Journal Zero

Night Zero has been busy busy busy these past few weeks, so the blog has had some time off but I’m back and eager to tell about some of the exciting things we’ve been doing. Most significantly, two weeks ago we had our first “away show” at the first annual Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, colloquially marketed as C2E2. We brought our famous free HDR photobooth, as seen at ECCC and Crypticon, to capture Chicagoans in their post-apocalyptic zombie-hunting best. If you were at the show and missed the email, the booth photos can be found here.

Chicago being Night Zero’s first foray outside the Emerald City, I was fortunate to have a good friend from the theater community who lives over there, providing a couch to crash on and a home base from which to command the NZ-C2E2 operation. The first step was to get the books back to the Midwest, coincidentally not far from where they were originally printed and bound, so in advance of my arrival a FedEx truck delivered a series of boxes containing the first two volumes of our zombie apocalypse.

I arrived in Chicago on Wednesday evening before the show, and met my friend Danniel for dinner and drinks. Thursday morning, he went off to work and I figured out the bus/train/foot route down to the McCormick Place convention center and walked the space to get a feel for our setup. Running a booth that invites attendees in for photos, while maintaining a space to talk about and sell books, all while not breaching our 10′x10′ area… it’s a tricky problem, and one that can’t really be addressed until the feel of the floor is felt out. Once satisfied, I walked to a cafe to get some lunch and draw up the booth layout, then set off to transport the real stuff of the Night Zero experience.

I recently signed up for the Zipcar vehicle-sharing service in Seattle, and fortunately it’s a nationwide network so I had easy short-notice access to cars all over Chicago. I found a suitable spacious ride and drove up to Wrigleyville to pick up the booth, which was a slightly challenging endeavor since I was new to Chicago and a Cub’s game was about to start, but I made it in good time and Danniel was there with some guys to help me load the books, lights, and gear into the car so I could head back down to McCormick and offload into the space. The convention offered a free “lend-a-hand” service for move-in, so I was able to drive right into the expo hall and have all our crates loaded to a forklift that drove them to our booth space. In no time at all, I had the Zipcar back in its spot and was walking back to McCormick.

One of the many things I really appreciate about our hometown show ECCC is how much is provided as a courtesy for exhibitors. Not only did C2E2 charge us extra for a corner space for our booth (essential for the aforementioned photobooth flow), but “renting” tables and chairs were all extra (and exorbitant) charges for what should be complimentary equipment. We couldn’t work without them, though, so I begrudgingly dropped the cash to get two small tables at our space, and set about hanging our banners and backdrops, experimenting with light and camera positioning, and decorating the tables with photos from our various shoots.

Thursday was a wonderfully warm day in Chicago, so after the booth setup I took some time to wander around town, grab some dinner, and take in some sights before returning home for some beers on the stoop with Danniel. Friday morning was the “professionals only” portion of the show, so while we had to be there early to setup and run the booth for the attendees, it was a slow period that I used to train Danniel and his friends Mark and Ben on how to oversee the photobooth flow, operate the camera/lights, and handle the cash transactions. Emily, the marketing director for Night Zero, flew in Friday morning and met us at the convention. She immediately took to work meeting professionals, moguls, and comicshop owners, beginning the networking-side of our C2E2 mission. As the morning turned to afternoon and the show opened to the general public, the costumed fans and comicbook folk started to trickle in, and by the end of the day we were running a full-scale operation to match our first ECCC appearance.

Saturday and Sunday followed suit, with Sunday being a slower convention day but nevertheless keeping us busy with talking about our unique project and taking photos. As the show wrapped up, we packed in the camera gear and took down the signage, but generally left it all behind to go have a relaxing dinner and post-mortem on the weekend’s events. Monday morning, I packed up everything from the house and went down to McCormick to consolidate my personal luggage with the booth gear, leaving a nice neat pile of boxes and crates while I went to find another Zipcar. Load-out was as easy as load-in, and I conveniently chose a Zipcar whose parking space was but a half-block from the subway station to take me back to the airport and to my uneventful flight home.

All told, the show was a mixed bag. In the short term, it did not perform as well for us as our local shows, perhaps because of the rough economy or perhaps we’re more dependent on our “local” appeal than we expected. Suffice to say, the revenue from book sales was negligible compared to our expenses for taking the trip, which doesn’t bode well for future traveling booths.  In the long term, much remains to be seen, but thanks to Emily’s networking and marketing, we may have some expanded reach and possibly a distribution deal to get Night Zero out into the world. If those pan out as well as we work to make them, the extended returns on C2E2 may yet turn out in our favor.

Our next scheduled appearance is at the 2010 horror festival of Crypticon Seattle, hosted the weekend of June 18th-20th, so if you’re in the Seattle area make sure to come on by. We’ll be doing our free HDR photobooth right next to the amazing Doug Jones, and who can say no to that?

A comicon before it's a comicon

Decorations, lights, and books books books

An hour spent just moving tripods around to find the best fit

Do you like our table? $80 for three days.

Our first visitors of C2E2

The view from our booth

Ben, Mark, and Danniel, badasses

The scene that we’re just getting into now is the culmination of a year’s worth of efforts, the highly-anticipated “protest shoot” that launched Night Zero to a new level of production last summer. I look forward to telling you much more about it in the coming weeks, but since we had no blog post last week, I’d like to talk today about some of what happened since Episode Four began.

The choice to open the episode with a narrative montage didn’t come until the end of the production process, and was shot just a few days before the episode was scheduled to begin. The consideration that led to these introductory pages was to find a different approach to the “recap” that precedes the serial episodes, filling in details as a reminder of what’s happened since our story began. In the past, this has been done with a single dense page, covering as much information is possible in objective and utilitarian narration.

Instead of another of those, I wanted to take the recap as an opportunity to get a perspective on the preceding events, coloring and affecting the retelling of the story through the eyes of Nadia. While this is new for an episode opening, it’s actually standard operating procedure to dedicate a portion of each episode to one character’s backstory, and Nadia’s morning routine and inner monologue does just that while filling the reader in on what’s going on. It’s a win-win all around, and more fun to read (and shoot) than a simple “Previously on Night Zero…” page.

The office scene that opens the action of Episode Four was a great pleasure to shoot, because it was a rare chance to bring in new faces and play with some new people. Our typical shoot for the serial story has a pretty static cast, so having four new roles outside our usual demographic was the perfect chance to tap into the many artists in the greater Night Zero family.

The four councilmen are all extremely talented actors from the Seattle theater, film, and improv communities, and having this scene as an opportunity to work with them on Night Zero was fortuitous. A single day’s shoot, a simple setup, and very sharp costumes… that’s an easy sell, although they were already eager to be a part of our amazing project.

In addition to these heavy-hitting cast members, we had two new crew members on the shoot who both performed excellently. Phoebe was on hand to learn the ropes as Assistant-Director-in-Training, and following Chloe’s lead, she picked up the job and was a joy to work with. I look forward to many great shoots with her at the helm in the coming year, and am confident she’ll take good care of the cast and crew.

Running camera on the shoot was Jansen, who’s not a stranger to Night Zero (he shot all the behind-the-scenes for our protest shoot), but this was his first go at principal photography while Eli was out of town. Jansen is a highly skilled and experienced photographer and camera operator, so it was a challenge to train him to resist the extreme precision he’s used to working with (on film) and adjust to the highly unusual world of photographic novel production. Finding our balance in the morning pushed us a little behind schedule, but Jansen was very patient with me and we were soon working right in sync. I also look forward to more shoots with him behind the lens, and I’m sure Eli won’t mind a few days off here and there.

Charley reviews the scene before the shoot

Get that director out of the shot!

Ladies and gentlemen, the New City Council

Director, Assistant Director, Assistant Director in Training

For every photographer, a personal method of shot setup

Michael is one of the few men who can pull off a bowtie

Chloe and Phoebe, who keep the director and the shoot on track

The cameraman at task

A true politician