Recovery Operation

So unless you've been living under or a rock or haven't really followed any of my videos, you will now know that we have confirmed a new Resident Evil Challenge for this summer! But there's no time to mess about as it's taking place this upcoming weekend (21st - 22nd August).

The Resident Evil Challenge 2010 is the first Challenge that I will have attempted in over a year and I won't be doing it alone. Nathan Gibbard is making his long awaited return after nearly 3 years! We attempted our first challenge over five years ago together in July 2005 and since then, have a total of 10 - 24 hour challenges to our names. Unfortunately, only 6 of those are successes as we failed 4 due to time, internet problems and just too difficult games.

We made a 7 minute trailer for the challenge which has taken up a good month of my time. As I knew this was going to be such a big deal for our community, I paired up with some friends to produce a short zombie film. We had 17 people playing zombies, who all had makeup (big thanks to our 3 makeup artists who did an amazing job). We shot out in the woods and fields near my house and it was an interesting shoot to use the equipment. Speaking of equipment, myself and Nathan had to make 2 trips to Birmingham to pick up/return the equipment. Each trip was about 340 miles in total which consumed the best part of the day so if that's not dedication, I don't know what is...

Really pleased with how the shoot went, despite the amount of rain we had on the Saturday. We were shooting inside an abandoned Shepherd's hut but obviously had to have the equipment outside when we were shooting. We could only shoot for about 30 minutes at a time due to the rain so it was a very long and stressful procedure... Despite that, we got some fantastic looking footage!

For post production, I used some pretty nice filters to colour up some of the shots to give some areas a really cold feel and others quite the opposite. I wasn't sure about how this difference in colour temperature would look but in the end, it makes the day look like it's progressing so by the end, there's a nice shot of the 4x4 driving out with over-exposed lights hitting the camera lens. The actual interior office scenes look gorgeous with a shallow depth of field blur filter that I applied. It really amplifies the tension...

I would have to say that this was probably my favourite film shoot thus far of my career. Despite having a laugh with my friends during it, I've managed to produce one of the most ambitious and cinematic films so far. It makes my films like About Sixteen look a little more amateur than I previously conceived. Hoping that this challenge is a resounding successm and most importantly, fun! Have a look at the website for the video and details on all the above - www.rechallenger.co.nr