AM - Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Director: George A. Romero
IMdb rating: 8.0/10
Budget: $114,000
Box Office Takings: $12,000,000 (USA)        $30,000,000 (Worldwide)

Synopsis

The radiation from a fallen satellite might have caused the recently deceased to rise from the grave and seek the living to use as food. This is the situation that a group of people penned up in an old farmhouse must deal with.

Deconstruction

At first we see an establishing shot of 3 men, 2 of whom are carrying a coffin, the shot is quite long and drawn out over a period of 20-30 seconds, we then see a few examples of the 180 degree rule. 

The film is in black and white, signifying that it was made quite a while ago.

The next shot/shots is of the pickup truck driving , these are long shots of the truck going around a series of bends, we also hear diegetic sound of the two men inside the truck talking while we watch the truck move.

Once the truck comes to a stop at the cemetery, we see some more examples of the 180 degree rule and then see a series of high angled shots of Arthur (the victims father, to who the man in the coffin killed) this shows power and authority.

This is a trailer from the original 1968 version of Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero. 

KM - Day of the Dead

Director: George A. Romero 1985

Budget- $3.5m (estimated)
Box Office Gross- USA- $5.8m
Worldwide- $34m
IMDB Rating- 7.0/10

Synopsis- A small group of military officers and scientists dwell in an underground bunker as the world above is overrun by zombies. Set in Florida, as the film begins the dead have taken over the world, outnumbering humans 400,000 to one. The handful of surviving humans have taken refuge in an underground missile silo and argue and yell at each other like players in a Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode. Among the survivors are Sarah (Lori Cardille) -- a scientist who is trying to reverse the process whereby the dead turn into flesh-eating, irrational zombies -- and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) -- an out-of-his-mind psychologist who wants to capture the zombies and turn them into domestic help. Things heat up when the military tries to take over the scientific experiments.

Establishing shot

Deconstruction- The film opens with a non-diagetic gong sounding as the scene fades in quickly from blackness into an establishing shot of the protagonist sitting on the floor of an empty room, which signifies some sort of institution, anchorage is given for this through the orange jumpsuit that she is wearing, the rough white font of the titles appear over the establishing shot, and signify the movie genre.

POV shot

The scene then cuts back and forth between a close-up of the protagonist and a POV shot from the protagonist's perspective, looking at a calender on the wall, across the room. Non- diagetic electronic synthesisers crescendo over the top of the scene as the protagonist stands and slowly walks toward the calender. 




The scene ends with the protagonist being grabbed by zombies who punch through the wall, the shot ends suddenly and the screen transitions to white before showing the protagonist in a helicopter, signifying a flashback. 

The opening of this zombie film encorporates features similar to what we are including in our 2 minute opening, such as the first few shots showing the protagonist alone before leading into a flashback transition.

SB - Colin

Colin

Director: 1978, George A. Romero

IMdb rating: 8.0/10

Budget: £45

"Our hero Colin is bitten by a Zombie; he dies and returns from the dead. We follow him as he wanders through suburbia during the throes of a cadaverous apocalypse. " (source Colin)

There was only one scene in this film which was useful for our group, and that was the flashback scene of Colin being sick. The reason that this wass useful is because it uses fast takes of colin vomiting out of a window, and inbetween there us a slow paced mid shot. The shaking of the camera in the extremely fast takes are what we are also looking at, our fast paced shots will be of a horde of the ravenous undead sprinting down a dim li street with the camera sprinting in tow. Here is the clip which i was just mentioning from Colin. 

SB - Dawn of the Dead Original opening

Dawn of the Dead

Budget:$650,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:$900,000 (USA) (April 1979) (68 Screens)

Gross:$55,000,000 (Worldwide) 

 

A brief summary of the story.

"Following an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter, and his television-executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall." (source Dawn of the Dead)

The film is the sequel to "Night of the Living Dead". The film is set in a mall in the USA, Romero used this setting as a satircal take on people who shop at malls acting like zombies, with the humans standing in as royalty, enjoying all the luxuries suburban America has to offer, while outside, the undead masses clamor hungrily at the gates.

Tom Savini's talent for special effects is proven in this film, some scenes such as the zombie getting his head ripped of by the rotary blade of a helicopter or a zombie getting a machete to the face are true examples of the man's amazing ability to do anything with some fake blood latex and pumps. 

The make-up on the zombies is very simple and was a dull blue/grey colour and darkened around the eyes in order to give it the sunken eye look thata corpse posseses.

The only problem i faced with this film was the zombies themselves, they weren't much of a threat they seemed to move slower than the ones from the Night of the Living dead and seemed weaker, I think this was adressed in Zack Snyder's remake where the zombies are sprinting and a lot stronger than the ones in the original film, I think this gives the film an extra sense of bleakness as there is even less of a chance the protagonists and antagonists will survive.

ALL - Filming

Today we filmed some of our scenes with Jack Hanson, Here are some scenes we filmed.

SB - Creating Blood.

In this clip we are creating and applying our blood to our actors face and hands. The process of creating blood is simple and only requires red and green food colouring and golden syrup.We changed from blue to green because it made the blood look a lot darker. When applying the make up we used our hands and dabbed it onto the actors face and hands.   An intresting commentary from Jack Hanson aswell.

KM - George A Romero

George Andrew Romero (born February 4, 1940) is an American-Canadian film director, screenwriter, and editor best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Grandfather of the Zombie." - Wikipedia description

Here are some of the films that Romero had directed in the past: Night Of The Living Dead, There's Always Vanilla, Jack's Wife/ Season of the Witch, The Crazies, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.

The first zombie films (such as White Zombie and I Walked With a Zombie) featured zombies which were in isolated settings and usually in high society, George A Romero was the first director to feature zombies in primarily urban settings, also in Romero's films such as Dawn of the dead and Day of the dead, the zombie characters are purposeful in the task of hunting and killing humans, rather than aimlessly wandering around like in the zombie films before him. This is an idea we are using in our two minute opening, as the zombies are trying to reach our protagonist (Jack Hanson) inside the house.