Zombie - extra

During the short film "Man vs Zombie" there is a scene which contains many Zombies, therefore they needed extras to perform these, hence I was a zombie for the day!. In the morning I went to get my make-up done, this consisted if allot of fake blood, gashes and pale/grey foundation which wasn't particularly pleasant to have applied (but it was an experience). Once my make-up was applied I waited in the green room for an hour or so until I was needed for some shots. Before the filming we did a movement workshop to help us understand how the crew wanted us to move and behave, this helped me to change my movement style to un-human like and to gain a better understanding of what the director was looking to achieve. Which was in this case fast-paced Zombies who looked convincing, scary and were active vocally (groans, snarls etc).


The shoot- vocals and movement-(I used aspects from "Shaun of the dead" to help me)

• I tried to make my limbs look crooked and to walk with little balance and control, I also made sure that as soon as I saw a "human" I would focus completely on it as a zombie would see it as a piece of tasty meat basically!. I did find the movement very challenging though as it took me out of my comfort zone completely and I found it hard to change movement style completely, yet on the bright side I perform to the best of my ability (at the time) even though I was pretty terrified!, and the more I push myself out of my comfort zone the more I will improve.
• The vocals were also hard as it just doesn't feel right to be making such angry and silly noises, but despite this I did try and groan and snarl at the characters I was chasing after!, looking back I think I could of improved my vocals massively as I didn't use vocals too much and I don't think the sounds I did make sounded very convincing!.

Camera angles and frame sizes
 As the scene was challenging for the media crew to shoot, it took a while and many shots had to be retaken. 3 cameras were used simply because of how much was happening in the scene, and many shots had to be changed from long shots to close-ups as too much was going on. The zombies  (including myself) accidentally walked out of shot on occasions as we either got carried away or we were unaware of how small the shot sizes were at the time, this prolonged the shoot and caused inconvenience to the camera operators.
Overall I think we could of been given more guidance about the frame sizes and positioning as the communication was quite poor, saying this I think the actors were also partly to blame (including myself) as we were not focused enough, therefore we overlooked certain aspects of blocking and guidance. This shoot was a learning curve as it was hectic, challenging and showed me the importance of being focused and listening to everybody around you (which I will definitely do at all times from now on).

Getting into character before the shoot!