When
college friends get together for a day of fun around the hot tub, they figure
the day will be filled with high jinks, laughter, and, if they’re lucky, a
little fooling around. In Midget
Zombie Takeover,
this assumption couldn’t be more wrong.
The party starts out normally enough
with the exception that fat, socially awkward Billy shows up. While the cool kids think that Billy is
going to be their biggest inconvenience for the day, they soon learn that he
isn’t because their party is suddenly crashed by zombies – little, tiny zombies.
Seeking safety from the
zombies in a house, they soon find that these little zombies are deadlier than
they could have ever imagined. As
the cool kids begin to get killed off, it eventually appears that Billy might
be the one person who can keep them alive. But can he?
Starring: Kristi McKay, Matt ‘Goose’ Goosherst, Kedryn
Carpenter, Daniel G. Cramer, Cassandra Crawford, Anita Nicole Brown, Brian
Johnson Jr., Jayson L. Hicks, and Cody Strack
Written, directed, and produced by: Glenn Berggoetz
Letter
from director Glenn Berggoetz
about
Midget Zombie Takeover
Midget
Zombie Takeover
was a blast to shoot. Since we
shot on such a small budget ($2,000), we didn’t have the funds to pay for hotel
rooms for the cast and crew, so everyone stayed in the house we shot the film
in. It was like summer camp! We began shooting around eight in the
morning each of the four days of the shoot, then shot until about ten or eleven
o’clock each night. At that point
I would stagger off to bed to try to get six or seven hours of sleep before we
started shooting again in the morning, but I found out that most of the cast
and crew stayed up until three or four in the morning carrying on, having a few
drinks, telling stories, and hanging in the hot tub.
The
shoot went amazingly smoothly for the most part. While there was a two-hour stretch during the third day of
shooting when the one camera we shot the film on suddenly went haywire and we
were worried that the shoot we have to be stopped, just as suddenly the camera
began working again. Catastrophe
averted! Otherwise, the cast
members all knew their lines, we moved quickly from shot to shot, and everyone
had a great time.
While
we’re on the topic of moving quickly from shot to shot, that did result in some
problems for the editor of the film.
Since we had to shoot so quickly, many times we only shot a scene once,
then moved on to the next scene.
Unfortunately, this often led to us not having as much footage as we
should have or shots where the audio wasn’t as good as we would have liked it
to be. So when editor Erik Lassi
got the footage, he was worried.
He then showed me some of the footage (we shot the film so quickly that
there was no time to watch dailies during the shoot), and I quickly became
worried too. Dialogue was muted,
some takes weren’t centered exactly right, some scenes didn’t have very good
transition footage, etc. I
wondered if we only had enough footage to cut together a 35-minute,
incomprehensible short film. But
that’s when Erik went to work.
Incorporating
a lot of hard work, some technical skill, and (as far as I can tell) a whole
bunch of witchcraft, Erik began to put together a film that was not only
comprehensible, but fun! He was
able to capture the talents of the cast members, and he even threw in some
little touches of his own. I was
thrilled!
Speaking
of the talents of the cast, there are eighteen people who appeared in the
film. Of those eighteen, ten had
never appeared in a film before, so it was a pretty inexperienced group. But I couldn’t have been happier with
them! While some of their
inexperience shows up on screen (as is to be expected), I find their
inexperience to be quite endearing.
And for the most part, those moments aren’t that numerous as they all
did such a great job.
I
make films for two reasons – first, to have fun, and second, to entertain viewers. From what I’ve seen so far in the
screenings of the film that I’ve attended, both goals were accomplished.
So
who’s ready to watch “Midget Zombie Takeover?” Head over to their Facebook page, “Like” the page, and send them this message: “PromoteHorror.com fans want
to see Midget Zombie Takeover.” A select few fans will receive a special link to see
the movie courtesy of Glenn Berggoetz.
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