A dark comedy about two sad people in a zombie apocalypse.
After being bitten by a zombie, a survivor in the apocalypse must convince someone they’ve just met to shoot them.
This was a short film I wrote and directed for university in October 2022. It is also the short film that taught me I don’t like using scripts. And that I’m a bad writer. And director. And actor.
The story of the film began as a joke I came up with in June 2021, which ended up being the final scene in this film.
In April 2022, I wrote a rough draft of a script (working title ‘I’m going to die’) and filmed it with someone I’d met while making a music video for uni in 2021, though by the next time I saw them the footage had been deleted, save for a few short clips that ended up in my 2022 Year in Review montage.
When I took another screen media course later in 2022, the task of a narrative short film came up and I pitched the idea for this film to my team of four people (plus one actor who expressed interest when we shared our pitch).
I hadn’t intended on acting in the film, but as our casting call only got one response back, I filled in for the other role. While I wrote and directed the film, cinematography was handled by two other members of the team. Another member and I had put together a storyboard, but it was discarded early on during filming.
From the start of production, we faced restrictions from the uni when they banned the use of prop weapons after the script had already been completed. Bit of a problem when this film centres around being shot. There were also disagreements between members of the team prior to and during filming, which ultimately made this something of a salvage project to be saved in the edit. In the end, I’m a bit mixed on the film. There’s bits that I like and bits that I hate. It was a big learning experience for me and it taught me things about what I most like about filmmaking.
