I am thrilled to announce that a very exciting project that has been in planning for some time is finally coming to fruition. Two years ago I worked on a film called Kantemir, starring Mr. Robert Englund and directed by the super cool Ben Samuels. That movie was awesome and lots of fun to work on, and Ben and I really connected. So I was psyched to get a call from him a couple months later about one of his newest endeavors, 6:15 PM! As he described his vision to me it was clear that this was going to be a very refreshingly new take on the classic “zombie picture” styled and even photographed in totally unique ways. Obviously, as one who is driven to build things I’ve never seen before and to be a part of a truly innovative project, I signed on immediately. Ben and I started having some crazy creative conversations and we began prep work.
As our conversations continued I began having another conversation that would turn out to be quite career and life altering. I had submitted an audition tape for SyFy network’s reality show Face Off and they wanted me for the show. I asked Ben if he could afford for me to have have a “fairly major time conflict” for a period during the pre-production process. This turned out to be fortuitious for this project in many ways, but specifically because Ben had some stalls on his end nailing down the last of his budget during the same time period. If you have ever tried to raise money for anything I’m sure you understand it’s tough, if you’ve ever raised money for a movie you know it’s a very time intensive frustrating process. Often times as designers and technicians we lose sight of how the money we’re being paid was put together. It’s not easy or fun.
But Ben did it! It took some additional time than what we initially planned on, but ended up falling at a great time for all parties involved. So we’ve been talking and planning and designing and sculpting for about 2 months now and we are making some zombies! Can’t be specific but one of the big challenges in my mind is coming up with a design that we’ve not seen before. I think we are accomplishing that but keeping one foot in the mythology that audiences are comfortable with. We’ve taken a very forensic approach. There are some other really cool surprises that make our jobs as special effects artists even more fun and Ben is going to take us all on a crazy ass thrill ride!
I’ll keep you posted…
