Journal Zero

The beginning of Episode three gave us a wonderful opportunity to introduce three new characters, and also a whole subset of the Night Zero world: the Skullhunters. Except for fragments about the charming Edge, we haven’t quite gotten the whole story on the Skullhunters. So now, meet the trio: West, Axel and Sawtooth. We thought it’d be interesting to discuss the process of how each of the trio wound up with their distinctive look.

These characters allowed for us to really branch out past our born-of-utility drab and dingy color. The skullhunters are personas of their own invention, without societal constraints (think super-villains).  The script presented descriptions of the trio, ranging from specific to vague. This was the most premeditated costume design, with a small costuming budget and a long back-and-forth process between myself and Anthony, the director. I did some visual research for my ideas for each character with photographs found online, which allowed us to speak with the same language when discussing ideas, which we had not before. We found that we don’t all use the same words for describing costuming. What comes to mind when I say “suit”? Does that just mean a tie with jacket? Is it a three-piece matching affair, or perhaps a jacket isn’t essential for the “suit” look? Sending off two pictures and saying “more like this one or the other?” helps us narrow down ideas and pick out essential elements.

West was always meant to have a classic cowboy look, and the production team had very specific ideas about this. He was to have a duster-style coat and mismatched pistols. He’d wear the brown leather hat oft sported by the actor that plays West. That left me with finding the jacket (easy… craigslist is often a costumer’s best friend) and the basic underlayers. I’d thought this would be no big deal, but actually finding a traditional cowboy-style shirt (faded plaid, pearl snap buttons, yolk collar accent) was a challenge in the thrift stores of Seattle. After visiting (literally) every Goodwill and Value Village in the city, I found West’s shirt in a retro-clothing shop for $20. At first Anthony was a little dubious of the pale pastels of the plaid, but eventually agreed that it looks great against the dark bulk of his jacket. Pattern of any kind isn’t typically encouraged with this type of photography, so keeping it more subtle was key. Two mismatched pistols were added to our growing armory of prop and airsoft weapons, and we called West good.

Sawtooth was also fairly well-described in the script, however not all of the initial ideas for this character were practical. He was written as a hulking intimidating man (check, our actor is wonderfully imposing) who had, when in prison, filed his own teeth down to points to use as weapons. While that detail was very informative about this guy’s past and his mental status, in practice we couldn’t make it work. We played with ideas ranging from tooth black makeup to a big silver grill, but these were quickly abandoned as unworkable and we moved on to just making Sawtooth big and scary. And a little crazy. Our actor already had the biker aesthetic we wanted, so putting him in black with some chains was easy enough. When shopping for something else in the Army Surplus store, we walked past a display of retro goggles and joked that we should put them on Sawtooth. Up to that point, we were going to try more of an S&M type look with leather bands and collar, etc., but the switch to the completely crazy-person goggles solidified who he was to us. Sometimes ideas thrown out in jest wind up being the best part of a costume. I added some scars and played with facial tattoos on location. What started as the standard “teardrop” prison tatt, became the crazy whirling swirls that ended up in the photos. The teardrop, with the scale of our actor, just looked strange and not at all scary.

Axel was the most nebulous of the three, literally described in the script as “shorter than Sawtooth and either taller or shorter than West”. Not much to go on but, from his dialogue, we realized he was the clown. Once we locked in on this, his character gave me the most leeway and was the most fun to design. After a shortlived idea of a Napoleon Bonaparte-inspired look, I started thinking about Charlie Chaplin and the 1930’s train tramp. Some quick visual research got us to the essentials: bowler hat, fingerless gloves, bow tie and baggy distressed jacket. I got to learn the skill of bow tie floofing, which was a lot harder than I’d imagined, even with the video tutorials found online. The bowler hat was the most essential part, and naturally most expensive, and I think it looks just great. I also wanted to be sure he got the shotgun that looks somewhat like a cane, which our actor wielded beautifully.

Scratcher/Cranson didn’t require a lot of costuming forethought. Our actor for this particular role was a zombie enthusiast we’d met at the Crypticon horror convention the week prior. He was cast on the spot, at our booth, once he showed an interest in performing. His distinct look, bald head and goatee were perfect for a former-Skullhunter-turned-scratcher, so I just asked him to come as he was. I had the amazing canvass of the back of his head to produce one of my most favorite gore effects to date: a gaping gunshot wound. I found this technique by accident, as I’d forgotten to bring along tissue to build up under the latex I usually use for three dimensional effects. I looked at what I had in my kit, and settled on a dried out alcohol pad. I cut a hole in the fibers and secured it with latex and scar wax. It created a wonderful little receptacle for fresh blood and looked thoroughly disgusting.

Designing these character’s looks was a great learning exercise for us. Since then, we’ve been thinking much more critically about what our characters’ appearances says about them and the world in which they live. Look for subtle clues in the costuming and makeup in all of the future frames, there is information there.

Next up? Literally dozens and dozens of scratchers at once. Our next big (and biggest ever) endeavor takes us to the streets and I’ve finally enlisted the help of some wonderfully talented makeup artists. The result is going to be epic and we cannot wait to share it with you.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of nightzero.com, and to celebrate we’ve launched a brand-new website designed from the ground up for an improved user experience. I hope you’ve all had a chance to poke around and see what’s new. If you’ve got some feedback, send an email or post a comment below. If the page is all messed up and looks like somebody vomited HTML onto your screen… you’re probably using Internet Explorer 6.

Most immediately noticeable, of course, is the home page. While 75% of our regular visitors come for every update, the other 25% come only once a week, and we wanted a home page that was convenient for all of them. In the old model, missing an update meant a series of clicks to navigate to the episode archive or risking spoilers by back-clicking through the updates you skipped. In our new system, an entire week’s worth of pages are on the front page so you can jump right to where you left off. The previous images can remind you at a glance what the last page was, so you’re always on top of the story. Some favorite links have also been added to the home page, including some of our excellent photocomic brethren.

While I’m generally pleased with the new ARCHIVE navigation page, there are still some browser irregularities that cause occasional misbehaviour. In general, though, I like that each episode is given full focus on the page, rather that being all cluttered together, and that there’s room enough for a brief synopsis and some preview photos. Interestingly, episodes one and two were the only ones that cover photos were specifically planned for—the rest of the covers are either frames from the episode, or photos that were storyboarded but cut from the final layout.

The actual archives themselves are still in progress, and I apologize to anybody who’s had difficulty with them. For a seamless reading experience, the archive for a particular episode will download that complete episode from the start, allowing access to pages as they become available. This dramatically improves reading times because there is no wait from one page to the next; unfortunately the flipside is that it increases the download time at the beginning. Our wonderful coding team is well under way on a new version that will only download a few pages at a time, which should improve things all around.

People have repeatedly requested more Night Zero merchandise, and to that end we’ve created a dedicated STORE page. As swag starts to become available, like our upcoming T-shirts and anti-infection shot glasses, they’ll be added there. For now, the store is dedicated to Night Zero: Volume One, so if you haven’t gotten yourself a copy, head on over and check it out.

Episode three has begun it’s run, so our blog posts in the upcoming weeks will reveal some of the great new things that the Night Zero team brought to the production while it was being created. In the meantime, I’ve got just a few extra photos left over from the “Sisters” vignette, and they’re some of my favorites. Enjoy, and stay zombie-safe.

Dancing between shots

Doug snuggles up with his handy sidearm

Eli, caught red-handed

Showing how to turn and pose

Acting in the background is important too

Lining up the shot

Chris P., production intern extraordinaire

Backlit crew

After three days of shooting, finally satisfaction

Love at firs–BRAAIINNSSSS

The whole squad together for the first time

The journey of the Sisters production has been a long and challenging adventure, now come to an end. Next week we return from summer break to our regularly scheduled serial comic.

Each of the three Sisters shoots had a different combination of cast members and a different production aide on hand, but there was a great deal of consistency from one day to the next which I feel helped keep the cast and crew focused and comfortable. Each day started with a 7:30am crew call, to meet out front of the Galway Arms and unload all the production materials onto the patio. Two of the three days were metered parking on the street outside the Galway, so additional time was given for drivers to find off-street parking where they would be safe for the entire shoot.

Each camera arrives in its own bag, complete with extra batteries, lenses, memory cards, and maintenance equipment. Two full tripods, a mini-tripod, and (for this shoot) various ladders for rigging are all brought in by the photographers. Our typical shoot is done with a three- or four-point light kit, but due to the size of the space we were filling and the greater number of actors in each shot, Sisters was produced with six-point lighting: three totas for washes and general fills, and three omnis for focused actor lighting. More important than either lights or cameras, each shoot began with loading in a few dozen doughnuts and a large supply of fresh coffee for the cast and crew.

The core vehicle for transporting the wide range of tools is the production trunk, which is typically a large black footlocker that can house most everything needed for any shoot. For Sisters we were keeping a low footprint, so a smaller plastic tub was the substitute production trunk, and it housed all manner of thing: the shot cards and copies of the storyboards and script, a first aid kit and paper towels, props (including rope, a cocktail glass, guns and holsters, and keys), heavy leather work gloves (for handling the hot lights), and extension cords. Makeup previously traveled in its own rubber tub and costumes freely on hangers and in the production trunk, but as the scale of the Sisters shoot grew we decided to invest in a high-quality makeup train case and a rolling costume rack, both of which were loaded in for the third (and largest) shoot.

At 8:00am each day, a bartender from the Galway Arms would arrive and let us into the space. Without them this vignette would not have been possible, and I am grateful to all of them who gave up an entire day to help us out. Next time you’re in the University District of Seattle, stop in for a drink and say thanks for us. The Galway is a great bar, which is why it made such a great shooting space. We cleared out a half-dozen tables and plenty more chairs and benches to make room for the camera and production equipment, but everything you see in the vignette is the actual look of the space. Having the areas semi-divided by the various partitions and half-walls made for some great blocking and allowed us to have scratchers and characters in the same space without a constant bloodbath. Black curtains and a naturally dark bar allowed us to shoot a nighttime story all day long during the middle of summer. For the third shoot’s action sequences, a large box fan was also loaded in to blow the actors’ hair in motion (while they held still for HDR photography), but was ultimately used throughout the day to counteract the scorching heat outside and the sweltering lights inside.

Shooting with scratchers is always a challenge, but we’ve learned a lot in the last two years and did pretty well for ourselves in Sisters. The first step is to know exactly when they’ll be needed, to avoid the trouble of getting an actor into full sticky makeup, to the point where they cannot move or touch anything, and then having them wait around until their shots come up. Switching to the shot card system made this a very feasible task, and Kelly’s schedule work on location ensured that we minimized the amount of sticky-time and maximized what we got from it. The second step is to know how and when they’ll be seen, so that makeup can be applied to the important (visible) areas and avoided where it’ll never show up. Storyboarding with a pencil and paper cannot give 100% accuracy to a camera’s lens perspective and distortion, so there still occur times where a photograph, even though framed exactly like its storyboard, yields a very different angle. That being the case, though, we made good utilization of our makeup effects and kept our waste as low as possible.

Costuming the military squad was a pleasure and a challenge, because we wanted them to be professional (as opposed to civilians who happened to like wearing camo), but still give a nod to our roots with a distinctly ‘comic-book’ look. Our knowledgeable photographer Eli provided much of the consultation for the military garb and armament, and began by choosing the atypical MultiCam pattern of camouflage, which is an authentic but less common style of the US military. The rifleman and sharpshooter were shifted more towards “realistic” costuming with their heavier gear, while the shotgunner and machine gunner were given tanktops and a more stylized “comicy” appearance (without losing their military authenticity). Yevgeniy falls right in the middle, wearing a standard-issue shirt instead of either full body gear or a battle-impractical tanktop.

The costumes and arms of the military are complimented by their spot-on effects, which emphasizes how there’s more to makeup than just gunshots and zombies. Using photos from James Bond and Rambo as reference, their makeup was designed to blend with their characters but signify the struggle they endured to arrive on camera. That struggle began in the early iterations of the Sisters vignette with an ambushed caravan and deadly scratcher attack, and exists now as a full-fledged short story that I’m considering for inclusion in Night Zero: Volume Two. If you still haven’t picked up Volume One, it’s available in our store for just fourteen dollars.

Next week we return to the story of Marion and Claire (remember them?), the warehouse fires, and the possible destruction of the New City. Heroes and villains abound as new twists and intrigue are revealed in Night Zero episode three: House Calls.

Makeup too, hands of blue

Chris takes care of the rope

Eli framing a shot, pouch of lenses at the ready for anything

Gloves are necessary to handle scorching hot stage lights

Five of the six lights surround and illuminate

Even henchmen can be happy

Tony gets to lay down AND act at the same time

Taking a moment before the action starts

Swinging the barstool

Actors get breaks while the light setups are changed

Not as redundant as it sounds: Director of Photography, Director, and Photographer

Sometimes the makeup artist is also an actor who needs makeup

Ben only LOOKS like he's had a hard day