Journal Zero

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