Shoot HD Shoots Zombies
To mark the return of apocalypse drama the Walking Dead on NowTV, Producer Jamie MacDonald and Director Paul Wilkinson came to Shoot HD for cameras & crew to film a zombie-attack on a North London petrol station. The 30" & 40" promos will play at petrol station check-outs around the UK and show the forecourt being swamped with flesh-hungry zombies.
Wilkinson called in 20 zombie re-enactors and unleashed them in the dead of night and filmed the ensuing chaos. 1st AD Nick Goulden turned zombie wrangler for the night and skilfully avoided being bitten. DOP Ben Hodgson left Shoot HD's Red and Amira cameras on the shelf in favour of a couple of c300's, a box of primes and a ladderpod. "We had to resist the temptation to go for a cinematic look as we needed to emulate a cctv look" said Ben "we considered using a portable multi mini-cam rig as well as a dozen Go-pro's, but opted for two c300's as they gave the best low-light latitude as well as falling within a limited budget". Lenses used were a Canon 16-35mm zoom, Canon 24mm & 50mm prime.
For lighting, a couple of bi-colour led panel lights were used for fill and one Dedo 575hmi for a shadow effect, otherwise it was down to the low available light. "I wanted to shoot around a stop of F.11 to keep the deep focus cctv look and set an iso of 5,000 which we upped to 10,000 for the penultimate shot where a marauding zombie takes a side-swipe at the camera."
Above: Shoot HD's Robert Momber lines up a zombie to shoot
This is Shoot HD's first commission from WCRS and we had a lot of fun shooting zombies with them - who wouldn't! We're certainly looking forward to our next project with the team and who knows, we may even get to break out some of our Arri Amiras, DJI Ronins and a bunch of other cinematic toys - stay tuned!
