Journal Zero

So, there you have it. The final page of Episode Two, which coincidentally is our 100th update– a notable milestone for any online comic. Technically it’s not our 100th page because of the numerous two-page spreads, but I’ll take it either way. Coming up for June is a new zombie-filled vignette that’ll play with some new narrative and visual styles, so I look forward to putting those out for you to see and comment on.

These last few pages have been the first real-time montage that we’ve attempted, and aside from the way it draws out over our update schedule, I quite like the effect. In Episode One we did a couple of flashback montages, which I suppose would be more accurately defined as collages because they were designed to establish a past, not progress time and action forward.

The most fun part about shooting a montage like this (or a collage like Episode One) is the instant gratification that comes with the production of it. Regular scenes have to be edited, revised, storyboarded, blocked, sequenced, and scheduled across the full cast and crew before they can be shot. The Claire montage required a director, a photographer, the actor, and a car. It was a marathon of great photography.

It was a Saturday afternoon that we shot the montage, the weather was perfectly generic and the crew already assembled from a morning shoot. We had just finished up on location for the “teaser” shots of Claude asleep at his desk, and as the crew packed up and headed out, Eli stuck around and Tamara arrived. Together, we hopped into Eli’s car and drove down towards south Seattle, where the visuals are just what we want.

We’d drive down a dusty industrial street and someone would see a cool building or epic backdrop. We’d park the car, hop out with the camera, and within a matter of minutes frame, block, snap, and be back in the car, looking for our next spot. There were more great shots than we could hope to use, and dozens more great locations that we could have shot, but I had to keep in mind that a regular comic montage would take weeks to release on our website. I put my favorite photos onto a two-page spread to get them out all at the same time, and trimmed down the end of the montage to blend it in with the house approach. Still two weeks’ worth of updates, but the grand visual impression is very much worth it.

The wall of the New City was not something we were planning to address at this point in the story, due to scope and resource concerns, but during our driving adventure we came across a perfect emulation of just what parts of the wall would be. It’s called the Marginal Way Skate Park, and it’s a home-made skateboard part built underneath the Marginal Way bridge by the stadia. The ramps and pipes of the park are fabricated from old wooden boards, built into a mass of dirt and rubble. The form is held together by a simple wall of stacked cinder blocks and rebar, standing 10 feet tall and reinforced with packed dirt on the back. We pulled the car over and stepped inside to check it out, and just like that, we had our wall.

Thanks to the guerilla-style approach to the montage shoot, there are sadly no behind-the-scenes photos to share with you, but we’ll be back next week with some fun ones. Don’t forget to grab your tickets to Crypticon, Seattle’s own horror convention, next weekend (June 5-7). We’ll have our booth setup with free gore makeup, free HDR photos, and plenty of cast and crew members to talk to you about becoming involved with Night Zero.

Last weekend was a heavy-hitting event for the Night Zero team, my apologies for not updating the blog. We spent three days shooting a location from episode three that covers seven different sequences over the span of the episode, for a whopping total of 149 panels. To put that in perspective, the entire first episode of Night Zero is 185 panels.

We do all our shooting around the city of Seattle, in both public and private locations. Last week’s pages, with the messenger girls escaping the quarantine building, was our first chance to get down and dirty in the middle of the city. Our local readers will probably recognize the downtown alleyway, which runs parallel to 5th & 6th Avenues, between Pike & Pine Streets. To those who aren’t local, just know that we are in the heart of the Seattle shopping district.

A shoot like this always begins with a permit, provided by the wonderful Chris Swenson at the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Film + Music. Our assistant director Kelly Ota coordinates the actors schedules and puts together a shooting plot, which becomes the framework for the master film permit. A detailed description of the shoot, the cast/crew size, our props and activities, and our on/off schedule accompanies a detailed map of the area, and a check for $25. In about a week, we receive our master permit, which includes any special instructions from the Seattle Police Department, the Fire Department, or any other civil offices who might be impacted by our shoot.

Large-scale shoots, the kind that warrant closing down streets and pedestrian control, require a proportional amount of police presence to supervise such activity. Any shoots involving weapons, regardless of whether they are props or not, also require police supervision. That’s all stuff we’ll be doing later on this year, and are very excited for, but shoot in question we wanted to keep low-profile. The first way to minimize our impact was to shoot our three “doorway” frames, weapon included, in a separate, private location, and color-match the environment to blend with the downtown backdrop. With some sneaky framing and editing, the scene flows smoothly without ever having a gun prop in the alleyway.

The second way to minimize our impact is to shoot very early on a Sunday morning. Aside from the occasional hobo, the pedestrian and vehicle traffic was sparse enough to allow us full shooting freedom, and in the random situations where someone walked across our background, we’d just hold for a few seconds and take the shot again.

With a small cast, skeleton crew, and Kelly supervising our progress against the storyboards, what could have been an onerous shoot was over before we knew it. The rich textures and detailed backgrounds, exactly the reason I had chosen that alley, came out beautifully in HDR. The pacing of the scene is great, one of our first plays with using silence as tension (oh so briefly), and I’m really pleased with how well the actors brought it all together.

The final shot was done by the infamous Eli Black-Mizuta, who dropped by at the end of the shoot with his fisheye lens and penchant for raising his camera to dangerous heights. Photoshop includes some tools to compensate for the fisheye distortion, but these only can do so much, which leaves the image with a slight bow outwards. Not something that you would find in an illustrated comic, but it certainly adds to the feel of the frame.

Next week, all the dirty details on the montage going on now. Don’t forget to check us out at the Seattle Crypticon horror convention in two weeks, and keep that zombie survival gear handy. You never know…

Shoot location was half a block from Starbucks. Perfect planning for an early-morning endeavor.

Always have a copy of the film permit on set with you. And always have an assistant director as great as this one.

The girls were a little chilly, so they kept their jackets on while we framed shots

The shoot was bare-bones and the weather overcast, so there were no reflectors on-set. Kelly steps in with her notebook.

Even pressing the shutter button on the camera causes movement that upsets the HDR exposures. We use a little red button to activate the shutter instead.

The button also makes shots like this a little more comfortable

The directors at work

Eli with a big lens, plotting his next move