<< back to the intro

DVDown Under:  Given you have embarked on a horror film for your major film debut, it's pretty much a given you're both fans of the genre (aren't we all :)  What made you decide to make a zombie-fest as you first big screen venture?

Michael & Peter: We are big fans of the genre, especially zombie comedy films (Evil Dead, Brain Dead), and wanted to do a film that fans of the genre would enjoy and have a good time watching.

DVD:  There are two of you at the helm for UNDEAD.. Is it a 50/50 partnership with the directing, editing, writing and producing?  Or are you finding one of you focuses more, on say, directing then editing, and vice versa?

MP: It is definitely a 50/50 situation, which includes everything from writing, directing, editing, even down to the CGI.

DVD:  How did you find all the people involved with the film (both sides of the camera)?

MP: We had an amazing cast and crew. It was a very difficult film to make, the actors were put through a lot of long cold nights in the rain. No one complained. Our lead Felicity Mason was subjected to the worst of it enduring over 20 nights in the rain in the middle of winter.
The crew did an extraordinary job with very little money. Our Production Designer Matthew Putland built almost all the interiors from scratch, this was mainly because of the carnage that occurs in our various locations.
Andrew Strahorn, the cinematographer, gave the film a look well beyond its budget. Costume Designer Chintamani Aked managed to design and dress literally hundreds of people/zombies for a budget that allowed for about a third of that. Steven Boyle our Make-up Effects artist had just come off Episode 2 and was more than willing to make hundreds of appliances of prosthetic effects that were required for the shots.

DVD:  Was it more of a hands-on environment for everyone involved (with even the actor's getting around helping out on the set)?

MP: The actors didn't really get in and help behind the camera, they were far to busy in front. But the atmosphere was definitely one of total group effort with absolutely no egos.

DVD:  What is the basis of the story for UNDEAD?

MP: The film centres around a group of six people who find themselves in the middle of an epidemic. The townsfolk are turning into zombies. The group battle their way through the plague of walking dead and discover things are not exactly what they seem.
The basis of the story comes from a trilogy of short films we made a number of years ago. The short films were black comedies about a zombie infection that takes over a small town. The script for "Undead" has been expanded greatly from the short films but the tone and humour is very much the same.  The feature film is far more complex than just a bunch of people turning into zombies but I don?t want to give anything away.

DVD:  Was there anything in particular your tried to avoid when making UNDEAD,so as it stands on its own from other zombie films?

MP: We wanted to do something different with the genre, something nobody has ever seen before in a zombie movie, you'll just have to see the film to understand what I am talking about.

DVD:  C'mon, can you spill the beans on SOMETHING With your zombie-fest? You must have a favourite gore sequence? Tell me a 'little' bit about it....please :)

MP: I can tell you that it took two and a half months just to complete an animatic for a sequence so we could work through the complexity of the shots. It has taken almost a year and a half to bring just that sequence together. As for what it is all about you're just going to have to wait and see.

DVD:  When I first heard about UNDEAD and the fact it was not only an Aussie zombie-fest, but also a zombie-fest made in Sunny Queensland, I quite sadly :) got rather excited about this "local" film.   Aussie accents aside, does UNDEAD establish itself as being set somewhere in QLD Australia? and where was it shot?

MP: The film is set in a small fishing community called "Berkeley" somewhere in Australia.
We shot in and around Brisbane.

DVD: .... hey! Brisbane is my home town. Are we likely to see any "bris-vegas" landmarks in the finished film? ( Hungry Jacks on the Queen Street Mall comes to mind :))

MP: No, the town the film is set in is fictitious, see there are no distinguishable landmarks.

DVD:  You very bravely decided to make this film independently. I've always loved hearing stories of this nature. El Mariachi cost only $US7000, and Blair Witch cost some $US35,000. While these figures aren't a lot of money for feature films, it is certainly a lot of money for an individual to outlay in order to achieve their dream.
What was the budget you set for UNDEAD and to what lengths did you go in order to scrape the money together?

MP: The budget was very low for this film. There were definitely some El Mariachi techniques used to complete the picture. Thankfully we have computer technology that has really helped expand the scope. We were able to build sections of a set and extend it later in cg, something those other films did not do. Most of the money came out of our own pockets.

DVD:  Have you found working with CGI to more difficult than you expected, given that so many gore/zombie flicks rely heavily on "on-the-set" Prosthetics/FX? Was CGI used only for manipulting the look of a location or also to enhance the FX?

MP: The CGI is difficult to work with only because we are rendering at High Definition on fairly domestic machines. The computers crash a lot. But the freedom it gives you to expand the scope of your story to a level that only a couple of years ago would have been impossible is just fantastic. Almost all the make-up effects are on-set appliances. There are a few shots that use CG to enhance something that make-up just could not do.

>> go to page 2 of the interview    

All UNDEAD Images Copyright Spierigfilm (c) 2002. Photographs by Grant Marshall and Peter Spierig (c) 2001.