First off, for the record, let it be said that I am DONE WITH SYRUP.

With that out of the way, let us begin, shall we?

Who knew making a bloody (literally) movie would be such an exhaustive process? We were under the illusion that the whole shoot at Bilo Battery will take no more than 2 hours. “We’ll just swoop in,” Lawrence calculated, “shoot our shit, and be out before you know it.” I nodded my head, my naivety misread as supreme confidence. Boy were we wrong.

In retrospect, nothing didn’t exactly go super wrong. For instance, nobody died. Like. On purpose. Aside from a few scrapped knees and palms (that would be mine), no one was injured. We were also quite careful to clean up our bloody mess when we left the premises, in case the next bus of tourists be scared off by the pools of blood left behind. “It’s not real blood!” The guide would yell, “It’s syrup and food colouring! See!” He runs his fingers on the red patch on the ground then licks his fingers. More screams and panicking tourists run over each other as they exit the site.

The shoot day was Saturday the 5th of June, and the build up towards the shoot was cautious yet exciting. After a week of practicing our runs, figuring out camera locations, and shopping for ingredients, by Friday, Saturday could not have come any slower.

On Saturday morning…we began.

9:21am: Lawrence and Dani arrive at my place. Lawrence is in the zone. He even brought his Steven Spielberg cap. Well. Not really. But the impression was there.

Albie arrives later, and we all await the Mystery Van. I attempt to do a few zombie growls, but decide to keep my virgin state voicebox for when we actually need it. And when I want to ask for juice.

10:05am: Feroz arrives, and brings with him the much hallowed Production Van, as well as the Production Driver, Zaeed. Without Feroz, Zaeed and his van, this shoot would have been a whole lot more difficult to get going. We all pile eagerly into the back, crammed amongst the gear, food, bags and pointy tripods that made sitting arrangements slightly awkward.

10:22am: We stop off at MH Lami to make a few last minute purchases. 2 more bottles of red food colouring. 5 loaves of sliced bread. 3 tin cans of mutton. 2 mutton pies provide a quick breakfast for Lawrence and Dani. I kindly decline the offer to have some. I had Weetbix for breakfast. And as we all know – Fiji kids. Are Weetbix Kids.

10:40am: We pick up Dane and Mike on the way. Dane was seriously in the method acting swing of things. “Fuckin’ went out to the clubs till 5am. Only 3 hours sleep mate.” He looked surprisingly fresh for a 3 hour sleep person. “I’ma be a real zombie for this movie thing.” Mike loaded 2 buckets of stuff-to-make-blood-with. “Here, have a taste. I made some last night.” I took a small swig. “Sa, thing tastes nice man!” Famous last words.

11:01am: After much dirt road traversing, we arrive at our destination. The Bilo Battery. As we stumbled out of the van, joints sore from the seat-less ride, a lone guy was seen on the hill cutting grass. When he saw us, he cut the engine and jogged down to greet us.

“Bula,” Solomone smiled, waving us to a small hut next to the gates. We showed him our admittance fee group receipt (it helps that we paid our admittance fee as a group the day before at the museum) and permission letter, and he gladly nodded his head, permission granted. As we thanked him and started the process of unpacking our gear, I realized we were one zombie extra short. A quick conference with Lawrence, and I was hunching underneath the entry hut infront of Solomone again. “Vacava. Want to be one zombie?” He smiled, unsure exactly as to what this ‘zombie’ would entail. “Oh you just have to run ga, like the horror movies ga, run and move your hands like this -” I flailed my hands emphatically, “and thats it. Set?” A cautious nod, and he was in.

11:15am: Lawrence took us on a quick tour of the site, pointing out where the shoot would take place. Camera positions, walking shots, specific dialogue queues. The first thing that got to me was the scenery. Situated on the top of a hill, you had a clear look towards the Suva harbour. Something tells me this location wasn’t just for its sight seeing vista.

11:30am: “Ok – set. Let’s set up.” We broke up into smaller groups, each with their own sense of purpose and direction. Mike, Dan and me began the paint/blood make up. Albie and Dani walked slowly off to the entrance to ready the opening sequence while Lawrence helped Feroz help set up his camera. We were readying ourselves ontop of a pillbox, which proved to be quite the defensive spot to defend against…I dunno….zombie soldiers?

11:55am: Putting on zombie makeup is quite the messy affair. Since Lawrence was the authority on all things zombie (as well as having watched zombie makeup tutorial videos online the previous night), he took it upon himself to be the Chief Zombie Makeup Artist. So how does one go about making a gut-tearing, bone-chilling, blood-soaked zombie?

As a base, use standard black paint (water colour), and paint large swabs onto the front of the shirt. Then paint red on top of the black, which should lead to a big, wet, dark red spot, right where the zombie dribbled his first deluge of human blood. It also helps to wear a shirt that’ll throw out the red. In this case, white. As a funny side note, all the zombies wore white. Great. Just what we needed. A colour co-ordinated horde of zombies.

Using that same paintbrush, throw bits & pieces of red paint all over the shirt and face. The spottier, the better.

With the syrup+food colouring mixture on hand, take a mouthful of the ‘sugar blood’ and then let it dribble out and down your chin. The messier the better. Take care to equally distribute the fluid on both sides of the chin, so as to get an even flow down both your chin as well as your throat and shirt.

Profit.

12:10pm: The shoot begins. The beginning sequences are shot without much fanfare, or problems, with the only pauses in the shoot due to camera position switching, thanks to the one and only production camera. But hey. It’s a pretty damn good camera.

1:10pm: With the intro sequence out of the way, it was time to dress up the last zombie convert and get him ready for his closeup. Or…guts out.

“Just remember, when we’re there and shooting,” Lawrence said sternly, “everyone should be focused. Try and get the shoot done as quickly as possible, no monkeying around or making fun.” We all nodded in agreement. Get your Game face on. Focus. No fooling around.

Well. Perhaps just abit.

2:22pm: In-between takes, we all take a breather. Albie thinks the zombies aren’t zombie enough. “You need more hand action.” He raises his hands and claws at the air, grimacing angrily and stumbles off into the distance. “See? More movement. Like – real angry spazzed out.” The zombies are not impressed.

3:40pm: During a take where the horde of zombies rush madly out through the tunnels and into the open, a strange thing happened. Since this was the scene where we needed one more zombie extra to sort of fill up the scenery, we got trusty Solomone to run with the horde.

While we were waiting for the camera to be repositioned, a man suddenly appeared through the tunnels. Short, smiling, sandals and a school backpack, the Fijian stranger happily strolled through the group, smiling and saying bula as he passed each of us. Recognising Solomone, he strolled over, shook his hand, and launched into conversation, oblivious to the rest of group’s puzzlement as to who exactly was this guy.

“Us gang making one movie boy.” Solomone proudly pointed to the camera crew and the zombies. “Us gang have to run through this tunnel and make noise, like in the horror movie.” The stranger’s eyes lit up. “Sa dina!” He nodded his head, smiling and waving at our puzzled but polite looks. “Vacava, you want to run with us gang?” Stranger guy (who, for the sake of I’m-tired-of-typing-stranger-guy, shall be henceforth referred to as Happy Extra) didn’t have to be asked twice. He quickly threw his bag into the corner, took off his sandals, and raised his hands in the pose of a somewhat happy-go-lucky zombie. “Io boy. Just like that.” Solomone nodded and patted his back.

I shrugged, and looked at Lawrence. “Meh. The more the merrier I always say.”

We do a few shots of running through the tunnels, zombie cries echoing throughout the site. I secretly hope that a few tourists visit the site, and get scared away by the ‘local’ undead. Sadly, Saturday was a slow day, and we had the whole area to ourselves.

Happy Extra happily runs with the rest of us as we do our zombie run sequence. We have to stop, and instruct him to try and wave his hands abit more. “Io io set.” The same nod, a smile, he gets it. When we move to reposition ourselves outside, he quickly pulls Solomone aside, “Hey au sa fire eh.” As quickly as he appeared, he collects his sandals, backpack, and heads off into the distance, once again leaving the rest of us in a state of confusion.

Once again I shrug, and look at Lawrence. “Oh well. At least he enjoyed himself.”

Much later, when we had left the site, I realized we had forgotten to get his name to credit under extras. I guess Happy Extra will have to suffice for now.

4:01pm: Exhausted, bloodied and starving, we wrapped up the first stage of shooting. “How much shooting we did today Lawrence?” I asked. Lawrence mussed, and stroked his chin. “About 60%. The rest of the 40% we’ll be doing at Mike’s place.” Whew.

For the zombies, the taste of fake blood had lost its sweet allure. Seriously. After a gazillion times of holding blood in your mouth and letting it dribble out just to refresh your makeup before the next take, the sweetness (or saltiness, since we also had soy sauce + red food colouring) had worked it’s way all the way to the top of the “NEVAH AGAIN” list of things to stay away from for the next month or so.

As we were packing our gear and mess, Viliame, Solomone’s brother showed up. “Sa, you gang finished?” I shook his hand and tiredly nodded, “Wooo boy, if you came half an hour early, you would have been another zombie running with us gang man. Ah well, we’ll just put in your name in the credits, since you two gang brothers.” He smiled, then went back to staring at the bloodied floor inside one of the rooms.

“Hey remember we have to clean up our shit before we leave aye.” Grabbing a few shirts (come to think of it, whose shirts were those?) we wiped the blood patches, our tiredness aggravating the process. “Hey don’t worry, us gang will clean it up,” Solomone offered. “Fire set,” we heroically scrubbed away at the cement, “us gang made the mess, we’ll clean it up.” Much sore backs were had.

4:15pm: And with a wave to Solomone and Vili, we departed from the Bilo Battery site. Even though we were sore and stiff from all the running around (bunch of unfit zombies we were), we headed eagerly to Mike’s place for…lunch.

NEXT: The last 40%  of the shoot. At Mike’s house.

PS: Some people have questioned my need to reveal the production process of this short movie. “Why not just post a few pics before the day you release it, then just show the movie the day after? Otherwise people reading the blog are going to expect something big. You going to hype the thing saraga, and might set them up for disappointment.”

True. A good valid point. However, I feel that while the element of surprise makes for a great advertising push, the whole purpose for making this production diary wasn’t to raise people’s expectations on our movie, let alone anything we make. I’ll admit. We’re all first time n00bs here. None of us have ever made a movie before. None of us have ever done a full day shoot. And we most certainly are under no illusions that this movie is going to be Academy Award material.

So I’ll get that bit out of the way first of all. We’re not making a brilliant, Adrian Brody acting, Michael Bay awesome, Romeo classic film for the movie critics to get a hard on for.

Nope. We’re making a 5 minute zombie film. For fun. That’s it. Just a bunch of friends, with an opportunity to make something cool, and be proud of it. We’re going to make as good a zombie movie as we can possibly make. And leave it at that.

And the production diaries? Why, so that you too can have fun with us as we go about making the damn movie of course!

Be Sociable, Share!

•