Yazmin

We shot these in the studio towards the tail end of last year. Just by changing a few lights around you can completely change the mood of a picture. It's always great working with Yazmin, she knows how to work a camera and isn't afraid of goofing around.
I will be shooting the album artwork to Lord Lav's debut album Lord of the Dead at the start of february, we have all of our zombies lined up including Yazmin and a small group of friends and family so watch this space.

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The Red Carpet

In just over ten days we will be attending the cast and crew screening of Zombie Resurrection, so we will all finally get to see all of our hard work up on the silver screen. From the off the film has been a family affair, the zombie hordes (on two separate days) were made up of friends and family, including Andy (our director's) mum. My parents will be attending the premiere and even though I have thoroughly prepared them for the amount of swearing and lopped off body parts they will witness, deep down I know that nothing could really prepare them. The scariest film my mum will watch is What Lies Beneath, so it'll be interesting to see if she speaks to me again after the screening.

I will also have a display of a large bulk of the promo shots I took for the film including portraits of all the zombies who kindly gave up their evening to be covered in fake blood, so I will be able to take orders for prints if you are attending the showing. 

Lord Lav on set 

Pete Lumley and Lav

 

Matt De Tisi

A couple of new portraits that I shot of the legendary Matt De Tisi a few weeks back.
Matt worked as the best boy on zombie resurrection. For those of you who don't know what a best boy is, they are responsible for the day to day handling of the lighting equipment on a film set and work under The Gaffer.

Lord of the Dead

Recently a few of us put our heads together to come up with a promotional video for Lord Lav.
The two main purposes of the video were to help Lav to crowd source funding for his debut album and also to introduce the character of Lord Lav.
Lord of the Dead is a zombie rap concept album intercut with audio scenes that run as a narrative throughout the album. If the funding campaign is successful the album will be pressed onto 12" vinyl and become a tangible collectable object for which I will be shooting the cover.
Between us we watched a lot of IndieGoGo videos, some great and some terrible to gauge what made a successful video. Our main concerns putting the video together were that it held peoples attention, was fun to watch, got the main points over as clearly as possible and that it was short enough that people wouldn't get bored whilst watching it (hopefully)
So ultimately here is the video. Let us know what you think and if you would like to contribute to Lav's campaign it currently live on IndieGoGo here

Lord of the Dead

So what did you do with your thursday night?
We spent last thursday shooting a Kickstarter campaign video for Lord Lav. For those of you who don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a website where you upload a video of yourself explaining a project you need funding for and offer perks that reflect the amounts people pledge, which are decided by yourself.

The original idea for the video was to have Lav sat in the studio telling you what he needed the money for, so we set the lights up and as always started talking. The conversation quickly turned to "you know what would make a really cool video"...
The title of the album is Lord of the Dead and is a concept album set in a world where zombies have taken over. Proclaiming himself as a newly found lord of the manor Lord Lav sets about living the life of luxury whilst society falls into ruins.

As a result of the conversation in the studio we scrapped the idea of a normal straight to camera piece and decided to set up a scene that would better reflect both the concept of the album and the humour Lav wanted to inject into the campaign.

Over the next three weeks we would scour charity shops and gather make up supplies and start to collect our zombie volunteers. Thursday night came around and everything fell into place. My sister and her boyfriend made up all of the zombies and everyone pitched in to distress their own clothes. Lana cut up her t-shirt with a pen knife whilst wearing it that turned out not to be such a great idea.
Gaz ate more than his share of red food colouring, Justin shot a time lapse of the whole thing and Lav kept us all in tea for the night.

We will be editing the video on monday with a view to getting it finished and uploaded by the end of the week, so keep checking back and I will be posting the link as soon as it's done.

A massive thanks to all of our zombies and to Jake for lending us his camera (and their instagram names to see more zombie pictures)


Emma - @emmaluckins
Gaz
Gemma
Jake - @jakeycboyo
Justin - @lightreflected
Lana
Laura -
Lex - @alexisshep
Yasmin - @yazmoogle

I have also been uploading a lot of the pictures to my instagram account @zomtographer

Welcome to the Darkslide

The dust has settled and I can sort of sit back for a minute. My show is up after three days of laying it all out and then hanging it. The show features 29 framed prints that I have shot over the past four years, half of the work I shot specifically for the exhibition.

A selection of zombies from Zombie Resurrection

It took abut two weeks to frame and mount all of the prints. Some of the mounts I cut, some were cut by my wife and the largest were cut by the excellent staff at Southsea Gallery. If you've ever tried to cut photographic mounts before you'll know how frustrating it can be. You buy a large sheet of expensive mount board, measure everything out. Get the metal ruler and cutter in place, then make your cut only to realise that you 've got the blade the wrong way and the bevel is facing the opposite direction.

Shooting a time lapse of the show going up next to my print of Brotherman

The exhibition space is divided into three rooms, so I placed all the work on the floor and moved it around until I was happy with where it sat, then asked a few people to give me their opinions and tweaked the layout accordingly. I know that Richard Avedon used to have a foam board scale model of the exhibition space made up and scaled down prints that he would tack on the walls until he was happy with their arrangement. I had already done this in my head over the last two weeks before taking anything down to the space.

Exhibition cat who turned up on the first day

For the first two days I had a lot of help from Lord Lav who was a massive help both with carrying frames and keeping me sane sat underground for the first two days.
On day three the legends that are my parents came down and helped me to hang the rest of the show.
All the name plates went up a few hours before the doors opened and it all went really well. I sold 9 pieces on the opening night.

Dave White and Jon Gibbs

Johnny Griffith

Johnny and Rob

So if you are down in Southsea within the next week and a half drop in and see the show.
It's at Room 237, 76 Elm Grove Southsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire.

Time flies

In a few days time it will be one year ago that I stepped onto the set of Zombie Resurrection. There are many things you find yourself being nostalgic about in your life, a favourite toy from your child hood, a  chance meeting with an old friend, and zombies.

I know what you're thinking, they're dead, they're all messed up. How could you feel a pang of nostalgia for something most people would rather keep at arms length. Even now, whenever someone mentions Basingstoke (where we shot the bulk of the film) I don't think "wow, they've got some really nice scenery, or isn't that where the Aldermaston nuclear weapons depot is.
No, I think Basingstoke, that's where zombies come from.

So, one year ago in a few days was our first night. A night of filling a corridor with smoke, spraying zombies in the face with cream filled fire extinguishers and me putting my foot in it by asking a girl if she was pregnant when she clearly wasn't.

Good times

Dead exciting news

Exhibition update. Due to popular demand my exhibition will now feature work from Zombie Resurrection.
This will be the first time any of these images have been on show in the UK, a small selection of images were shown briefly in Guernsey last year.

Prints from the exhibition will also be on sale.

So put down your copy of 50 Shades of Grey and i'll see you on the 1st of August

Zombie Resurrection goes to Cannes

As you read this, Zombie Resurrection will be travelling across the channel to France, safely in the hands of its creators Andy Phelps and Jake Hawkins of Charmed Apocalypse Pictures. All of their hard work has culminated in an advert just short of ten minutes showing all the best bits from the film to show to potential distributors.

So good luck guys and hopefully we'll be seeing it on the shelves in HMV very soon!

Poster concept. I went with two simple fonts which will continue across all of the posters. 

Showtime!

The trailer to Zombie Resurrection is now available online for your viewing pleasure.
It's so good to see everyones hard work coming together. Stay tuned to  the Charmed Apocalypse
website for more info and keep checking back here for more on set stills.

120° of the dead

The Horizon Kompakt is a clockwork panoramic camera that shoots a 120° photograph by cocking the cameras shutter then releasing the mechanism. I was fortunate enough to have been given one of these cameras a few years ago when a friend of mine upgraded hers. They are similar in many ways to the Widelux although you don't have as much control over your images as the Widelux offers.

I had always been aware of Jeff Bridges work shooting with a Widelux on every film set he has worked on and wanted to try something similar. Being on the set of Resurrection was my opportunity to put the camera to good use. I still have more films to develop and one in the camera to finish off which  will upload once they are ready to scan.

See Jeff Bridges amazing work here.

Thanks for tuning in!

Ste and Matt

Hannah

Zombie clothes waiting to be gored up 

Part of the 50 strong zombie hoard being made up

My sister and girlfriend getting their zombie make up finished

From left to right Danny, Rachel, Sarah, Messiah, Chris and Dave

Mr Jim Sweeney

During the last week of filming we would sit for up to two hours a day waiting for the torrential rain to stop. So whilst drinking tea and eating my way through a mountain of baguettes I took some shots of the cast and crew enjoying the down time.

All images in this post were taken using a Bronica ETRSI medium format camera.

Jim delivering some of his characters lines

Mac with fresh zombie spine

Apocalypse now

Question - What happens when you combine sleep deprivation with a fake severed head?
Answer - See below

Becca with her dog tags

Jake & Rob

Gandhi

Mr Beaumont

Ste

Matt

Danny, Eric & Simon

If it bleeds we can kill it

Coming soon to all cheap theatres

Sykes

Esther

Gandhi & Becca

Gibson

It's the end of the world as we know it...

Here are some more photos for your viewing pleasure.
This post is to all the amazing people I have met over the past month.

As always more info about the film can be found here:
charmed-apocalypse.com
shootingthedead.blogspot.com

Andy - Director/Writer

Jaimie - Set designer

Jake Hawkins & Andy Phelps

Jake - Director of Photography/Writer

Joe Rainbow - Gibson

Shamiso & Matt

Rupe

Rupe & Shamiso

Sam - First assembly editor

Shamiso

Zombie YMCA