Guerrilla Productions presents
Con of the Dead
This is one fun movie! Every year at Norwescon, we do the "Let's Make a Movie!" workshop and this year, some of the biggest movies were all about people coming back from the dead and cannibalism ("...zombies are forever," claimed Ryan during the planning session). So naturally, we found ourselves drawn to covering this previously unexplored territory. Once again, we skirted the terrifying edge of parody and outrageousness with some really edgy stuff, much of which is certainly going to get us into trouble all over again every time we show it.
By all means, if you're interested in this or other movies we've made at Norwescon, visit Ryan's Norwescon movies page!
If you want to be in one of our movies, or help with one, just find the workshop at the next Norwescon. Seems like we usually have our first workshop Friday morning.
Thanks to our awesome new hosting solution, Con of the Dead is now available as a 5M RealVideo download! Check it out!
Cast
- Redneck Wife: Debbie Lentz
- Redneck Husband: Daniel Kaufman
- Zombagra Voiceover: Katrina Martin
- Hall Zombies: Leopoldo Marino, Theo Hill, ?
- Registration Volunteer: ?
- Zombie Keanu Reeves: Leopoldo Marino
- Zombie Translator: Alexandra Paris
- Zombie Activists: Theo Hill, ?, ...
- Zombie Pamphleter: Thaddeus ?
- Scared Woman: Laurel Parshall
- Pamphlet Reader: Sera Hartman
- Steve Irwin: ?
- Pool Zombies: Chris Anderson, Leopoldo Marino, David Tackett, Theo Hill, ?, ...
- Kurt Cobain fan: ?
- Zombie Kurt Cobain: David Tackett
- Bus Driver: Mark Dranek
- Charlton Heston: David Tackett
- Charlton Heston Wrangler: Ron ?
- Zombie Soylent Green Fans: Theo Hill, Runia, ?
- Jesus Christ: Mike Reddig
- Homeless Zombie: ?
- Cafe Zombies: Theo Hill, Thaddeus ?, Leopoldo Marino, Runia ?
- Waittress: ?
Crew
- Producers: Ryan K. Johnson and Brian D. Oberquell and Edward Martin III
- Writers: Ryan K. Johnson and Brian D. Oberquell and Edward Martin III
- Director: Edward Martin III
- Cinematographer: Ryan K. Johnson
- Assistant Directors: Ryan K. Johnson and Leopoldo Marino
- Post-Production and Audio: Edward Martin III
- Makeup: Lori Hillard
- Props: David Tackett and Brian D. Oberquell and Janet Borkowski
- Lighting/Electrical: Tom Lentz
Production Diary
04-28-2006: Con of the Dead makes the cut at the Zompire Film Festival in Portland. We also show a teaser for Flesh of my Flesh.
04-01-2006: Con of the Dead makes the cut at Faux Film Festival in Portland. It's clearly a banner year for zombies.
12-09-2004: Con of the Dead shows at Gore-o-Rama A-Go-Go 2: Season's Bleedings film festival in Portland. Even the drunks laugh!- 04-11-2004: Con of the Dead premieres at the Fandance Film Festival. People are vastly amused. This is probably our funniest and slickest productions yet (thank you, Ryan, for showing me how to use the titler! Cool!). The night before, I had added a few more sound effects, as well as some bits of music to a few scenes, such as the Steve Irwin parody and the "brought to you by..." commercial. Wow, this is just a remarkable achievement. Woo-hoo!
- 04-10-2004: Two-and-a-half hours of shooting and we got it all. Everybody seemed really happy to help and there was just some really, really excellent performances all 'round. We edited on GP's production computer, which meant that we had access to Premiere (the point of the workshop is to show people that a movie can be made relatively easily and affordably. One could argue that Premiere, being rather expensive, violates this principle, but we only used it because it's the tool with which we are familiar. Our edits were simple cuts and fades, which are do-able using most any piece of video-editing software. Last year, we used iMovie and the time spent learning the software was just a killer for us. So, we used Premiere, but we didn't do anything with it that was really extraordinary -- just boring stuff). Last night, I spent a few minutes making an opening title sequence, and I think that was a really big change from what we normally do. Our first title sequence on "Intergalactic Bad Astra" was just us holding up a paper sign and making musical humming sounds while waving our hands in front of Ryan's light. The editing workshop this afternoon went well, too. There were a few extra sound and voiceovers that we wanted to drop in and they went in well and we had a chance to show people how we dropped in sound. This was also the first time we ever used audio filtering. Ryan was surprised at how simple the process was, and I hope I turned him on to some really good tools (such as Goldwave).
- 04-09-2004: Our first meeting of the "Let's Make a Movie!" workshop. Ryan and I had previously discussed the possibility of making a zombie movie. It is, after all, a popular staple of the genre. Surprisingly, the workshop audience was thrilled by this and we came up with lots of great ideas and scenes and skits.
