GPx BTS: Samurai Dead Episode #1
A fun, behind the scenes look at our first zombie webseries, Samurai Dead. Thanks to everybody who helped us with this project! You guys are an awesome team!
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Inspired by WALKING DEAD, MAD MAX, and TWILIGHT SAMURAI, my filmmaking buddies and I decided to create our first zombie, post-apocalyptic webseries. With short, 5 minute episodes, we thought it would be simple to produce, but little did we know the pain and heartache we were getting ourselves into…
The first obstacle was trying to figure out how to create a convincing zombie. We originally planned to take the CG route and digitally transform our actor into a zombie. At the time, we’d seen other YouTube videos and tutorials on how to transform an actor in After Effects. These tutorials were relatively easy to do, but when we tried to apply them in practice (that is, apply them to an actual movie), we found them impractical. It was relatively simple to transform an actor into a zombie if he or she was standing still n a fixed position, but it was much more difficult to track the effects to an actor who was twisting, turning, and moving in a more normal way. We realized we’d have to turn to 3D effects, which we weren’t ready for at the time.
This forced us to resort to go old school: Make up. Fortunately, we found an extremely talented makeup artist. Despite having never done zombie makeup before, she absolutely floored us with her work during our initial tests. If it wasn’t for her help, SAMURAI DEAD would have never been.
After the shoot, we ran into another obstacle: special effects / VFX. There were two key scenes in the movie that required a fair amount of CG work: The opening transformation scene and the arm infection scene at the end. Unfortunately, we filmed these scenes without placing markers on the actor’s face and body. This made it 100 times harder to track and apply the effects. It took us months to figure out how to apply the effects and it taught us a valuable lesson: MAKE SURE YOU PLAN YOUR VFX SHOTS, YOU IDIOT!
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. While reviewing our footage in the editing room, we realized that the sky in nearly every shot was blown out as a result of improper exposure. It took us hours upon hours of painstaking work to go through and replace the sky in every shot. It was slow and tedious work.
Looking back, it’s a miracle we managed to finish this project. We simply didn’t plan and prepare the way we should have. Fortunately, we learned several valuable lessons that we believe will help us in our future projects. Thanks for watching and subscribing to our YouTube channel. It’s our goal, here at Glass Pixel Studios, to entertain our viewers and provide you with the information you need to film your own movies. Good luck and have fun!
Feel free to contact us at [email protected] for more information about our film and future projects!