Adventures in ZOMBIE filmmaking:

Jacob typically helps the company Orabrush keep up a weekly vlog, and luckily for us they decided they wanted a ZOMBIE youtube video.

It was pretty exciting because we had enough money to call up Chris Hansen who is a professional special effects makeup artist in Salt Lake City. He has worked on a ton a movies in LA like Underworld and Hellboy, but he talks like it was no big deal. He made seven zombie masks for us which are awesome (we kept two but Jacob had to swear he wouldn't wear it around and scare me). And then Chris and his team also put zombie makeup on 8 others. Of course, I volunteered to be a zombie with full makeup. When we showed up on set, Jacob was totally disgusted. He wouldn’t look at me for about half the day. He kept saying "thats not my wife". Take a look:

I know I look really gross. Please don't judge me or remember me by this.

The idea for the video is a first person shooter, so the video is supposed to look like you are playing a video game. Jacob built a helmet cam which is pretty sweet.

We also now have a ZOMBIE POLICE story. I was walking to the beach last week (Hawaii trip will be the next post) and I was telling the story to my family when a guy walking by us stopped. He had to admit he was listening in ask questions like "why were you dressed as a zombie?" evidently it was a good story to overhear. So I’m starting to think that this story is pretty good.

It starts with a location- we were shooting in an abandoned juvenile jail. It’s a super cool, huge building that’s been left to slowly fall apart.

Now let me tell you, we HAD a locations permit SIGNED and DATED. So we were not just messing around, this was a professional shoot.

During the day the zombies had a lot of down time which they spent exploring the super cool building. Some zombies decided to check out the roof which is full of barbed wire and other hazardous but awesome materials. While they were exploring, a couple zombies grabbed the air soft guns, which we had taped the orange ends to help them look like real guns. What we didn’t realize was next door and up the hill is an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. Go figure. So now what we have is: zombies on the roof wearing masks, jumpsuits, and holding guns. A teacher saw our weapon bearing zombies and called the cops. School goes on lock down.

We go on filming oblivious to the situation. For an hour the cops have us circled, with four snipers aiming at the zombies on the roof all assuming that we are planning to shoot at the school. During a break in the filming one of the zombies decides to take a walk on the road. The cops pull their guns on the kid, cuff him, and put him the car. Some of the other zombies witness the event and run inside yelling. We are all in masks and costumes so we have to hunt down Jacob who doesn’t look intimidating to talk to the police.

They were pretty nice, they just asked that if we film with guns again to give them a heads up. In the end, we think the Cops were just relieved that it wasn’t real.