Journal Zero

I love comics and was eager to attend this year’s Emerald City Comicon to meet the legendary Stan Lee. Armed with a bag of comic books, and dressed as American McGee’s Alice, I ran from booth to booth getting books signed and commissions drawn by my favorite artists. The booth for Night Zero stood out among the many vendors present at the show, and I stopped by for a closer look.

Night Zero’s friendly cast and crew often attend local events (like the recent Red, White and Dead Zombie Walk in Seattle) and part of their booth is outfitted to take HDR photos with a backdrop right out of the comic (gun props and all).

I couldn’t resist their offer of having a free souvenir photo taken as a zombie hunter and I bought a copy of Night Zero: Volume One. I was impressed by the comic’s unique look and entertaining story and quickly caught up with the recent issues online.

A page near the end of Night Zero: Volume One, called for actors, artists and graphic design volunteers. As a graphic designer, I have always wanted to work on a comic, so I inquired about being a part of the project and I was pleasantly surprised when the comic’s creator, Anthony, responded to my offer. He graciously took the time to meet and provided me with an overview of Night Zero’s production and detailed instructions on the page layout process that he has developed over the past few years. I was amazed by the amount of work that goes into the comic.

An immensely talented and dedicated group work on Night Zero, and recently I‘ve been lucky enough to have an early look at their latest work while I have been assisting with the page layout of Episode Four. After reviewing the comic’s script and storyboard, I utilize a page template in Photoshop to mask, resize and arrange unaltered production photos. I also add dialogue and word bubbles, and with feedback from Anthony, I create mock-ups of the comic pages that will eventually be published on the site. Once the mock-ups are finished, they are sent back to Anthony and he exchanges the production photos with the finished HDR photos which he has designed and rendered at his workstation.

I am excited to be constantly learning more about the entire production process of Night Zero, and recently I attended a pre-production meeting for an upcoming shoot. Working with the new script, we made rough sketches on note cards to create references for the photos that will be taken on set. Readers will be happy to know that an action-packed story, with a few naughty scenes, will be produced shortly and should be making its debut later this summer.

Working on Night Zero has been an incredible learning opportunity for me (word bubbles can be a bit tricky!) and I’ve enjoyed making a small contribution to the production of a very cool zombie comic (and getting a sneak preview of the story a few weeks before anyone else, spoilers!). In the future, I hope to experiment more with the layout of the comic, and I am looking forward to seeing how the story and look of Night Zero will develop.

As a gaffer who really only works on narrative films, I was amazed at the difference in workflow and the speed with which they were able to work through all the required shots.

The two days at the courthouse were bright and sunny.  We knew we were going to be there over several hours, and in that time the sun (which was our key source of light) was going to march across the sky, shifting the shadows as it moved.  To keep the look consistent we used a 12′ x 12′ silk on a frame that was mounted on stands.  The silk is moved around and angled such that it flattens out the direct sunlight and allows us to add our own “sun”.  We do this with a 1200 watt HMI Par lamp, which burns closer to the ultraviolet blue of the sun as opposed to the standard tungsten lights, which (uncorrected) burn much redder.  Now we are able to control our “sun” light and move it around as needed by the director of photography. Add to this mix a couple of tungsten heads with color-correcting blue on them and the scene is pretty much lit.  Repeat as necessary over the course of the two days for each setup, and we have a wrap.

The next time I worked with Night Zero was for the “trap the scratchers in the back of the truck with live bait” scene in episode three, and on the same day, the vignette Special Delivery. In this huge container storage yard down on the Duwamish, just as at the courthouse (and most outdoor shoots), we needed to use my generator to get power but in this case the fact that it rained all day made for a very miserable time.  I did construct a tent (of sorts) with tarps and C-stands but by the end of the day it was just dark, noisy, and we were splashing around in puddles everywhere.  I think I used only the 1200 Par HMI for the back of the truck along with a 650 watt Tweenie to highlight the gunshot, and the 2000 watt Junior to pick up Jezebel when she stepped around the truck.  For the vignette we just followed the action around with the 1200 Par on a narrow lens, eventually ending with me on top of a container to shoot the single light source down on the final fight scene.  We wrapped in the dark and got lost trying to get to the main gate of the location, but a warm shower and a beer soon wiped away the cold and wet.

For this scene, we blocked off the extraneous daylight spilling in through the windows with a 12 x 12 solid.   We then added our own daylight with the 1200 PAR HMI and keyed the actors with the tungstens.  A 2000 watt and a couple of 1000 watt fresnel lights would evolve into the inferno, starting with their basic orange color.  As the fire progressed I added to the lights some “rock and roll” red gels, one at a time, until all the lights were red and the room was filled with smoke. The raw shots alone looked amazing, to say nothing of them rendered in HDR.

Setting up the warehouse for the fire fight

The crew, finished early, waits for the cast to arrive

Taking a read on the "flames" lighting Blaze's face

Best Boy Jason preps some special reds for the upcoming shots

Christian and Ben in their first blast of smoke

We broke every few minutes to let the team step away from the heavy smoke

By design, professional theater smoke machines don't set off smoke detectors

The two stars ready for their scene