood if anyone wanted to leave. All but one stayed. We also had zombie extras that stayed from the earlier shoot to help out. We had a great group of people on this film.

10:30PM: We shoot the scene where Ashley (Laura Schlecht) beats Jeremy (Jeremy Worden) with a bat. Alan Hutton had worked on the scene choreography with them while we were filming Steve (Norris Thompson) fighting off the zombies at the door. The scene went flawlessly in five takes. We shoot the scene with Donna (Donna Calleja) being bitten on the neck (thus completing her transformation into a full zombie) by the shirtless zombie (Ted Purnhagen). Then we shot Donna biting Steve in the head (Donna was getting tired at this point). So next we set up the second part of the scene where Ashley bashes in Jeremy’s head while cursing him out. I went handheld behind a piece of glass and was covered in a plastic painter’s drop cloth. We also covered most of the room with plastic and shot the scene at an up angle. Originally we were supposed to have a pump which sprayed the blood up from Jeremy on to Ashley and created a blood bath. No pump and the low ceilings created a problem. So Alan stood off camera left and Kristi off camera right. People started getting a little weird after 17 hours of filming. Domingo decided to pour the fake blood mixture (with caro syrup in it) down the back of Kristi’s pants. We still don’t know why. That livened things up a bit and made Kristi pretty sticky and uncomfortable for the next few hours. Back to the shot –Alan and Kristi flicked the blood up with their hands on to Ashley while she wailed away on Jeremy (unfortunately later we would find that their finger tips could occasionally be seen and the scene had to be cut down but I overlapped the audio in the background of the other scenes).

12:15AM: We shot the scene with Ashley (Laura Schlecht) being drug down to the floor by Donna (Donna Calleja). We follow that scene up with Ashley being disemboweled by the zombies. This scene need a little extra “something”. So we had one of the zombies place her hand under the hole in Ashley’s tee shirt to push the guts through. The Elastigel (a rubber compound used to make the guts) smelled horrible. So a lot of the grimacing looks on the zombies faces are in response to the odor from the Elastigel. We complete that shot and film Bruce (Matthew Carter) reacting to Ashley’s death and aiming the shotgun at her. That was followed up by the final scene which involved the Director (Eric Simonsen) being attacked by Bruce. Four takes and we were done. Wish we had gotten more takes for the ending scenes.

1:30AM: We go to a back room of the house and shoot through a window to the the backyard. We lit the backyard with a Spiderlite and the $25.00 cheap light. This is the scene from earlier where Bruce (Matthew Carter) is looking out the window at the sexy zombie (Liberty Barney). We had several zombies in the background and end it with the zombie at the window (Peter Cressy) hitting the window (all the sound was added in post production). Three takes and we are done!

2:00PM: We break down the set, pack up the equipment and say a lot of “thank yous” and take a break. Editing starts tomorrow.

NOW. ShortFilmTexas.Com is proud to present Wayne Slaten’s short film “Last Stand”:

CLICK HERE to read PART I of Wayne Slaten’s “On The Set” Interview.

To learn more about Wayne’s work visit his production company website at: www.myspace.com/fire_pig_productions