Well. It's official. Ferals has been the best production that I have worked on thus far in my filmmaking career. Not only was it highly enjoyable with an amazing crew and cast, but the footage. looks. amazing. However, this didn't come with problems...
Pre-production took around 2 months, there was a lot of organisation for this production. There were 30 extras to sort out to play the Ferals, 4 cast members which we had to audition, a crew spanning over different areas of the UK from Birmingham to Brighton, a makeup crew... The list goes on. But I love it. I would be estatic if I could do this as a full time job but then so do thousands of other producers in the country. It's a competitive game.
Anyhow, we had a big issue two weeks prior to the production as our original lead dropped out due to a new job opportunity. Luckily, we managed to bring on the talented and very much enthusiastic Tom Pepper to play the role of Will. Think you're a zombie fan? You've not met Tom. I challenge you, he's seen 'em all, played 'em all. This guy is a zombie nut. And I've never met an actor so gratuitous to get the part, he worked really well with our lead actress Bethan Hanks as well who very kindly came down to audition with the applicants in our moment of last minute casting.
Production was a pretty hectic couple of days, the crew stayed at my house for ease of travel to the shoots but after 4 12 hour days, the exhaustion on crew and cast became very apparant as can be seen on some of the production stills on the main site. Nonetheless, everyone was very enthusiastic to crack on to battle the living dead. We had some great catering for the shoot, I think the stack of eight dominoes pizzas went down very well for our team of hungry zombies (crew and extras) after an extensive shoot through some open fields.
Due to the intensive shoot, we didn't manage to grab every shot that we needed so last night we took a stripped down crew and cast to shoot our last few pick up shots. Tomorrow we're getting our final two pick up shots and then Matt can announce the all important words for the end of the shoot!
I'm heading to Madrid to go travelling for a few weeks with a couple of friends this Wednesday. Will be a nice escape after the shoots, dissertation and final year coursework that I've battled through in the few seven months of this year thus far, heading around Spain, Portugal and if we get time Morocco so I'll be back to hit this edit with a fresh and open mind. In the mean time, I'm handing the footage over to Matt to start a rough cut.
Really looking forward to seeing how this one plays out. See you on the flipside dudes...
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