Journal Zero

It’s the night of ghosts and ghouls, magic and monsters, and of course, costumes and candies. Let’s pray that it’s a night without the zombie apocalpyse, for the sake of those poor souls still unprepared.

This week wraps up the warehouse exposition segment of Episode One, so ready yourselves for some action and violence in the upcoming weeks as we begin to see more of what makes the post-apocalypse what it is. In preparation, I present the first of two parts on how the Night Zero team created its unique brand of zombie, and why turning the rulebook on its head created a new breed of faster, scarier, and more awesome terror.

… So the addition of an escape clause is pretty much unheard of in the world of zombie fiction, I’ll admit that. The idea that there is some counter-attack, that a bite or scratch is not a guarantee of infection, has very serious ramifications to the genre, in particular to the element of why zombies are scary. Over the past few years I’ve met with a lot of people, zombie fans and unprepared alike, and compiled a cross-section of why zombies are, in fact, a scary thing, and while it was rarely listed as a primary reason, the inevitability and irreversibility of infection plays a major factor in the other reasons people listed. Reasons such as “there is no way to overcome their numbers,” that “you may have to kill someone who loved you,” and things of that nature. Inevitability plays a huge factor in the speed and scope of the apocalypse, and that’s a serious precedent to fight.

From a production perspective, however, that manner of zombie is perfect for a one-time story (such as a movie or novel), but poor fodder for an ongoing serial like Night Zero. Now of course there are many, many zombie comic books out there, and some have been going on for quite some time. But two things happen in those series, neither of which I was wild about for ours. The first byproduct is that your character collection is always very small, a band of survivors that is constantly on the move and on the defensive. New characters have to be regularly introduced so that they can be killed off, or brought in as replacements for older characters that have died. The second byproduct is that, the longer the series runs, the less plausible it becomes that any one character has survived for so long without the slightest scratch, bite, or splatter, EVER. The longer they live, the less believable it becomes, even in terms of zombie-apocalypse believable.

For Night Zero, I wanted to have a wide cast of characters, each with their own histories and objectives, and I wanted the freedom to move between them and tell all their stories. This first serial episode, “Ashes,” focuses on two such characters, and their bosses and enemies, while other vignettes and short stories expand the world with tales of other survivors. Allowing the characters to have close calls, gruesome fights, and near-defeats, but still carry on to tell the tale, greatly improves the freedom we have to explore the world. But in order to do this, and do it right, the most important decision came down to how Night Zero was going to do its “zombie” thing.

Over the past few years, the zombie genre has exploded in films and comics, and new ideas and implementations have broadened the horizon that was once strictly a Romero/Russo landscape. I wanted to avoid the “living dead” aspect, and focus more on the primeval human elements that drive us to destroy. Why bother with a corpse, inexplicably driven to kill a human, when you can explore a human, driven by their most basic instincts, driven to kill other humans in a gruesome display of dominance and power. With that came the natural decision to build on infection-based zombies, rather than animated corpses. A curious side effect is the blurred line between an angry person and an infected one (which serves some delightful plot points later on). When dealing with a virus that selectively shuts off and hyperactivates various brain chemicals, you create a very gradual transition from emotional human to terrible monster, rather than the moment-of-death that a living-dead zombie requires before the changeover.

This new style of zombie, more ‘28 Days Later’ than ‘Dawn of the Dead’, still keeps the overwhelming-numbers and could-be-your-loved-one terror of the classic Romero zombie, but adds the element of logic and process solving… not going to be driving any cars or programming computers, but able to open doors, climb buildings, and even (in some cases) set traps and coordinate attacks. At the cost of a percentage of numbers (only persons specifically infected become part of the mob, as opposed to absolutely everybody who has died), the scare-factor is bumped up tenfold by their ability to run after you, and run fast.

Next week… how we took this “new millenium” zombie and turned it on its head to create the SCRATCHERS.

Special bonus double-feature update today, just for you. A quirk of developing for both online and print media is that sometimes a strength of one (i.e. two-page spread in the book) comes out a little wierd on the other (as an extra large image that won’t possibly fit on your screen).

As Alexander discussed in an earlier post, one of the challenges of the premiere episode is trying to balance action and adventure with the (more boring) exposition of the backstory. Unlike other zombie apocalpyse stories, Night Zero is not the story of our world collapsing as we’re all expecting. Time has passed, the world has changed, and it’s up to us (the creators) to fill you (the readers) in without boring you to tears. One of the ways we do this is with the introduction of the newbie character, Claire, who asks the questions that the readers have. Another technique is the blending of the flashbacks, which not only reveal more about the history of the characters, but provide action to break up the dialogue. The characters’ actions in the present are layered with explanatory conversations, the whole of which is layered against the flashbacks and (upcoming) heavy action sequences, for a rounded entertainment experience.

On the technical side of the production, layering is also a necessary component of the Night Zero visual style, and is subtle but essential to this entire warehouse sequence. Each HDR photograph, of course, takes three separate exposures to render in the Night Zero style, but that’s just the beginning. For a proper comic book feel, we want the entire frame to be in focus (with a few specific, intentional exceptions). This means that for every shot, we take one triplet of exposures for the foreground actor, a triplet for the background actor, and a triplet for the background itself (no actors). Each set of three is rendered into HDR, and those three are layered to create a composite, all-in-focus photo.

Like much of the photo processing that goes into Night Zero, this effect is virtually unnoticed at a casual level. If the photographs were presented as normal, the depth-of-field would be obviously distracting to the page; the lack of depth-of-field, however unnatural, is unconsciously accepted.

When we get to the intense action sequences (coming in the next few weeks),  a lot more “comic book” special effects are rendered to the photos– speed lines, motion blur, sound effects, and the like.

Until then, enjoy the story, and stay free from infection.

The biggest disadvantage we face in the production of Night Zero is having a core crew of producers responsible for an army’s worth of tasks. At the moment, we are simultaneously finishing post-production on Episode One, in the middle of principal production of Episode Two, beginning pre-production of Episode Three, optimizing the Night Zero website, and of course, publishing Volume One.

The production process we’ve developed over the past eleven months is something of a blur between sketching a comic concept and storyboarding a film. We begin with the script, breaking it down into shot sequences that are tackled at a particular location or series. As director, I first block out all the actions and emotions I see in the sequence, and create a “Shot List” of each moment in time I want to capture. This rough sequence of events I then lay out into pages, approximating the size, shape, and location of each shot on the comic book pages.

This rough frame layout is delivered to Forest, who is billed as the photographer but in pre-productiona acts more as a cinematographer. He reviews the action of the script and my proposed shot sheet, and develops detailed shot setups that determine the ultimate angle, framing, and composition of the shot. In the weekly production meeting, our two shot lists are brought together, with the oversight of assistant director Kelly, and the three of us work out the final storyboards for the shoot.

From there, Kelly moves to wrangling the actors, compiling the prop list, and coordinating the crew hands. Forest plans out the lighting schematics and technical needs of the shoot, and I arrange the locations and permits we’ll need to make the set.

Getting on set where the real magic happens, we’ll talk about that later. Now to the photos!

The cast and crew assembles for a morning shoot.

It's not always fun and excitement, sometimes it's just waiting. Good thing the Tamara and Katrina are such good sports.

Forest and I discuss our notes from the storyboards.

A little elevation can go a long way towards establishing a new location.

Tamara is a lot stronger than her dainty figure would lead you to believe.

Things are picking up this week, both for the online serial (the stage is being set for the action yet to come) and the real-world production. Last weekend saw our final shoot for Volume One, being the cover shoot, and saw more scratchers and gore than we’ve tackled to date. It was a delightfully successful shoot, we met a nice group of new people who were very enthusiastic and fabulous as our zombies, and the cover for Volume One is definitely going to stand out when it hits bookstore shelves at the end of the year. I saw the first printed draft of the completed book this morning, and it is stunningly gorgeous (and heavy). I cannot emphasize enough how much stronger the HDR photography shows up on paper than on the computer screen.

The major challenge for the cover shoot was to composite an image that would scale to be full size, while shooting in dark lighting. The camera of Night Zero, a Canon Rebel XTi, has a full resolution of just over one single page, so taking a single photo for the cover would not have yielded a quality image. We instead shot the cover as a single photo for reference, then shot each element (actor) full-frame and digitally composited them together.

Running the gore for the cover shoot was the lovely miss Jana Healy, who did a wonderful job making the beautiful actors look their most gruesome best. Although a number of latex prosthetics were used to simulate burns and cuts, the most powerful and grisly gore was created with rolled up toilet paper and latex. I only wish the cover were bigger, so we could show more of the detail that went in to the shoot. Kristina, one of our scratchers for the day, posted a lovely review of the experience on her video blog.

Episode two continues it’s production this weekend with another photo shoot, so I’ll talk more about that next week. Until then, stay zombie safe.

Forest Gibson works himself into a corner.

No actors were harmed in the making of Night Zero. At least, not during the parts you'd expect.

The fabulous (and talented) Andrew Cardillo

Every character’s “night zero” story is going to be revealed through flashbacks (and the occasional vignette) as the overarching story moves along. The world of the graphic novel is exploring the “what happens next” part of the post-apocalypse, but the actual unfolding of events deserved to be told as well.

The actual backstory here, of Marion and her boyfriend Aaron, was developed by Katrina Hamilton, the actor who plays Marion. As part of the collorative nature of the Night Zero project, much of each character’s history, personality, and survival story is developed by the actor rather than the design team. Each cast member is invested in their character, understands their choices, and brings new ideas to the project in a surprising and exciting way.

Not-so-coincidentally, while Katrina developed the backstory for her character she visualized the events as they would take place in her own apartment (method acting is prep work for the real zombie apocalypse), so it only made sense for us to shoot the sequence there rather than building a new set to match. It’s always tricky shooting on-location indoors, where walls and ceilings restrict camera placement and lighting options. For this particular sequence we shot in the late afternoon to get as much natural light as possible, which is easier to diffuse and reflect as needed than it would be to rig up light sources (and constantly move them out of camera sight).

Kelly Ota, the assistant director for the production, and Eli Black-Mizuta, freelance photographer, are also our behind-the-scenes photographers, and special moments backstage will land on this blog after their pages air (to avoid spoilers).

You cannot imagine how painful and blinding it is to have the sun reflected into your face, but Katrina takes it like a pro.

Highs of 96 degrees and not a cloud in the sky

Tara Miller provides on-set guidance to the actors

Shannon, lighting assistant extraordinaire, and Eli, freelance behind-the-scenes photographer

We had to digitally remove the wonderful Rob and his light disc from pretty much every photo in the shoot

Forest Gibson is always ready to shoot

An unexpected (and deliciously cold) on-set visit from Alexander, who wrote the script