Altered Zombieland Review (Megan's)

Zombieland Review

When we think about films, a horror-comedy is the type of picture that can go either one way or the other, and, surprisingly, Zombieland has tipped the scales in its favour; just about. With its strong mix of characters, and reckless, adventurous nature rubbing up against a tale of romance and bout of comedy, it’s certainly a film that keeps the audience intrigued. Yes, some of the gags fall dead here and there, leaving us with a few limp chuckles, and some moments are gut-wrenchingly cliché, but, all in all, for what it is, it could have a been a disaster.      Within the opening scene of the film, you are immediately immersed into the post-apocalyptic world of the ‘Unites States of Zombieland’, and what you get is an immediate and comical zombie-fest of slow motion shots of undead vs. human fun. Unfortunately, the quality of the humour begins to plummet - it does, however, save itself by keeping you invested through the relationships forming between certain characters, and the peppering of a good zombie punch up here and there; with the blood gargling and rotten zombies being realistically nasty. Certain scenes stand out in particular, such as an unusual rollercoaster ride that would have you screaming in terror for all of the wrong reasons, and a gas guzzling mum running from her sweet, little, flesh eating angels within the first 5 minutes of the film.      The characters are generally likeable, with tough guy Woody Harrelson bringing the action, and Emma Stone’s fiery character adding onto this, whilst also playing as part of the romance sub-genre with weak nerd Jesse Eisenberg. Yet, although we’ve been given a colourful palette of characters to feast upon (pun intended), the greatest moment of the film lies in its much anticipated cameo. The cameo is introduced perfectly and their jokes hit you right in the funny bone, coming as a much needed boost to its comedy genre. Despite all of that, you can’t help but feel that the story sometimes gets lost within itself, skipping back onto the recurring ‘twinkie’ joke, and slipping in clichéd moments towards the predictable ‘finale’ which doesn’t go off with much of a heart shaking bang as it perhaps could have done. Don’t feel discouraged, it certainly does take you on a good ride through this post-apocalyptic world, but just doesn’t seem to bring anything new to its hybrid genre; making it, really, a throwaway film.      So, if you’re are looking for a cheap thrill movie that has a strong set up of characters and a good promise of laugh out loud fun, then Zombieland should be next on your list. It certainly doesn’t bring anything new to the Horror-Comedy table, but does enough to keep you entertained and fairly satisfied. My advice? Stick to Shaun of the Dead.

Shaun of the Dead review

Shaun of the Dead

Shaun of the Dead, one of the most popular zombie comedy films out there. When you think cannibalistic comedy, you think Shaun of the Dead. The British humour sadly limits it somewhat (as different nations have different comedy), but for the average Englishman, its bound to have you in stitches. With exaggerated gore and delightfully stupid characters, it is a must-see.
The film is one of the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy, automatically catapulting the movie ahead of other films. Written by and starring Simon Pegg, he appears with his ever-present partner in crime, Nick Frost. Shaun (Pegg) is in a troubled relationship with Liz (Kate Ashfield). They split and, as if to punish them, the zombie apocalypse begins over night. Ed (Frost) is Shaun's dopey best friend who always seems to make things worse for them. Liz's best friends are Dianne (Lucy Davis), who is a 'failed actress', and David (Dylan Moran), who is in love with Liz but is in a relationship with Dianne because she 'knocked [him] back'. This, like Zombieland, revolves mostly around the characters and the bonds between them than the zombies, albeit the gore is over the top and used excessively. Since it's one of the BIC trilogy, it had a part for Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy, who appear in all of the films.
One of the most astounding things about Shaun of the Dead is that it was a remarkably low budget film, like its successors. Despite the fact that the film is shot in London, it's a remote part, and much of the film was shot on set since there is a lot of screening time for the pub, Shaun's house, Liz's apartment and Barbara's (Penelope Wilton) home. Obviously, Jaguars are expensive, but they seem to have no qualms with trashing it. The gore is very obviously faked and the pulling apart of a certain character (no spoilers!) is utterly unrealistic, but the film wasn't created to be realistic; it was created to make people laugh and scoff at the stupidity of the characters - all of them completely British.
Shaun of the Dead is certainly the best zombie comedy film that I've been fortunate to watch. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, the co-writer, have crafted a genius piece of British comedy with a nice dose of zombies. Its script is brilliant and the casting is perfect. This movie, like The Blair Witch Project, confirms the fact that low budget films still have the potential to make a change to the typical horror genre.

Zombieland Review

Zombieland

Zombie horror is extremely popular now, its leading pictures including Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead. I'm glad (and almost astonished) to say that Zombieland has joined their majesty. Surprisingly, it was difficult to pass accurate and truthful judgement over it but on the whole, it was an impressive film with actually funny comedic scenes and a different take entirely on zombie films that we've seen so far.
Zombieland - starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin - tells us the story from Columbus' (Eisenberg) anxious point of view, with his list of rules and 'irritable bowel syndrome', automatically setting this character apart from any other. Columbus travels across the States with Tallahassee (Harrelson), badass hillbilly who loves his car and is on a never-ending search for the last Twinkie; while being a total kickass, we do discover a surprising past about Tallahassee that could change your mind about him - no spoilers! We meet the con-sisters Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin) who are also pretty badass, but seemed to let the side down; Wichita managed to irritate me in almost every scene, though her sister was better.
What sets Zombieland apart from all other films in that genre is the character development and focus on them. Seldom do you see more than one characters' pasts in these sorts of movies and Rhet Reese and Paul Wernick wrote them beautifully. Whilst Columbus and Tallahassee have plenty of screen time and we uncover their past throughout the film, Wichita and Little Rock are rather underwritten, only giving us a small peek into their life pre-apocalypse. One of the nicest things about the character development and vastly different characters is that you get to watch them get comfortable with each other and become something akin to a zombie-exterminating family taking a road trip to an amusement park. The entire notion of the plot is completely ridiculous but still manages to make it a funny and somewhat endearing film.
So even though it deserves to be in the same top five list of zombie films for me, it didn't blow me away like Shaun of the Dead, but then again, nothing has managed to blow me like Shaun of the Dead, since there's really no competition. Zombieland was an enjoyable experience and had me laughing a lot throughout the film - good quality characters and a nice change to the serious zombie films focused on torturing the survivors.

Camera angles: Some of the camera angles would be achievable even by a no-budget film. For example, in the beginning, the camera shot is of the American flag seemingly standing proud but then it turns and reveals the flag on a car is sideways and the car is upside down. The camera angle would be easy, as it is merely turning it on its side, however, the car on its side would most certainly be difficult to do.
Budget: In order to attain the effect they desired (for the characters to be entirely alone), the creators would have had to close streets, whole halves of cities and close down a theme park simply for the set. This in itself would cost thousands of dollars. The price was increased by the need of props, special effect, vehicles and so on.

Target Audience

 

Shaun of the Dead

·         Swear words

·         Casual acting

·         Cautiousness

·         Clothing

·         Food being eaten (Cornetto)

·         Dialect (‘You got a fag?’)                                                                               Middle/working class

·         Blood                                                                                                    Adult male primarily

·         Casual props (cartoon mug)

·         Messy apartment

·         Use of media

·         Tense music/atmosphere

·         Gender (all male)

·         Immaturity

·         Ages

Age: Adults primarily (characters are middle aged and are in a similar situation to other men)
Gender: Male (characters are male and very male jokes)
Culture: British (British comedy - set in London and British slang)
Class: Working/middle class (characters are working class – live together cannot afford to live alone; and dialect)

 

 

Zombieland

 

·         Woody Harrelson big Hollywood star

·         Teenagers

·         Characters – nervous teenager and hillbilly

·         Weapon – banjo, shears

·         Teamwork

·         Gore

·         Use of food – Twinkies

·         Comedy quotes – ‘just gonna take a little off the top’ ‘man, these poor fellas really let themselves go’

·         Age rating of 15

Age: Teenagers primarily as the majority of characters and humour appeals to them but Woody Harrelson appeals to adults.
Gender: Male (male jokes and relatable situations for men in college or university) but female characters appeal to both genders.
Culture: American as it is set in America and has a hillbilly as a main character.
Class: Middle class as they are educated but the hillbilly character appeals to those similar to him and in Southern states.

Evil Dead II



 

Production Moodboards

 

The Nine Stages of Pre-Production!

For the first part of our course, we'll be planning a scene for a zombie film that we're designing and a trailer. First of all, however, there is a lot of thought that needs to be put into the pre-production. There are nine very important stages of this: type of production, financial issues, time scales, personnel, facilities, materials, contributors, locations and codes of practice and regulations. As a student in sixth form, there are positives and negatives to these aspects of film-making.

• Type of production: Zombie film. Nowadays, teenagers and adults are attracted to zombie films, particularly ones with comedy and lots of believable gore. Shaun of the Dead and World War Z (respectively) are good examples of these. They're also easy to make cheaply as long as you have a good make-up artist. However, they can also be messy, include a lot of work to be done and could be seen as over-done. Another example of a type of production is a 'romcom', like Shaun of the Dead or Warm Bodies, which are 'zomromcom's.  Conventions are very important in telling us what kind of production it is as well. The term conventions basically equates to clues. If, for example, the production is simply a horror, the zombies or frightened expressions of characters would tell us what genre it was. In a comedy horror, such as Shaun of the Dead (the image below) depicts the character's unamused and slightly freaked-out expression as a comedy while being surrounded by zombies, fitting the intended horror theme.

• Finance: Low-budget. All the best films are made with exceedingly high budgets, often in the millions and billions. Unfortunately, as an unemployed student, I haven't the luxury to spend more than £100 on a single scene. Low-budgeting is usually in the thousands, such as £20,000. If I were to have £20,000 as my budget, I would have to be very vigilant on my prices and what I spend my money on. However, if I were to have £50,000, I could afford to spend more on personnel or materials as I'd have more money to use to make it more visually pleasing.  While low-budgeting can be good (more profit in the end), it must all be self-funded and other employees (see personnel) have to be paid. Finance would be used on hiring out locations and materials as well, hopefully the best that one could afford. Not only this,
• Time scales: Whenever the school is empty (or mostly). Time scales includes things like deadlines, scene allotments, working out how long it will take to set up cameras, get lighting correct, and so on. Working out timing is very important to a film as there's many deadlines and other people often have more than one job and have to do more than one thing in one day. Timing is a good thing, of course, because it instigates good organisation and gets things done efficiently in the minimum time necessary. On the other hand, meeting deadlines can be very difficult, especially when being a student with other assignments and subjects to be focusing on. 
• Personnel: Cast and crew. Personnel is a vast category as it covers everyone who is involved in a single scene, excluding experts on information. Personnel includes make-up artists, costume designers, actors, stunt persons, cameramen, catering, producers, directors, cinematographers, art designers, editors, still photographers, score mixers and so on. Having personnel can be a good thing, as it means that you don't have to do everything yourself and share the load, but it means more people to keep track of, more people to recruit and you have to find good quality designers for costume and make-up. 

An example of make-up used in Warm Bodies. Zombie make-up doesn't have to garishly gory! 

• Facilities: The school. While the school is our set location, it's also the place where we keep props, costume and it has a catering system and free toilets. Sometimes facilities are difficult to find as you often have to pay for them, but since I'm a student at the school and it contributes to my learning, it's unnecessary to pay. Sometimes, however, you can't always get the facilities you want, and have to look somewhere else instead. 
• Materials: Props. Materials is a very broad subject as well, mostly for props. Materials is basically whatever makes the scene more visually pleasing and realistic. Props in our scene, for example, would be the character's weapons (hockey sticks or something similar). Materials also includes cameras, the actual costumes, any additional lighting, etc. However, it can be confusing for the actors especially to work with so many props while saying their lines, and they'd need to be fixed, replaced, maintained and kept track of. 
• Contributors: Our teacher. A contributor is someone who is often an expert on something that is crucial to the plot or scene, or someone who can add something to the budget, or even help out in general without being directly involved. This is a benefit to having a contributor(s), but sometimes, they'll want to be paid.
• Locations: The school and its pavilion. As we're students, it's easier to use a set that we have access to anyway. For our film, the school is an easy place for our scenes as it can be creepy and has long corridors for filming. Locations can be anything from a school to a field, a museum to an apartment, a bus stop to a petrol station. The location is a very important factor of filming as it adds to the overall image and is often the part to be judged in a scene. Our location is good as we can set it there easily, but some places may be a little awkward in filming, such as trying to film from a corner in the changing rooms. 

Scenery from The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey. Most of it was in New Zealand, like The Lord of the Rings, though nowadays, a lot of scenery is simply digitally added.

• Codes of Practice and Regulations: Permission from the headteacher, media teacher and on-site management. This is a crucial part of filming anything, as it keeps everything legal and copyrighted and safe. As we're simply a school project, the codes aren't as multiple as the bigger films would have to have. We'd need safety and permission to film in some areas as the most important legalities. However, sometimes in films, it's difficult to acquire the codes as some scenes are always dangerous, but sometimes it's simply a matter of making it as safe as they possibly can. In a big action film like World War Z, there would have to be a lot of safety regulations and many legal matters to take care of to even allow the movie to prepared for.

The traditional copyright symbol.