Today we went on a preliminary location scout round our beautiful home town of York.

We’ve filmed just about every corner of this city while making CrimeFighters and Whoops!, not to mention the Zomblog web series. Practically everywhere we look is a location we’ve used.

At least, almost.

The Zomblogalypse movie (which incidentally is now up on IMDb) is larger in scope and scale and other things beginning with ‘sc’, like scabies, so we can use parts of the city we perhaps haven’t been able to use through lack of money; both exteriors and interiors.

We’ve written some crazy scenes in and around many York landmarks and buildings and the hope is that we’ll be able to use them all. We want the film to be true to the spirit of the series but to afford us an opportunity to run a bit wild around York, filming and firing as we go.

Today was all about finding a few likely areas of York for the set pieces and street scenes and also scout the Zomblog mansion: whether it will be the same one we filmed the series in remains to be seen, as this is big stuff, not just a few idiots with a camcorder… though you’ll get to see a lot of that too.

(The photo above is by Mark Allen, thanks Mark!)

The next stage, now that we’ve submitted the script to the relevant people, is to keep busy while we wait for more meetings, a budget and shooting schedule. At the moment, we have a script, some big opportunities and a lot of enthusiasm.

What we’re hoping to do in the next few months is to turn these elements into a large-scale film production that will benefit us and the city we call home. So look out for us on the streets: if we’re sizing up your establishment, you may be getting a call from us one day…

Kevin Williams Acquires Zomblogalypse

YAAAAAY but what does that mean? Who is Kevin Williams? How did he ‘acquire’ Zomblogalypse? Who invented liquid soap and why? HELP!

What happened is that thanks to the support of our miraculous friends, fans and family, we went to Cannes and we met with some sales agents and distributors and other assorted folk who are interested in taking Zomblog to the next level, which is essentially to make a movie.

But not JUST a movie…

When we began Zomblogalypse in 2008, we wanted it to be a pop cultural thing, smeared all over the internet and comics and games and up your nose and out through your face pores and into your cereal.

Or, if you prefer the term, multi platform; something that people got obsessed with for the details and in-jokes; something they loved, even if they didn’t watch it for three years and then caned the entire series in one sitting. (We love it when people do that, by the way).

So when we pitched the idea to the good people at Cannes in May 2013, their eyes lit up at the thought of not just Zomblogalypse the movie but Zomblogalypse the movieS, the comic books, the web series, the scrolling splat-’em-up game, the mug, the action figures, the pop culture icon…

Okay, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. First off, we want to make a damn good zombie apocalypse movie and we’re now well on the way to making it happen.

Producer Steve is meeting with some rather exciting folk this week to see about taking this up a notch, after which we can meet with budget folk and council dudes and lots of other wonderful people keen to join Team Zomblog.

We’re planning big things, people. Big things that will stimulate not just us and you but also tickle the UK film industry a bit and create a great big film-quake, with York at the epicentre.

So, ‘Kevin Williams Acquires Zomblogalypse‘ means that our little web series affords us the chance to trot the globe and spread like wildfire over the World Wide Web, infecting the rest of the planet like in that film about the virus. No, not that one, the one with the monkeys. Although hopefully without having to see our own deaths at an airport.

We’ve babbled enough. Let’s end by saying thanks to everyone who helped us get this far for your continued support. We can’t wait to see what the future holds.

We’ve added a PRESS button on the site where we’ll gather past and future stories about Zomblog and add some information about the show and the films. There’ll be a ton of new stuff shambling your way soon. Until then…

VIENE LA TORMENTA!

This is no small feat. About 150 people donated and hundreds more showed support by sharing, tweeting and pimping the campaign to a triumphant degree and the result is… WE’RE OFF TO CANNES!

But what does that actually mean? Well, over to our Producer Steve Piper, who knows what he’s talking about:

‘Visiting the Marche du Film is a phenomenal experience and an opportunity to meet with the industry, learn the latest about the international market, get feedback on every aspect of the project, meet a bunch of other filmmakers, actors and technicians, attend all kinds of seminars on different aspects of filmmaking, financing and distribution and, crucially, FINANCE THE ZOMBLOGALYPSE!

There was some really solid interest in Zomblog last year and all four of us will be pounding the Palais carpets and Croisette pavements to meet up with as many people as possible and take the last couple of steps to the fabled greenlight and production. It takes quite a while to go from script to screen but please keep with us as throughout Cannes week we’ll be sending daily reports, videos and photos to the wonderful folks at One&Other so keep an eye on there from around the 15th of May.

We’re also launching into pre-production; zombie design work has already begun, casting will get rolling to fill supporting actor roles and talks will advance with people like York City Council and a bunch of the fair city’s landmarks that we’re hoping to include in the film. We’ll be talking with CGI people too to work out scaling up the world of Zomblogalypse, locking down the script and signing on the dotted line of some distributor’s finance agreement, hopefully all over summer.’

So there you have it. Wise words from Steve and a very exciting week ahead followed by a very exciting transition from chats, talks and plans to actual pre-production. We have our cast and crew in mind and as soon as we have a budget, we’ll be able to action these and start powering the Zomblog movie into existence. It’s always a tough journey getting a film started but we’re well on the way.

Stay tuned to this site, our Facebook and Twitter pages, wish us well and come along for the ride. It’s going to be a wild one!

Lots of love, Team Z x

There is some crossover, as some stick closely to the press release but there are some wonderful diversions including these great pieces from York’s bastion of common sense and media creativity, One&Other:

One&Other: The Apocalypse That Will Put York On The Map

One&Other: Halfway to Cannes-pocalypse

Then there’s SFX’s Alasdair Stuart’s excellent blog on the history of Zomblog:

SFX: Zomblogalypse The Movie

York Mix and Blog of the Living Dead’s fun and playful interviews:

York Mix: The Six Greatest Zombies In Movies

Blog Of The Living Dead: Blogging, Brains, Beans & An Interview

…and some great support from Crowdfunding Press Centre, The Horror Society & York Press:

Crowdfunding Press Centre: Zombloggers Turn To Crowd Funding

The Horror Society: How Three Idiots Survived The Zombie Apocalypse

York Press: Zomblogalypse To Make Feature Film

This level of support has helped us soar over our halfway point and with just 70 hours to go, there’s still so much we could gather to our bosom. If you’ve supported us, we love you, if you support us further, we will love you… further.

Here are the four interview videos we’ve done with key cast and crew members, and a GREAT photo shoot from last year by Redshirt Films‘ Jamie McKeller.

Tony Hipwell

Miles Watts

Hannah Bungard

Simon Brodie

Zomblog Photoshoot

Thank you for reading this and supporting us. Join us for the next leg of the journey!

Hit this link: Zomblog IndieGoGo - to see our pitch, videos, concept art and much more to come as we roll towards our goal to get the Zomblog movie staggering into cinemas with gleeful bloodlust. We have some GREAT PERKS for you other than being involved with the movie… you can own the movie… you can be at the premiere… you can even be IN the movie!

In the first 24 hours, we hit the £1,000 mark of the £10,000 we’re aiming to raise to start the ball rolling and we need YOUR help to keep the campaign strong all the way through. If you love Zomblog and really want to show it, NOW is the time: donate, share, tweet, whore, whatever you can do to get the word out there that we mean business, anything goes and every morsel of support is appreciated.

JOIN USSSSSS!

CLICK THE PIC BELOW for a video special, including a previously unseen outtake we just found:

The premise of Zomblogalypse – three friends blog the zombie apocalypse – is pretty simple, but only when you’re making ten-or-so minute episodes for the web. You can start the episode, do a few jokes, meet a few characters, explode a few zombies, make some off the cuff comments and be back in time for tea.

Then there are the ‘feature’ versions of the shows, from the Season 1&2 feature on our DVD to this feature length version of Season 3:

They work because they’ve been edited to work, not because they were planned as features. Z3 more so, but mostly because we took a road movie approach; it’s still episodic and small in scale.

'Let's CG a thousand more zombies in there.'

What we want to avoid when making a feature version is simply doing a ‘longer version of the TV show’ but we also don’t want to make something that sells out the concept. And we have to make something for the people who have never seen or heard of Zomblog. Which is everyone except the 1600+ Facebook fans we’ve garnered to our bosom.

Yeah, when we said 'cinematic'...

We want to deliver something funny, fresh and new, not just ‘another Shaun of the Dead‘ which we’ve never felt Zomblog was, despite the zombies. Zomblog is its own thing but it’s been difficult to focus on knuckling down to write a feature draft for various reasons. Making Whoops! all summer being one of them. Hannah not living in York another. All the same, we had a go at drafting some ideas back and forth over the summer.

Zomblog 2: Back to the Sofa.

But now that Hannah’s back in the ‘hood and we’re deep into post production on Whoops!, us three Zombloggers finally managed to gather in a pub this weekend over some Sunday roast and discuss the Zomblog movie. Happy to say that within about an hour, we’d figured out a draft idea that we think is a goer. Very funny, very Season 1, very silly, pretty solid. The structure is simpler than the first few ideas we had. It doesn’t make everything different for the sake of it but it does expand the scale of Zomblog into something that allows for, we think, a fun adventure.

'That was mint.'

It also very much uses York as a feature, perhaps for the first time as a character in the story, even more so than in CrimeFighters. We’re getting excited to the point where location scouts, production sketches and a preliminary production plan are all on the cards…

That’s all for now but rest assured, Zomblog fans, we aim to make this film next year and we aim to make it good. Well. To make it good and well. If you see us around town, aiming imaginary guns at you, don’t worry. We always aim for the head, so you won’t feel any pain.

Going postal: 'He's tampering with the Royal Mail!'

So we made this serial killer feature film over the summer called Whoops! which exceeded our expectations about how much fun filmmaking could be. No zombies but we think there’s plenty for Zomblog fans to enjoy.

'Where are the zombies?'

With a cast of professional actors from TV, we were gifted with some of the most talented cast & crew we could ever hope for. We made a lot of new friends and worked with some old ones and you can be sure some of them will turn up in the Zomblog movie. On which note…

Future zombie slayer?

We shall be spending the next few months working on the edit for Whoops! as well as developing the Zomblog movie script. What we’re working out at the moment for the movie is just what the story is, the set pieces, the FX, the characters and the overall scope. We want it to be huge and different but in keeping with the homemade, snarky Britishness of the series.

I say, cup of tea, wot wot?

We have some interest from some very cool bodies (not those kinds of bodies) and we hope to impress them with a brain-meltingly entertaining script, so that is what we are now working on. We’re very excited to be finally thinking seriously about what will happen in the Zomblog movie, who will work on it, star in it and when we’ll film it. Rest assured, we’re working on it… in fact we spent part of today discussing the film’s grand opening…

'No, Hannah is not making her entrance on a flaming zombie hippo...'

In the meantime, keep interacting with us on Facebook, look out for our upcoming Hallowe’en event, and keep tabs on Whoops! because as we always say, there’s SOOOO much more to come, including ANOTHER horror film you won’t know about yet… more soon!

Another MilesTone film, another gallon of blood...

This is kind of how we work.

At nearly 20 pages, the scriptment – with action and dialogue from the film peppered throughout – represents pretty much everything that’s going into the full-length script, which we’ve been working on in tandem. In length, the script is about a fifth of what it’ll end up as, but it should be enough to give folk an idea what we’re planning.

Fun times.

The treatment was designed not only to present to potential investors and distributors but also to start us putting onto paper what we would actually do with a Zomblog film. Ideas are great but the abstractions of ‘this would be cool, that would be awesome’ at some point need to be made practical. In words, at least, at this stage. We’ll worry about how to film it all later.

And this will be quite a film. Zomblogalypse the Movie is everything we would do with Zomblog if we ever had more than a few quid to make it. The snarky spirit of three callow fools surviving in a scary apocalyptic world is in there to the core, but we have so much more planned for the movie, in scope and ambition. Plus explosions. And gore. TONS of gore.

Zombies by SC4V3NG3R on DeviantArt

The ‘how in the name of knickers are we going to do this?’ element never goes away when you’re writing a script, but at least with this treatment we didn’t have to spend the entire time thinking there’s NO WAY we can do any of this. There are some utterly bonkers stunts, effects and sequences that we are going to have to figure out how to film, but as much as we can, we shall.

And there are some truly SPECTACULAR moments.

The most satisfying thing, as ever with Zomblog, was working together to combat apathy and make sure we one-upped each other’s ideas to create the best script we could. A lot of the dialogue will be improvised but we’re determined to get a butt load of great jokes in there, and many of them are better off scripted. We were very grateful to have Steve guiding us through the process this time, challenging us to better ourselves and constantly improve.

It’s not about who’s got the best idea and whose ego gets served, it’s about making the best film we can. The best ideas get into the script, regardless of who had them, and that’s a very satisfying way to work. Tiring and obsessively nit-picky, but satisfying.

Zomblog Season 3 Crew, March 2010.

Having signed off the treatment, we then read Steve’s funding proposal, which… let’s just say if I had a ton of money, I would give it to us to see this film get made. It’s going to be a hoot, and everything we would want a Zomblogalypse movie to be. The future beckons hungrily, like a… hungry zombie.

Out of similes. We’re tired.

Bloody wonderful job by Mr. Marcus Wilson who runs the excellent web company Pooka.Pro (and who also happens to be my oldest friend. As in, I’ve known him since we were five, not that he’s terribly old or anything… don’t look at me! – Miles).

When we started Zomblog, we wanted the site to look like a pinboard or fridge to which someone had stuck a post-it, and this was the first poster and web design we stuck with:

Early poster design from 2008

As the site evolved to include more episodes we played with several new designs including this one:

2009 website concept by Chris Marsh

But in the end we went for a more striking look to launch the new site with Season 3, very much with a Cowboy Bebop kind of vibe:

3rd season/website redesign, 2010

And now for 2012 we’ve gone with this new design:

2012 Redesign by Marcus Wilson

It’s clearer, cleaner and looks great on mobile phones, which is so very important these days since about 50% of browsing takes place on a smartphone or handheld device.

Over the months, the new site will evolve to include photo galleries and document our gradual development of the Zomblog movie right up to and including filming, so that fans can keep up to date as we report from the run up, the shoot itself and the edit room.

Homies

SCRIPT TREATMENT

As for the script treatment, we’ve had some interest from various people whom our Producer, Steve Piper, has been meeting with at Cannes. They love the concept of Zomblog and get how a movie would work but want to see in more detail what we’d do with the film version. It’s great in one way that the series speaks for itself and has that sense of anarchy, but on the other hand, there is no script to show the money people, so they need some clarity as to what exactly will happen in the movie.

By way of explanation, here’s an excerpt from an early version of the treatment as we were playing with ideas:

Hannah explains that she co-habits with two boys, just as we hear a SCUFFLE in the courtyard outside, accompanied by GUNSHOTS. Hannah sighs.

HANNAH

Ohhhh dear.

This is our first realisation that the world has gone wrong. Hannah seems at ease about the whole thing, continuing her blog while the sounds of battle and MOANING go on outside.

DOWN IN THE COURTYARD, the battle rages between a horde of RAVENING ZOMBIES and TONY and MILES, Hannah’s housemates.

Miles texts a lot and films from his smart phone as he lazily offs zombies, moaning:

MILES

Zombies, zombies, zombies. I’m so sick of zombies!

TONY

(mid-kill)

What’s the matter, allergic to fun?

It’s always weird, trying to present a ‘script’ of Zomblog, because the magic tends to happen through a combo of planning and improvisation. We always like to have a map of where the scene will go but then make stuff up as we go, often cracking up in the process as you can see in this Making Of Documentary from 2010:

We’re doing our best to convince the industry folk that this will be broader, funnier and more insanely violent than the web series yet remain true to its spirit.

And it’s a load of fun working it all out.