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Cliche Zombie Flick trying to get original...

rizien

rizien

Ok, my friend and I love zombie movies, well the good ones, and we love filmmaking, so we decided to make a film about zombies!
We got the idea at work one day adn just kept talking about and talking about it...and decided we HAD to get something original in it...
so we brainstormed...and though "well they could be fast zombies" a la 28 days later, but that was in 28 days later...so we'll make em smarter faster zombies..that hunt in groups maybe..and thats where that stopped... im rambling on now so to the script...

(edit) we canned that script..we have a basic outline now..and we're gonna work on detailing it now..man writing scripts is hard
 
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Take a trip to here : http://www.Fangoria.com

They have messageboards (a lot of them) specifically for the horror-genre. You will need to register for the boards, even to just look at them... but it is a haven for zombie-lovers everywhere.

Lots of good ideas can be gleaned just from reading through the various posts... It will not help with screenwriting skills, but you'll find a tonne of great ideas.

8)
 
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Don't try to write the whole screenplay at once.

Writing is staying in the moment. That's the first discipline. You select one scene and write it. That's not so hard. You say where they are. You say what they're doing. You say what they say. Then you go back and figure out how to cover what they said with visual and action instead of dialog. Then you go back again and make sure that bad actors can play the scene without screwing everything up. That gives you a one-scene masterpiece.

Magic happens when you just let yourself write a scene. You get myopic. You get into tiny blocks that stop the scene instead of huge blocks that stop the movie. You have to figure out how to get a character from one side of the room to the other. They're relatively easy blocks to overcome, and they stimulate great little ideas. Brilliant films are made up of a lot of great little ideas, not one huge brilliant idea. As you make each individual scene interesting, you'll get past the cliche and into really cool stuff.

Also, when you're working on one scene, you can write totally different versions of it just to see how each would change the film. That can often breathe great energy into a project.

One thought in reading your outline is that you've got a film entirely about guys. Zombie movies tend to have silicone in them, don't they? You might want to bring that dimension in, for the buyers and audience if for no other reason.
 
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haha yea, one of my friends (girl) really wants to be in it, shes all about acting and wants to do it for a living...and some other girl even agreed to a shower scene :) but yea we diversified the script some more...and have a basic outline done...if you guys wanna see the outline lemme know ill post it
 
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also...the minute we decided to add a female to the main roles/cast ...our 18 yr old minds lost sight of what we hope to accomplish..and just wanted to see some girls naked..hahaha...but we're slowly creeping our minds out of the gutter and regaining our mission..lol
 
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hahaha, you guys ever see that commercial on IFC where they make fun of hollywood, the guy drives up and orders a hollywood burger? and he gets all this extra stuff he doesnt want, i like that commercial, lol
 
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haha well, being 18, we got two girls willing to do semi nudity, one of them i think iwll do full nudity, haha but i'm kind of having doubts about the zombie film, i wanted to re invent it kind of...bring a new light to it, make it better...not some sh*tty genre thats only good if its a spoof...but i'm having a lot of doubts now...argh
 
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It's not ripping off. Art forms evolve.

It used to be that there were "schools" of artists. The impressionists. The romantics. The surrealists. People who thought similarly and used similar techniques to evoke what they wanted from their audiences. Now we call it ripping off.

If you want to do something different, but you know that distributors want nudity if they're going to sell a zombie film, then you could do nudity differently. Let's say for example that a zombie is just a person without a soul, that the process of becoming a zombie is a sort of death, but the body keeps going as something of an automaton. And the process of becoming a zombie involves this seizure period during which the soul departs. For one of the zombies (a girl) you could describe what happens in that seizure state in a surreal, very visual psychographic sequence. In that sequence, you could represent the soul as the nude, innocent interpretation of the person. And you could conjure a sort of imprisoning process.

You could even take it a step further and follow the story of the imprisoned souls and the drama of their need to reclaim their bodies in order to live a normal life and fulfill their karmic destinies. It could be kind of an interesting commentary, actually, as the souls lose their innocence because they've been waylaid on their path. (Am I getting too esoteric?) That way you've got your two stories, one a very standard zombie-movie suspense story and the other a mirror image that allows you license to satarize and comment on the genre. And you'd get your nudity artistically.

People are much more willing to do artistic nudity than erotic nudity. Erotic nudity is kind of banal and belongs on the fringes and behind curtains in the local video store. (Where you have the most interesting conversations, by the way.) Artistic nudity is absolutely on the other end of the spectrum, as long as it's tasteful, justified, and necessary to the piece.

It's silly, really, to make it necessary to the piece in order to have it because you know it won't sell without it. But we do live in this world...

-Eric
 
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hmm, im still brainstorming, your ideas are good eric, but i dont know how i could follow the souls idea, and personally, in real life i dont believe we have souls...but thats gonna start a whole long big convo... anyway im so close to giving up on the Zombie flick...and it angers me...i wouldnt mind doing a QT style zombie movie, but i dont know...i feel like im ripping him off too bad...ill keep brainstorming...man i just looked back and realized i use "..." way too much..haha
 
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but i dont know how i could follow the souls idea, and personally, in real life i dont believe we have souls
Click to expand...

I am fairly sure George Lucas doesn't really believe that futuristic battles took place in a galaxy far far away... and I'm pretty sure that Sam Raimi would be most upset if he discovered real undead forces inhabiting his local woods.

It's about telling a story... and sometimes logic/rationale/realism can be left at the door, if the story is entertaining in it's own right.

I'm getting a few links and quotes.. brb.
 
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Take a trip over here...

http://www.Channel101.com

They hold a monthly short-film fest. (Well, not a *real* one, but it's monthly, at a Hollywoood bar... and the rules are easy enough to follow).

Make a film... 5 minutes MAXIMUM.

They often critique the failed shows, as well as the successful ones... and they have some fun screenwriters who tend to run their mouths... a lot. They tend to discuss ways that the story matters, as opposed to great special effects, famous actors, big budgets, etc. I suspect they do it that way, because they do not have big budgets, famous actors or special effects, though. :P

Here's a little (abridged) something that Dan Harmon was talking about, concerning zombies, btw...

But, back to what you're really asking. You want to know how much hard science and logic should be going into your creative process. You want to know, in other words, if you are overthinking during your writing or if that's just how you write. The answer is pretty simple: If the thinking is stopping you from writing, it's too much thinking. Look at it like taking a trip in a hot air balloon. Fantasy is hot air and science is weight. How much "extra weight" do you really need, you're already MADE of weight. You have an overwhelming, natural tendency to stay on the ground, just like the audience, and the purpose of generating the fantasy (hot air) is to take the science (you) on a ride.

Remember, the key event in a story is the crossing of a threshold, the threshold between what you might call "logic" and what you might call "cuckoo crazy town." If you spend too much time thinking about how feasible it is to make zombies walk all you'll succeed in doing is diminishing the contrast of the threshold in your own mind. Too much research before the first draft is bad, that's what I'm saying.

(cut)

So, maybe you're a very scientific person, cut out to write very scientific sci-fi stuff, because, for you, that's where the magic is. But just so you know, here's my two cents on zombies: the first person to tell a story about a dead person coming back to life didn't have to utilize our knowledge of recent medical advances. He played on our 150,000 year old suspicion, alive and well today, that it's possible for dead people to come back. Out of all the monster archetypes, the "walking corpse" wants the least scientific explanation because every time we go to a funeral, we're scared shitless that the fucking guy is going to jump out of the box. Would you stick your fingers in a dead guy's open mouth? I woudn't. Zombie stories shouldn't be about what zombies are, they should be about how to to avoid getting eaten.

I know you specified that you're not talking about explaining things to the audience, but, to me, the only purpose that scientific explanation has is to help the audience believe what they're watching is really happening, which shouldn't be too hard if they're being entertained, therefore if someone is sitting around thinking logically about something, I'd wager credits to navy beans that they're just procrastinating.
Click to expand...

Oh... and watch Twigger :D

Oh... and do NOT watch Jaws 4 :shock:
 
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True Zombie Movie

If you want to do a zombie film based on a more scientific approach, then you should check out any research you can find on the Zombies Haiti and Voodoo.

The whole zombie story starts there, whre Voodoo priests have been using various drugs to fake death and enslave people for centuries.

One research tool you might use would be to visit

http://www.forteantimes.com/

It's a magazine that takes a scientific approach to paranormal experiences.

And then there is this

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/voodoo/howzombie.htm

The nicely titled - how zombies are made
 
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