-Last Saturday (9/13/2014), the zombie short film “Blessed Are The Meek” by MAD ANGEL FILMS was premiered at SCARE-A-CON. As such, I’m now able to upload the pics and recap from that filming session. BATM will be one of several zombie short films to be on a compilation DVD called “Empire of the Dead” to be released by SRS CINEMA LLC. Here’s the recap…
-06/14/2014-This was a very long day for filming on a zombie short film named “Blessed Are The Meek” (BATM) by Mad Angel Films. I played the role of “Draven”-a whacked psycho killer (with a touch of “The Joker”) who basically changes personalities on the fly from time to time and leader of a trio comprising of Ryan Santiago and Greta Volkova. Weeks earlier I came up with the idea that the three of us should wear “skull makeup” for this and contacted Melody Wilkinson for this. I had to do some test runs before the shoot date cause I tend to sweat easily and readily so I wanted to make sure that the makeup would stay on-at least until the fight scenes. The three of us arrived early on this day to have the makeup applied and, for the most part, it stayed on all day-even after the fight scenes. Luckily for me, it was cool this day which was a blessing for me. I know for a fact that Greta would disagree with me on this 🙂
-We arrived and filming had already been done with some of the zombie extras and other cast. We initially started filming in the same location that “Slade Collins 2: In & Out of Time” was being filmed. It was fun and quick. Glad I wasn’t lugging a huge bag of equipment this time. 🙂 We then went over to a forest location for the rest of filming.
-We finished everything this day, but this was a long one. Lots of mud, gore and blood all around. I actually got pretty winded towards the end cause I had to fight off several zombies-and, of course, none of these were one takes. That’s fine with me though-I’d rather do take after take if that means getting it right. One of the zombies I had to fight was played by Cassie H. and she really took a lot of abuse at my hands. At one point, cause things were moving so fast, I misjudged my distance and, while doing a backhand, actually connected with a glancing blow to Cassie’s head (!). You’ll have to watch this to see what other damage me and the others did to each other. Note-never wear good leather pants on future film shoots-unless I get a spare 🙂
-Everyone did a great job and we had some real troopers on this one. As I stated earlier, the MVP award, IMO, goes to Cassie-I don’t think I’ve gone thru that much abuse filming-and I’ve gone thru a lot. In fact, as soon as I got to my girlfriend’s place, it seems like someone pulled the plug on me and I was quite sore and lethargic for the rest of the night and the next day-and I had filming to do in the next two days. Still preferred over a normal 9-5 job. 🙂 It’s was great working with everyone on this and hopefully this will be out before year’s end.
Update-This short film, along with others, premiered at the 2014 Scare-A-Con in Verona, NY on 9/13/2014 and will be one of several zombie short films released on a compilation DVD by SRS Cinema LLC.Pics can be seen on my acting page on Facebook. Via the link below…
WAYNE W. JOHNSON 