It rained while we were in transit from one location to the next. It was pretty grotesquely humid, which actually worked out great on the 2nd location.As you can see from the still from the footage below. There was an awesome fog that seemed to always be lurking on the edges of the shot and added a haziness to some of the footage, it looked pretty cool.
We gathered up for a quick shoot at Hardy Mill Pond with the leads, it went as expected, no problems whatsoever and we left slightly ahead of schedule.
While driving between the two locations we had a massive downpour and stopped in at my place along the way to wait it out, it put us a little behind schedule, but better to wait there than in the rain.
I've never shot here before, the 2nd location was Scales Pond. It's absolutely beautiful and rather grim looking at the same time. We also ended up swapping out canoes with inflatable boats. Might not have been the most brilliant idea, but I think in the end it made it easier moving things around.
I've also never filmed people in boats in the water, so this was a pretty new experience and one I really had misjudged just how difficult it would be.
While we shot some stuff with the leads, I had a couple makeup folks get the zombies ready in the background.
And that meant it was time to pile the girls in the boats. They weren't meant for 3 people, but they will hold them well enough.
And this is how I spent most of the day, in waders that had a leak in them. By the end of the day (and the zombies suffered much worse) I been walking around with one leg soaked to the knee in a boot full of water.
Even on the still camera the fog was pretty prominent.
That hardest part was resetting each time. I had a couple zombies get in the water and they were constantly pulling the boats back into position and letting them go while I tried to get a few shots. Overall I think it worked, might look a little awkward, but I'm hoping that translates to slightly silly looking.
Steve here, in the background was getting ready to be the first underwater zombie. He had to submerge himself and pop up at just the right moment, speed and position. It took only a few takes and it looked awesome in the end, perfectly creepy.
All day I was dreading the zombie attack sequence. There were so many things I couldn't show, didn't want to and had to hide it made the whole thing slightly stressful. Once we got all the zombies in the water and had very carefully shot some leadup footage I had no choice but to just do it. We also were constantly moving the boats into random spots of the river with different depths to accommodate what we needed. I don't think it shows, but I'm not going to pay too close attention - or even really care for that matter.
This was probably somewhat safer then putting the girls in canoes and tipping them, clumsy, but that makes it kind of funny anyway.
Everyone was incredibly patient, it was nice that despite it being such a difficult shoot, there was never a moment of tension or any time where anyone was very visible upset or put out because of something that was happening or not. Although I do believe the closeups of Heather in the boat when the zombies attacked her was genuine and not acting.
We had more to shoot after the zombie attack scene, but it was just taking too long to get what we had that I just didn't feel like I should expect anyone to want to stick around for another scene, so at the risk of falling behind, I decided it would be best to call it for the day and just deal with it later. We got some great stuff, but it was so exhausting - wandering about in waders all day certainly didn't make it easier on me and I doubt anyone else was really enjoying being cold and damp either.
We ended a few hours later than planned, even with dropping the next 2 scenes, we finished in the early evening I believe. And thanks to everyone who stuck it out, it was painful by times but this was the most difficult shoot on the whole series. The location was pretty remote and the weather was making everything damp, so I'm really hoping the next few shoots will be drier and easier.
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