watch OUTBREAK zone #1 - short zombie film made for a week film competition

[tzborden89]

OUTBREAK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boE4xYBMh9Y



We had to shoot and edit everything in one week.
We had a meager budget and used non-pro actors (obviously). All shooting on location. Please let me know what you think.

Also, if we get the most views by Sunday 2.27 then our film automatically gets shown at the red-carpet screening.

Please help us out guys. Thanks so much.

(We're currently at 250 views and the leading film is around 500)

 

[dar]

It's realistically shot, and you did a lot with very little time and I'm assuming a zero budget. However, there doesn't seem to really be a story here; that's what I'm looking for in my horror. I know it's supposed to be found footage, but even so, there can be a narrative.

 

[tzborden89]

I understand where you are coming from. We did want our story to seem real, but we tried to provide some motivation for the characters and I was hoping this would provide a bare-bones story.

Shannon and Steve are leaving Oxford... zombie outbreak happens and Shannon insists that they go back to town to find her sister. With more time we would have included more of a build up and climax before Shannon gets zombified.

I hope you guys enjoyed it.
...we were chosen as one of the top 16 films and shown at CMF-2011 this year. We were also nominated for a Golden Tripod Award for Best Directing and we are a semi-finalist for the AT&T Rethink Possible Award.

We also have a shot at the international finals if we win the wild-card with the most text votes.
To anyone who enjoyed Outbreak Zone #1 please vote.

TO VOTE TEXT:
VOTE237
TO THE NUMBER:
41234
YOU CAN VOTE UP TO 4 TIMES

We went up against a lot of great films, many of which had much higher budgets. Our last chance to make the international finals is to win the audience choice.

Please help us out if you can spare the texts... Thank you!

 

[Panda.Symphony]

this was pretty well done i thought it was gona be one of those cheesy videos that people make of themselves, to me the beginning was a bit to long i kinda skipped parts of it, till just before the radio situation

that panic was pretty well done, the noise clutter added to it but kinda annoyed me but i think it added to grabbing the persons attention directly at something

this reminds me of the Blair witch project, not too badly done

 

[rayw]

Decent enough.
Narrator oversold his part 3X too much.
Would've like to have "seen" more of what you had, but understand the advantages of hiding stuff in the dark.

Zombie Cloverfield. Cute.

 

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

The acting was actually fine - for "found footage" filming, that kind of acting is actually perfect. It fits the style of video blogs and the like, which if you follow people like the ShayTards on YouTube you'll be able to compare.
The guy behind the camera was a bit too intense, perhaps, when we just find out about the outbreak.
The story also seems very forced. With found footage films, the story takes time to get into, or at least eases you into it somehow. Just going straight from singing to songs on the radio to OH GOD OUTBREAK AND ZOMBIE MAN isn't scary, in fact it sort of does the opposite. As much as I dislike Diary of the Dead, it pretty much does a great job with the pacing, as do others like Cloverfield and Rec (Cloverfield less so).

Another note - you were probably going to go for the Blair Witch approach towards the end, where there was just black for a large amount of time and then the dimly lit ground, but for this short film (that doesn't rely on character development and interaction), it doesn't work very well at all.

Overall though, a nice piece.

tl;dr: You should improve the pacing of the story, lower the intensity of the acting from the guy behind the camera, and have less shots of nothing. The acting overall was perfectly fine though.

Think more like ShayTards, but with zombies.

 

[Murdock]

I understand its found footage, but there was little actual footage. There was a lot of shooting at the ground. And some of it was only to set up the "scare" with a quick tilt. As mentioned above there wasn't really a story.

All in all: with the time and budget constraints taken into account,I think you guys did fine accept for the story. This would have been pretty good if there was a story.

 

[Deniz Akbulut]

I found this actually mildly entertaining. A living example that you don't need an expensive RED camera and a budget to make something entertaining.
Of course it would have been better with a story but still I enjoyed it.