| The Zombie Diaries | World Premiere Sunday 29 October 2006 The Broadway Cinema Letchworth Start: 8.00pm Tickets: £3.50 |
If you've ever sat in the cinema and thought I could do better than that, then Letchworth's Michael Barlett will be an inspiration to you. Armed with nothing but a love of film, he decided he'd make one. And he did! Benefiting from what he says is a very exciting time for wannabe film makers, Michael and his co-director Kevin Gates gathered together more local people and eventually assembled a team of professionals working on a profit share basis. This follows a trend of a lot of independent films these days. With new and better equipment becoming more accessible to all, young film makers and artists are now much more able to get together to produce high quality films without needing to know the 'right' people or try and persuade someone or an organisation to back them financially.
 | | The Zombie Diaries: Cast |
The result of Michael and Kevin's efforts is 'The Zombie Diaries', which they have written, produced and directed entirely between the two of them. Described as a cross between 'The Night of the Living Dead' and 'The Blair Witch Project', it will receive its World Premiere at a special Halloween screening at the Broadway Cinema in Letchworth on 29 October. Michael's amazing journey from knowing nothing about film making to making a film is detailed in his blog - Making the Film (http://www.makingthefilm.com) - but we caught up with him before the premiere to find out all about the movie, his experience making it and if he had any advice to give to others thinking of following the same route. How did you and your co-director get together for this project? Michael: I'd just completed a short film called Mnemosyne which I shot in Letchworth and used a lot of local people. During filming I met an experienced director Kevin Gates who happened to live down my road! He took care of all the camera work on it and we became good friends. I'd always wanted to make feature film so we began looking for a project. So, why did you decided to make a Zombie film? Michael: Kevin was really into the horror genre and I got into horror movies, and in particular zombie films, at a very young age. When I was a boy, my next door neighbours had a son the same age. They went out a lot and asked me to go over and sit with him and for my mum to keep an eye on us. To keep him quiet they rented him any film he wanted - we watched everything! So I was de-sensitised to them at a young age! We thought it would be a good idea to make a Zombie film because there was a good chance of selling it and we both loved the genre - we just needed an original hook. So, what's the hook?
 | | The Zombie Diaries: Alexia Angelis |
Michael: At the time Bird Flu was in the news and people were getting very paranoid about it. It was all over the headlines and people were panicking so we thought why don't we use this. So we did - there's an epidemic and the survivors use video to document their experiences, their plight and survival for posterity, so it's a bit like the Blair Witch Project. It looks a bit like a home movie so people are drawn into it. It's also like the current trend for reality TV - people seem more drawn into something that looks like it's really happening, so that was an inspiration too. So it's kind of films within a film with people recording events on video? Why did you decide on this technique? Michael: The problem with people making their own films these days is that they try to make it look like it's shot on a higher budget. The camcorders that you get now are good quality but you can always tell that it's been shot on one. People become obsessive about making it look like film but I think it doesn't matter as long as you've got a good story to tell. But Kevin thought that rather than apologise for this, we should make the most out of the fact that it was shot on digital video (DV) because of the immediacy and rawness of it. Films like '28 Days Later' and 'Open Water' were shot on DV and people really get drawn into it - the immediacy effect works well. Was it all shot locally? Michael: Mostly yes. Some was shot at Manor Farm in Hinksworth and local businesses have been very helpful - we used a Happy Shopper storage facility. But I have also lived in Kent for a while so we did some scenes there. How long did it take to make?
 | | The Zombie Diaries: Alison Mollon & Jonnie Hurn |
Michael: We started shooting in July 2005 and finished around November 2005. Post-production then took about two months. I was working as an IT consultant in Leeds at the time and was commuting on a Friday night and sleeping on the other director's sofa for the weekend so there was a lot of going backwards and forwards. I moved back to Letchworth in the end! Who are your inspirations? Michael: My two favourite film makers are Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch. I am inspired by their styles, you can tell immediately from the visual styles that it's theirs. In Mnemosyne I tried to fuse those styles to get some cold visuals. Had you had any film training at all? Michael: No - Kevin had been to film school but my academic background is in Computer Science. My blog documents going from knowing nothing about film making to building up the skills to make a feature film. Did writing a blog help you in the process? Michael: Yes - there were many members of the public watching my blog so it made it hard just to quit. It's important to get out and do it, not just talk about it and I've since found that other people have been inspired by my blog to go out and do it for themselves. I've also been emailed by lots of people such as the Raindance Film festival and the New York Film Academy saying that they liked what I was doing very much. What's been the most difficult thing would you say? What would you warn others about? Michael: Trying to balance your life is very difficult. You have a full time job and personal commitments and there are only so many hours in the day. Also you are always still learning and many people make a few films and they don't turn out well and they don't take criticism very well, they take it personally. I would say don't take criticism personally - you need broad shoulders in this business, you have to take criticism on board and use it. Remember the audience because you are making films for them!
 | | Jonnie Hurn, Alison Mollon and Kyle Sparks |
With Mnemosyne I found that people either loved it or hated it but now I think I was trying to be too artistic. That's what I learnt and that's why we made the zombie film. You've got to remember the audience, because it's entertainment at the end of the day. What I would say to anybody is don't give up because you can get better - but you have to really persevere. The famous director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) once said something like "You don't become a good guitar player by talking about it. You have to sit in the garage and practice till your fingers bleed". And that is very true! What happens next with the film? Michael: We plan to take it to film festivals in 2007 to build up a buzz about it before hopefully going for a DVD release in late 2007. We're looking to go to specialist horror festivals like Fright Fest, then there's Cannes where we want to do a Premiere and Raindance because they are big supporters of young independent film makers. Why do you feel that now is such an exciting time for independent film makers? Michael: Well- before you had to know the right people or persuade The Film Council to fund you and so you tended to get a lot of copycat films as the Film Council don't tend to fund original films. But now, because of new, accessible, better equipment you get a good representation of new wave film makers with equipment and everyone who gets involved in the films does it for the love of movies and for having something for their show reel. So you can get very good actors. Basically everyone works for free and you only pay expenses so you end up with good films for very little money.
 | | The Zombie Diaries: Sophia Ellis & James Fisher |
You have contracts like it's a proper movie but you don't have to worry about it being the right kind of movie to get money. It's a very exciting time. We did work as a profit share, this was all agreed in advance so that everyone involved in a big way will get a profit share but we have found that this is secondary really, but they appreciate the gesture. Are you working on another film yet? Michael: We've no project lined up at the moment but we've been discussing the options. We may do a sequel. George Romero, who invented the zombie genre with Night of the Living Dead, came back last year with Land of the Dead and zombie films seem to be the in-craze in Hollywood at the moment. He's just announced that he's now doing 'Diary of the Dead' which seems to have a similar idea to our film. With a $5m budget it's going to be a big film and will draw attention to ours so we may do a sequel. We're just keeping our options open. So, tell us about the special screening of Zombie Diaries? Michael: Yes - on the 28 October there's a special screening for the cast and crew. The on the 29th there's an open screening for public so that's its true World Premiere. And the cinema may extend it if it goes well. It starts at 8.00pm and there are 150 tickets available and we sold a third without any real advertising so we would recommend that you buy tickets in advance. The cinema has said that if it sells out and there are enough people wanting tickets, they may do another screening immediately at 9.30pm. Geoff Bartram, who manages the Broadway cinema in Letchworth has really helped us a lot, along with the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, to help us secure this special public Halloween screening and Exposure TV in Hitchin have agreed to sponsor the showing and supply a digital projector. Tickets are £3.50 and all the money is going to the cinema as it's still independent. | 
