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.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 2:04 am and is filed under On Location. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.