The issue of marriage equality has been all over the news lately. More and more polls indicate that the majority of Americans support the granting of equal marriage rights to consenting adults of all races, sexes, and stages of decay. For social conservatives, this can be disconcerting. They would like to pretend that healthy nontraditional relationships don’t and can’t exist. “How do I explain it to my children?” they cry. So let’s talk about zombie marriage.

Zombies are consenting adults. Sure our communication skills aren’t the greatest, and sometimes we get a little slow when our brains start to rot. But after spending the last few years on the Internet and especially on certain social networks and discussion forums, I don’t think anyone has the right to look down on me for only having half a functioning brain. Compared to some of the comments on Youtube, I’m downright gifted.

“But it’s not right!” the conservatives cry. “The wedding vows say ‘until death do us part’!”

For your information, my husband and I wrote our own vows, and that phrase wasn’t included. Not everyone copies their wedding off a template. Not everyone even gets married in a church. People get married in courthouses, movie theatres, and graveyards. And spiritual beliefs are just as varied. My hubs and I will part when God, fate, or a twelve-gauge shotgun decides, not an arbitrary, traditional couple of words.

“But zombies can’t have children and can’t reproduce! There’s no reason for them to get married!”

What on earth does physical reproduction have to do with a legal contract between two people? The two can and do operate completely independent of each other. Besides, anyone who has studied epidemiology knows that zombies are aces at reproduction. In fact, we’re better at it than most breathers. On a good day I can make ten new zombies in a single afternoon, whereas my breather compatriots can’t make more than one a year without ending up on a reality show.

“Next zombies will want to marry our dogs or our children!”

What exactly would be the point to that? We may want to devour your dogs—especially if they’re yappy, ill-trained little rats that don’t stay on their own property—but why would we want to marry them? A dog can’t even cosign a mortgage, and good luck getting alimony out of a ten year old.

“It’s unnatural and goes against what Jesus would have wanted for us!”

You’re reading this right now on an electronic talking screen that probably would have sent Jesus screaming into the night about demons and witchcraft. When you can Skype your opinions on a stone tablet, then you get to whine about what’s natural and unnatural.

“It’s just gross.”

Aaaand, here we have it. The very heart of the matter, the real crux of the argument. Zombies are icky, therefore zombies shouldn’t be allowed to marry each other. Following the same logic, we should probably ban marriage between ugly people, too. After all, unattractive people are more genetically likely to have unattractive children. Won’t someone think of the children?????

Oh yeah, and how can breathers explain it to their kids? “They’re holding hands because they’re in love, sweetie. They’re shambling this way because they’re hungry. Now hold on tight to that rifle and don’t forget the double-tap.”

Until Death?

The sun sets on Hillsboro.

Not all rehearsals focus on dialog and acting.  For a few days, technical work takes center stage. In the week leading up to opening night, lighting and sound design is worked out in collaboration between lighting designer Ryan O’Gara, sound designer Amy Altadonna and stage manager Angi Adams. One of the rows in the theater is covered with equipment as the technical details are tested, refined and stored for playback during the show.  Director Susan Atkinson moves back in the row immediately behind the stations giving input and guidance.

From the first rehearsal, Angi has been noting the meticulous details of stage movement down to which actor moves which bench and in which scene change. By now, movement is refined to the point when light and sound can be applied in support of the story.  While the script dictates the dialog, the production company fills in the technical details.  Mist, orange light and shadows give the impression of a hot and humid evening supporting the townspeople commenting on the blistering heat.

Drummond comes to town.

Light and sound come together in Henry Drummond’s (Keith Baker) entrance. The lawyer for the defense in Inherit the Wind is an unwelcome stranger in the God-fearing town of Hillsboro.  Melinda (Gaby Bradbury), a young girl, sees his larger-than-life shadow cast on a wall and screams “It’s the devil!” and runs off.  Ryan uses a headset and communicates with the lighting engineer to adjust the size and intensity of the shadow.  He speaks in numbers and percentages and the shadow elongates.  Amy plays a blues guitar riff underscored with a low bass.  The music is so unlike the gospel hymns earlier in the play that it emphasizes his strangeness and the tones say “trouble’s coming.” In production, it’ll happen too quickly for most audience members to give it much thought, but it will give an impression that problems lie just ahead.

Evening at the courtroom

Not all of it is strictly for the audience, though.  In Act I, the townspeople enter from either side of the stage singing Old Time Religion.  They’re not within hearing distance of each other when they start, yet they need to be in sync. A recording of the cast singing it in a prior rehearsal closes that gap.  Angi reminds the cast to pay attention to the queue lights back stage.  When the light is on, get ready to go on stage and when the light goes off, start signing.  Today, though, rehearsal slows down to get the technical work ironed out. The actors often wait as transitions are tweaked and adjusted.  Not everyone is required for every scene.  I’m reminded of the down time on an active film set.  The director is always on deck, but there are expected pauses for the rest of the cast and crew.

Ryan O’Gara at his lighting design workstation

It’s also reminiscent of the film post production process as the sound track and digital effects are applied, but that’s where the analogy ends.  A film editor commits the edits once and they’re burned to DVD, the job is done.  Not so for the production crew who is on hand for every performance. Light and sound is queued up for playback and it’s up to them to hit their queues and work in sync. They may not be on stage for curtain call, but they are just as responsible for delivering the performance as the actors. Next time you find yourself applauding for the cast, make sure there are a few claps for the crew, too.

Behind the Scenes at Bristol Riverside Theatre: Technical Prep

Linda B. Stockton (left) and Gina Andreoli (right)

On Saturday May 4^th, I arrive at the rehearsal studio after the lunch break.  I’m early for a scheduled meeting with the costume department, but just in time to catch a hymnal recital.  This time, the cast is practicing Rock of Ages and Walking to Zion and they are on their game as Keith Baker plays piano and coaches the chorus.  I feel like I’m walking into an old time tent revival. The last time I heard these tunes was at the Gospel Tent at the 2003 JazzFest is New Orleans.  When the cast starts clapping their hands and sings Old Time Religion a cappella, I’m tempted to join in. It’s catchy.

The two actors playing Howard, Erik Daughterman and Alexander Ryan, are due to be fitted today.  Howard is a young student of Cates, the teacher on trial, and has the distinction of being the first character introduced in the play.  It opens with Howard, in overalls, fishing and taunting a girl with a worm. Later, in the second act, he’s in a suite when he’s called as a witness in the trial. Two actors with two costume changes call for four distinct outfits. With a cast of over forty, the costume department has their work cut out for them.

Gina Andreoli and Linda B. Stockton manage costume acquisitions, fittings and tailoring. Director Susan Atkinson tells them what she’s looking for and it’s up to Gina and Linda to make it happen and button up the details. Clothes, shoes and hats fill the fitting room waiting to be tried on, but it’s far from the full inventory of all the prior productions. The rest is in storage and one of the challenges they face is keeping the inventory in rotation without going over capacity.

Suits and dresses reminiscent of the early 20^th century line the length of the room. Gina explains that with The Great Gatsby in theaters 20s fashion has enjoyed a boost in demand. My expectation was that most of the shopping would be done at thrift stores for both cost savings and for the style.  To my surprise, Gina and Linda do most of their acquisitions online using eBay. And they have some contacts with other theaters open to sharing and swapping costumes.

Alexander’s suit is a just a bit large on him, but it fits the role of a young boy having to dress up for a special occasion. It brings my grandfather to mind, who insisted on buying clothes a size too large explaining I’d “grow into it.”  Gina then marks the hems and cuffs and the fitting’s done.

Keeping the costumes in order in a cast this size requires dedication to organization. The clothes go back on the rack in a definite sequence with the lead roles up front followed by the ensemble cast. In the next week or so it’ll all be transferred to the theater and readied for production.

Behind the Scenes at Bristol Riverside Theatre: Costumes

Spring is here at last, and the fear of limb loss due to freezing has finally passed. My little shamblers made it through the winter with only two fingers and six toes lost in total. This isn’t bad for them; at least we got most of the toes back. What we couldn’t find half-buried in the snow was later fished out of the mouth of the neighbor’s dog.
Unfortunately, with the thaw comes week after week of nonstop rain. This is less damaging than frost, but it’s equally depressing. Has your mother ever told you, “You’re not made of sugar; you’re not going to melt”? Well this holds true for the life-challenged as well. We don’t melt—exactly. But we do rot faster in the damp, and there’s nothing more dreary than watching bits of yourself wash away in a heavy downpour. It also upsets our breather neighbors when they find hairy chunks of scalp in the gutters. They start freaking out about radiation, and then those guys in the plastic jumpsuits come out and tear everything up.
So I can’t let the kids out in the rain too much, even though they enjoy stomping in puddles and munching on dead worms. But I can’t keep them cooped up inside for too long, either. They fight over toys, beat each other up, and the only video games they like are those disturbing ones that feature zombies as helpless victims of rednecks with shotguns. Those games will rot their brains—more.
Fast food restaurants usually have indoor play spaces, but I worry about the quality of the food there. It doesn’t make much sense to take my shamblers somewhere so they can run around and exercise, and then let them fill up on meat that’s been fed a steady diet of greasy beef, processed cheese, and phosphorus-laden beverages. We go occasionally as a treat, but it’s not a permanent solution to our cabin fever.
Children’s museums are an adequate alternative to turning the kids loose on the neighborhood, but it can get expensive. Even the cheaper ones that only cost five bucks or so per kid can add up when you include transportation, snacks, souvenirs, and whatever I have to pay the parents of whichever kid that inevitably gets bitten. You’d think that in this helicopter generation parents would do a better job of teaching their kids not to grab toys away from the ravenous dead, but whatever. Somehow it’s always my fault.
Indoor gyms are the best choice all around. Most park districts have them; don’t go to one of those fancy workout places. Cost aside, everyone there is either ridiculously skinny or on one of those strange diets that makes them taste weird. There is no good eating to be had if you get the munchies. Go to your local park district instead. They usually offer a family pass, which makes it more affordable. Also there’s lots of space to spread out, so there’s less chance of some breather child invading my kid’s personal space. Best of all is the running track. Whenever I go for a jog in my neighborhood, someone always panics and calls the CDC. But on the running track at my park district’s community center, I don’t even stand out. Everyone there is moaning, shambling, and stumbling every ten paces or so. It’s the ideal place to take the family when Mother Nature isn’t cooperating.

Rain, Rain, Get Out of My Brain

Model design for the set.

The day after the script read-through, rehearsals of Inherit the Wind begin at the Bristol Riverside Theatre.  The cast is practicing rousing hymnals as Keith Baker plays an upright piano including Rock of Ages and Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.  While the script calls for a few verses of Old Time Religion and Walking to Zion, the other hymnals give the production team options for scene transitions or a preamble to the first scene.  The script provides dialog and action, but there are plenty of details left to fill in.

A ten minute break follows and then Act I Scene I begins. The room has been drastically transformed from the prior arrangement at the script read-through. It’s gone from tables arranged in a large rectangle to a mock court room. Tables sit atop one another to form a tiered jury box with the judge’s bench towering above the rest. This is the heart of the play where Drummond (Keith Baker) and Brady (Michael McCarty) face off against each other over the fate of a small town teacher, Cates (Jered McLenigan), accused of teaching evolution.

Rehearsal starts with seating the jurors and court room audience.  While watching a play, I don’t give these details much thought, but these are the practical concerns that need to be addressed.  No sooner than everyone is placed, Director Susan Atkinson has the cast get up and practice their entry and note their place in line.

Fewer actors are at this event than at the read-through, but it’s still a packed court room.  Some roles are filled by two actors.  Kathryn Moroney, assistant director, encourages them to shadow one another if both are present.

With places and movement worked out, Drummond and Brady start their legal arguments as the court observes and Susan orchestrates.  The cast demonstrates they know their lines, but they can’t see the court from perspective of the theatre audience.  An actor in the court room audience is seated behind Drummond fanning herself.  The script does describe the day as hot and stuffy.  It’s a perfectly natural thing to do.  Susan asks her to remain still since her movement behind Drummond tends to distract from the principle movement on stage.  That’s not something the actor could have seen from her perspective.

As Brady and Drummond verbally spar, the audience reacts in favor or derision and Susan guides and fosters it.  During jury selection, Sillers (Mark Collmer) has his religious beliefs questioned.  Ultimately, he responds with “I just work at the feed store.”  In context, it’s a funny response and the actors responded with a laugh. At the script read-through, the laughter was candid. Here, in the rehearsal, laughter is an unscripted part of the response.

The cast’s job is clear.  They need to read between the lines of the script and respond in character. Not as they would respond naturally, but as a Christian in a small southern town in 1925 might respond.

As the session winds down, Kathryn gives the ensemble cast a few suggestions that remind me of the advice I was given in my recent acting class. She tells them to consider their character’s background and their history. Let that inform how to respond and react.

Next up is another hymnal rehearsal and a visit to the costume department. Stay tuned!

Behind the Scenes at Bristol Riverside Theatre: Orchestrating a Cast

A few weeks ago Sanj and I completed an acting class in effort to improve our directorial skills.  It involved learning and delivering a monologue under the guidance of an experienced instructor.  We paid as much attention to the direction of other students as we did to the instructor’s direction of us.  Soon after the class finished, another opportunity presented itself.

The Bristol Riverside Theatre is putting on a production of Inherit the Wind with an opening night of May 23^rd.  Along with the casting call, an opportunity to participate in a unique opportunity was announced.  For the first time, “all-access” reporters have been invited to see and document what happens behind-the-scenes during the production from the first script read-through to opening night. Having shot a short film last year and with an interest in seeing how other productions, both stage and screen are run, I jumped at it.

Kathryn Moroney, the associate director, invited me to the first read-through of the script Tuesday evening, April 30^th.  I felt like I had arrived at a town hall meeting when I walk into the rehearsal studio.  Over forty actors were seated around a series of tables arranged in a rectangle.  About ten others are off the sides in support including stage managers, Greg Hartley, Audience Development Coordinator, and Debbie Fleischman, managing public relations. This is the largest production the Bristol Riverside Theatre has done in recent history, with a cast of nearly fifty. The play recreates a small southern town and, looking at the population of the rehearsal studio, I think they can do it.

Director Susan Atkinson observed the reading while Kathryn read the italicized portions of the script indicating action and movement.  Having just finished my acting class a few weeks ago, I have an implicit expectation that the script reading would need adjustment.  When the students in my class would read for the first time, it was generally delivered without any emotion or sense of character.  I must have had a subconscious expectation that the first reading would involve adjustment.

That wasn’t the case. These actors made it through auditions. They are cast and they know their characters.  I’m struck with how well the lines are delivered.  Genuinely funny lines in the script were met with candid laughter.  Here, the cast can freely respond to the lines.  Later, they’ll get direction and orchestration, but tonight it’s the first read-through.  Not a rehearsal.  If you’re not delivering the next line, the response is unscripted and that’s okay.

In less than three hours, the entire play had been read. Applause followed and Susan congratulated the cast on a job well done.  Next come rehearsals of both stage and song, but you’ll have to wait for my next entry for that.

Behind the Scenes at Bristol Riverside Theatre: Script Read-Through

A packed house at the Seventh Annual Roslyn Film Festival

Once again, Blobageddon has reared its head.  This time it was at the seventh annual Roslyn Film Festival, a community-based event held at the Roslyn Fire Company in Abington, PA to benefit the fire fighters.  This marks the fifth time Blobageddon has been unleashed on an unsuspecting audience and both Sanj and I were in attendance Saturday evening March 23^rd.

I’d been living in Abington, PA since November 2010 and hadn’t heard about the festival until a few months ago – just in time to get a last minute submission sent in ahead of the deadline.  Sundance, it’s not.  But, it is more than either of us expected.  We recognize that Blobageddon is not exactly cinematic excellence.  What it is, it is and that’s cheese, glorious, indulgent cheese.  Go ahead and soak it in.  It’s less than five minutes. I’ll wait.

We shot it specifically with the Phoenixville Blobfest in mind.  It somehow managed to win the 2012 Blobfest Short Film competition, covered more fully in a prior post.  At that point, it was the most involved video we had produced, complete with an animated blob and a mad scientist’s lab (Part I and Part II).  As low budget as it is, we put plenty of work into it and want it to get as much exposure as we could muster.  The Roslyn Film Festival takes place only five minutes from my home.  We couldn’t resist an opportunity to see Blobageddon screened for another audience, so we entered.

While it’s not a high profile festival, it is a worthwhile and enjoyable fund-raiser for the Roslyn Fire Company.  We expected other films to be about on par with the dubious quality of our submission.  That was not the case.  Nine short films were screened, all of which had better editing and larger budgets than our homage to the Blob. 

Audience members were given a ballot and asked to cast their vote for their favorite.  First, second and third place trophies were to be awarded at the end.  Going into the event, we thought our chances of winning a trophy stood at 33% with nine entries.  After seeing the competition, we quickly determine our changes fell to about 0.002% or less.

Both Sanj and I have seen Blobageddon dozens of times.  As it played, we were paying more attention to the audience reaction than the movie.  When the audience vote was tallied there was a Q&A session with the filmmakers.  Someone asked what it was like hearing the audience’s response to your own comedy.  I was frank.  The laughs were not as frequent or as loud this time around as they were at Blobfest or at Mascara and Popcorn and I think that has to do with the audience as much as it does with the movie.  Having seen Blobageddon in several different events, I think the response hinges on the context and expectations.

John answering a question from the audience in the filmmaker Q&A session.

Blobfest is all about camp.  And camp we are.  That audience was expecting it and reveling in it.  The Mascara and Popcorn crowd enjoyed cheese horror and appreciated our short for what it was.  A crowd of sci-fi and horror fans I presented to last month also enjoyed the movie despite its apparent flaws.  This time, at the Roslyn Film Fest, it was different.  We were up against dramas and documentaries with a budget edited by people in film school.  The first film set the tone. Infinite, unlike our submission, had a set, crew, preproduction planning, etc.  A sci-fi drama, it touched on fundamental religious questions and the nature of the universe.  On the spectrum of quality independent films, it’s about as far from Blobageddon as possible.  Moreover, it set the tone for the festival.  There were just as many comedic shorts as there were dramas, but the dramas shined in terms of editing and cinematography.

Infinite won third-place. We didn’t have a chance.  Dancing Outside the Box, a documentary about wheel chair dancing, won second.  Toy Soldier, a short about a boy who loses his father in the Iraq war, took first.

They are all well-deserved wins and give us something to aspire to as amateur filmmakers.  Blobageddon is only a start.  We’ve been moving along in post-production with Zombie Casserole and have a few more scripts churning away.  We will be submitting to the Roslyn Film Festival next year.

We continue to film in and around the Philadelphia area.  If you are interested in participating or would like to learn more, please feel free to contact us at zombies@forzombies.net.

Blobageddon Screened at the Roslyn Film Festival

We at For Zombies don’t let anything stop us, least of all common sense.  No experience – we’ll muddle our way through it.  And we’ve been muddling our way through make up as evidenced by the photo of ourselves in the banner above.  With some guidance from a friend of ours who had done make up for seasonal haunted houses, we applied cotton balls, latex and grease paint with no artistic still whatsoever.

And that was fine for our YouTube videos, but when we wanted to shoot Zombie Casserole, we knew we needed some help.  Fortunately, Derek and Alicia generously volunteered their time and skills and zombified a horde for our shoots.  That worked wonderfully for our weekend filming.

Sanj, before I zombified him.

Sanj during zombification.

Zombie Sanj!

Sanj and I do have occasional cause to shoot our Dear Zombies segments that feature just ourselves and we recognize that we need to improve our make-up skills.  So, we enrolled in a one-day class hosted at FX Warehouse in Fishtown.   The Poor Man’s Zombie Workshop was taught by Josh Counsel, a make-up artist with plenty of experience in the field.  He owns Toxic Image Make Up Studios out in Utah.

There are a number of nuggets we picked up that will improve our zombie making skills:

• Use tissue paper in addition to or instead of cotton balls.  A single ply of tissue gives your skin a crackled look.
• Use Rice Crispies, Corn Flakes or oat meal to give the skin a distressed look.
• Stipple and dab with the brush.  Don’t make long brush strokes.  My girlfriend later pointed out that’s how women apply make-up.  Apparently, I have a gross lack of experience in this area.
• Do not use water to thin fake blood.   That tends to stain clothing when the food coloring is introduced.  Use vodka or some other alcohol base instead.

John with a slight cereal skin condition.

John becoming a zombie.

Burn victim zombie!

Both Sanj and are better prepared to zombify ourselves and others at our next filming event.  A little learning goes a long way.  We haven’t given away all of the secrets.  A zombie has to keep a few for himself.

Make Up For Zombies

It’s kind of a big deal when you take a project you’ve been working on for months and get your first glimpse of what the end result might look like.  So it was a couple of weeks ago, when I produced a DVD of the rough cut of Zombie Casserole.  It clocked in at 31 minutes, 13 seconds and 17 frames.  After a couple of months of piecing together individual scenes, this was pretty much a watershed moment.

John and I slapped some beers in ourselves, the DVD in a player and kicked back with notepads and pens.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t far off from our original vision when writing the script last fall.  Some things came out better than we hoped, others not as well – but the overall film was pretty much on target.

Although the sound in this version hadn’t been mixed, we did have a catchy title song to go with the opening credits thanks to Shmoolie.  One big thing we learned was that even though when writing a script you may come up with separate scenes, when you actually lay everything out, those scenes and the ordering may not make sense.  I suppose that’s why it’s called a rough cut.

However, this is film – we can make anything happen.  We immediately decided in some cases that in order to make the timing make better sense, we needed to intercut parts of some scenes with parts of others.  We also saw some opportunities to use After Effects to clean up some footage.  And yes, while this does require work, it’s not nearly as bad as sitting in front of a monitor with lots of uncataloged footage you have to review and then pick through to decide what should be used.

I should note that once we take into account all our notes, we’ll still have a ways to go.  At that point, the film will be ready for sound mixing and scoring.  But there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

The Zombie Casserole Chronicles – Part Ten

We admit it, we zombies don’t know much about art. Sure, the Moanin’ Lisa’s fine and so’s the Scream. We can appreciate any artist who’s willing to hack off part of himself and save us some trouble. We know what we do like and it’s undead art that breathe new life in our daily shambles. In our un-beating hearts, we are hungry artists.

Here are a few samples from Ed Luterio who runs The Spirited Artist, a BYOB instructional studio and gallery next to the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville. It’s the home of the Blobfest.

Edward A. Luterio
Illustrator
www.Fishpainter.net
215-353-3534

The Spirited Artist
237 Bridge Street
Phoenixville Pa. 19460
Phone: 610-933-4336

Zombie Art Appreciation