The development of Zombies from 1968-2012

The use of the word zombies or Xombi's started a long time before cinema, and even when it crept into cinema it was not the zombies common audiences would recognise. It all began with Hatian Zombies who were slave masters controlled by their slaves with Vudoo. As interesting as these zombie films are and as enticing the comparison between the two types of zombies are there have been a large number of changes to the classic "Romero" zombies who are considered the first of modern zombies in Night of the Living Dead (1968 George A Romero).

"Romero is the Shakespeare of zombie film, and this is his Hamlet" (Peter Dendle The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia 2001) Nobody could put it better and Zombie's started with him in Night Of the Living Dead (1968). Romero was never trying to reinvent the Zombie movie or make a new monster in fact he was mimicking the creatures from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, in that novel the creatures are warped vampires however Romero dulled down the creatures and took away their main weaknesses and was left with a new creature of his own. The word Zombie is never used in the film and Romero never called them zombies himself but that is what the press decided to name them in their widely mixed reviews of the film. Romero's zombie is frighteningly simple, its out their waiting, if it catches you it will try and kill you, you have to shoot it in the head, if you die you will turn into one of them! Finally zombies want you for one thing, food. There are many themes within Night of the Living Dead and despite what many reviewers said at the time, there is definitely a lot of subtext behind what many called B movie trash. It was one of the most graphic films of the 60's and is in my opinion an early precursor to many 70's horror films that focused on blood and the evil within us all. Contrary to horror in and before the 60's that focused on the alien enemy, the outsider, the foreign, Night focuses on the enemy within, not only does it criticise the nuclear family and racism but it is popularly seen as a critique of the Vietnam war. The ending credits specifically are referencing lynch mobs and the burning of bodies, television footage also mimics that of news footage of Vietnam. There is a lot of evidence for all of Romero's subtexts and it is evident in all of his other zombie films that his work is a critique of society that just uses zombies as a plot device to make people listen and watch.

Romero's zombie can still seen today and has gone through many variations including those that call out brains, those that come from the grave and there have been dozens of proposed reasons for their existence, radiation, poison, Vudoo, magic, curses, the devil, disease ect. The most recent and most important change came to screen in 2002 in the form of the Rage infected masses of 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle 2002). The significance of 28 Days Later is partly to do with its time as it is seen as one of the first of the new wave of zombie media, 2002 was a ripe year, with war in high swing and made in the always government protesting England, the inward looking genre was bound to do well again. Danny Boyle known for Trainspotting and Sunshine is a "gritty" director who aims for realism and bleak imaginations of pretty basic stories. 28 Days Later fits into this bleak category for sure but more importantly the "rage" virus somehow made audiences see the infected as a new more believable zombie, whether this is because of how little is explained about the virus or because of a lack of knowledge about science is beyond me but it worked. The other big change is the running, this was introduced in earlier films but never really took off and was never as scary as it is in 28 Days Later these running zombies are literally infected with a virus that... makes them angry, rather than eating you they want to kill and beat you. Still pretty horrifying and there is still a lot about them that don't make sense but this most recent movie iteration of the zombie has been copied many times now although most films just take the running bit, the question is why?

Personally I think the move to running zombies has to do with the audience, its not the 60's anymore and if you show a modern audience the zombies of NOTLD they don't really care, they are desensitised to that kind of horror, there needed to be a new level. Of course Romero's zombies can still be scary, Romero himself proved that in Diary of the Dead,  Land of the Dead, and Survival of the Dead  but it takes a master to add that kind of fear, thrill and tension. The slow horror film is a dying breed instead (and really since the late 70's) we have slashers and action, thriller horror hybrids. There is no time for intelligent critique and slow drama, it has to be fast, have explosions and be on a massive scale. The remake of Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder 2004) is one good example of this kind of zombie film, it is a clear Hollywood blockbuster of a film, it mixes all the kinds of high octane action you expect from Hollywood but loses the B movie charm and character depth of Romero's films. It is still a brilliant film, and still a successful film but it is a different monster, as is the zombie itself.

It is however the opinion of Romero himself that the reason for the change was video games in an interview with Vanity Fair he said
"it’s just the influence of video games. I don’t think there’s anything deeper to it than that. Filmmakers saw what was happening in video games and started thinking, “Well, we’ve got to keep pace and make our zombies fast too.” I still don’t agree with it. If zombies are dead, how can they move fast? My guys don’t run. They never have and they never will. They’re just lumbering oafs that are easy to dispose of unless you make a mistake. Those are the rules, and I’ll stick with what I’ve got."

An interesting and probably correct theory however it disregards the reason that computer games themselves moved from slow moving to quick zombies. The main game series that illustrates this change is Resident Evil, in the first 3 games had slow moving Romero style zombies, admittedly there were other fast creature out to get you like Lickers and Hunters but the zombies stayed the same until Resident Evil 4 which came out in 2005, years after quick zombies swarmed the silver screen. I think this change is for exactly the same reason as it is in cinema, audiences getting wanting action horror rather than survival horror. That being said there are a lot of fast paced zombie games and arcade games that did appear before 2002, House of the Dead for example. 

Zombies have changed very little since 2002 and continue to be subtly morphed by different franchises. My personal belief is that whilst the sheer number of zombies in a film is often a scary thing, they should be considered dangerous even by themselves and should be scary by themselves. The mass killing of zombies isn't something I am a fan of, to me sing zombies as cannon fodder is quite poor film making, it is more interesting to spend time on character development than zombie head popping effects! For this reason I dislike the most recent Resident Evil film  (2012 Paul Anderson), which deals with multiple random monsters, zombies, hundreds of head shots, poor acting, poorly written characters and illustrates the reason games aren't often literally translated into films. 

I await the return of the true zombie and of George A Romero, it all started with him and in my opinion his are still the best, no matter how far the genre comes, no matter how much zombies change Romero will always be the Godfather of the Zombie!

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2010/05/george-romero

Varieties of Zombieism: Approaching Comparative Political Economy though 28 Days Later and Wild Zero (Derek Hall)

Varieties of Zombieism: Approaching Comparative Political Economy though 28 Days Later and Wild Zero (Derek Hall) takes the comparison between Zombies and Capitalism to a level I have never seen before! I didn't read the section on Wild Zero as I have not seen the film and found it hard enough to follow the section on 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle 2002) despite my familiarity with the film. This has nothing to do with bad wording or writing you just need to spend a lot of time solidifying the economics and the history of capitalism before even attempting to apply it to the films.

Hall first shows that in today's media permeated world, with zombies on top, the undead creatures of the night can even reach the more dry and most serious of subjects, the banking crisis, which is clearly one of the most important things happening in the world now and for the last 10 years. He quotes news sources using terms such as "zombie crises" and "zombie banks" showing how far the ideological link between zombies and banking/ capitalism has grown to be widely accepted by both audiences and film makers, it no longer needs to be made an issue of, everyone gets it and is now applying it to real life. Hall's most interesting and compelling argument, the focus of the essay, is that in 28 Days Later the outbreak of "rage zombies" mimics the "outbreak" of capitalism as outlined in Ellen Meiksins Wood's The Origin of Capitalism (Wood 2002).

The article is elloquent and full of small points and explination about both 28 Days later and The Origins of Capitalism however after sifting through all of the difficult language it boils down to three main points (that I can get my head round):

1. Capitalism began and stayed in England. From the 1400's to the 1900's England was the only Capitalist country.

2. Capitalism happened by accident or more appropriately "capitalism emerged as an unintended consequence of he struggles of feudal actors trying to reproduce themselves as they were."

3. "Once it did emerge, its dynamism meant that it would inexorably spread"


In comparison:

1. The whole film is simply set in England, one of the characters suggests that England has even been quarantined, further suggesting it wont spread any further, exactly like capitalism.

2. "Two social groups- scientists and animal rights activists- have confronted each other within the constraints of an existing social system, a confrontation in which both groups are carrying out their respective roles" Similarly to the lords and peasants of the 1400's. "Rage" is released by accident and all become infected "more precisely, as an unintended consequence of struggles between people who have no intention of changing the fundamental nature of social relations"

3. Zombies continue to consume, there is no doubt about that!

Some compelling arguments, and thats not all of them, religious and rebellious parallels are also drawn but for me the best other line is the comparison between the army barracks at the end of 28 days Later and Soviet Union. "having followed stirring calls to action that spoke of salvation and the answer to zombieism/ capitalism, what they have discovered instead is an oppressive  militaristic society engaged in an armed stand off with capitalism and hoping capitalism will collapse of its own accord." A truly brilliant analysis which I hope was encoded by Danny Boyle and the writers and not just something read into the film.

The section like the film itself ends with the opening up of the story to a world wide stage and Hall describes the translation in capitalist terms as "the persistence of diversity in the globaal political economy that allows our heroes to be rescued".

I found this really enlightening even if it was really difficult to understand I feel as though I learned a lot whilst reading it and what I learned is reasonably applicable and well evidenced in the case of 28 Days Later it has definitely given another new reading to the film. Not only that but next time I see the common capitalist subtext in zombie films I will look more closely at what it is actually saying rather than jsut taking for granted the fact that it is there like I have in the past.

Some Kind of Virus: The Zombie as Body and as Trope (Jen Webb and Sam Byrand)

One of the items I have found to inform my discussion and research is an article in the journal Body and Society. Some Kind of Virus: The Zombie as Body and as Trope (by Jen Webb and Sam Byrand) Body & Society June 2008 issue 14 page 83-98.

The article begins with a simple validation of itself, the article is important because of the character of the Zombie being so important and prevalent in modern film and literature. The introduction of Zombies sums everything up nicely; "(zombie's have) become a very familiar character, one that participates in narratives of the body, of life and death, of good and evil, one that gestures to alterity, racism, species-ism, the inescapable, the immutable. Thus it takes us to 'the other side'- alienation, death and what is worse than death: the state of being undead"

A comparison between humans and Zombies follows, one made interesting by the idea that maybe they are scary and unnerving because they are so similar and that darkness is within us. Whilst the comparison is well made unfortunately the horror of us being similar to them is poorly made within a section on Freud and psychoanalysis which is sloppy, confusing and badly written. The comparisons are as follows; "Like humans, zombies aren't social isolates" "they seek well beyond their local region" "there is always something "nearly me" about the monster" "The transmission of the virus between us indicates our 'closeness'" Before the section on psychoanalysis the term zombie is massively opened up to include Golems and Xenomorphs which I do not personally agree are zombies despite similar thematic tendencies.

The psychoanalytical part focuses on drive need and desire however as I previously stated the section is confusing and contradictory. The most interesting thing in the section call back to the idea of our closeness and the bridging of Zombies and humans that occurs with Jim in 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle 2002) and in Bob in Day of the Dead (George A Romero 1984). The lack of a wish of survivors in zombie films to culturally distance themselves from the zombies is another interesting thing that is talked about in both of these films as well as in Omega Man (Boris Sagal 1971).

The next section is a basic but well informed argument about the capitalist themes within the majority of zombie films. The most interesting and basic of points being: "Capitalist competition is visible in its roughest, rawest form in depictions of the average zombie, who spends all of his or her energies in struggling to gain more and more- the perfect consumer, the perfect exemplar of the search for personal advance through self interest." It compares both consumers and capitalism itself to zombieism in the statement "The problem is that capitalism doesn't care, and doesn't weigh human costs. It is simply zombie- hungry, and hence focused on feeding and expanding regardless of the consequences"

In conclusion the article ends by asking why discuss the zombie trope?  It answers by saying than in a world full of internal and external pressures it would be easy to "collapse into zombie status; mindlessly consume and/ or exile from ourselves the capacity to feel, and thus be." however by "Bringing zombieness, the hidden aspects of the self and society into light" we can "consider more reflectively what it means to be 'me'" A really interesting idea and conclusion however it is a shame this idea isn't highlighted in the introduction and more constructively used as a theme and point of the article.

Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance (Kyle Bishop)

Dead Man Still Walking: A Critical Investigation Into the Rise and Fall...and Rise of Zombie Cinema by Kyle Bishop is an amazing looking paper on Zombie films and culture today however I have only been able to access one section so far. Dead man walking; Explaining the Zombie Renaissance (Dead Man Still Walking: A Critical Investigation Into the Rise and Fall...and Rise of Zombie Cinema p17-25) this section talks about the links between natural disasters, terrorist attacks and Zombies in a post 9/11 world.

The chapter begins with some context about films in general replicating their times "atomic weapons at the end of World War II ushered in paranoia narratives" for example and Communist threat inspired alien invasion stories" in the 50's. This sets up the key idea that it is the terrorist attack on September 11 2001 in the USA that is the cause of zombie films re emergence. Bishop supposes "genre conventions of zombie cinema fit post 9/11 consciousness well" representing the "inescapable realities of unnatural death" and "a modern apocalypse in which societies infrastructure breaks down" this rings true and makes a lot of sense. Bishop backs his argument up by comparing tv news with zombie films, a stark but often true parallel.

The chapter takes a turn for the historical, briefly summarising Romero's zombie films and how they represent their times and their concurrent box office success and failure. He attributes the low production of zombie films in the 09's to "too much complacency and stability for zombie movies to fit the national mood." He does however also address the move of the zombie story to video games such as Resident Evil and Doom where they were "incubated" until the film world was ready to see the narrative again.

28 Days Later (2002 Danny Boyle) is the film Bishop and many others credit with the reignition of the zombie craze in the UK whilst at the same time in the US Hollywood was creating the film spin off of the resident evil franchise. Both earned massive amounts at the BO and cemented the return of the zombie genre.  The amount of Zombie media that is produced now is insane, the list goes on and on through all types of media and Bishop attributes it all to terrorism and natural disasters. Bishop notes that the conventions of zombie films haven't changed but are "more relevant to a modern contemporary audience."

The fear of zombies is theorised about a lot and many different ideas are definitely at play Bishop lists a few of the reasons he thinks people fear zombies: "they are corpses of the known dead", "technically dead rather than the romantic undead", "they cannot be reasoned with" "zombie directly manifests the visual horrors of death" and "every viewer could both fear and relate to the zombie... everyone will die and rot." I like a lot of these theories, there are more for sure but these are definitely some of the reasons we as an audience are so scared and interested in Zombies.

Another interesting theory Bishop poses as a contributor to the popularity of Zombie films is the survivalist fantasies audiences can play out whilst watching post apocalyptic films. True there are many real life Survivalists that take the feeling to the extreme but even more true is that there is a little part of all of us that thinks "thats how I would do it" or "I wouldn't go in there alone, unarmed." Bishop mentions capitalism as falling when zombies arise however there are more focused studies on this I will discuss later. Interestingly he also draws parallel's between zombieism and Euthanasia, in Land of the Dead specifically where infected people can be killed before or after they are turned, like the terminally ill. The last point Bishop makes before starting his main argument is that it is not the zombies that pose the major threats, for example in Dawn of the Dead 78 the bikers destroy the equilibrium. Likewise in 28 days later it is the soldiers that pose the real threat and fear of rape and bodily harm that are "real world potentialities, they are all the more terrifying"

Bishop's main theory displayed in the article is that he believes terrorism and natural disasters are the reason for the Zombie renaissance. His first piece of evidence is that when people see natural disasters or terrorism one of the most common statements is "its like something out of a movie". Another piece of evidence to support his theory is that 28 Days Later takes inspiration from "footage from the "killing fields" of Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot and the lost family board on an "actual street scene following a devastating earthquake in China." Bishop ends this section with an excerpt from an interview in which a traumatised victim of 9/11 who was more prepared for the horror because of zombie films. He also states the worrying and stark truth that "today (zombie movies) are all the more shocking because of their familiarity.

Overall Bishop shows himself to be a true scholar in zombie theory and study and shows that there are a large number of reasons for the zombie renaissance  Whilst bringing up some interesting themes and motifs within Zombie films he shows that Terrorism and Natural disasters are similar to the horrors of zombie films we see on screen and that fact isn't so far from fiction.... at least visually.

Shooting day!

Wow, what a jam packed few hours. Our set was pretty much ready, our shot list was done and we were almost ready to shoot so I expected it to go smoothly. It didn't, we were lucky to get everything filmed in time. My role was sort of camera, although we had cinematographers to do most of the camera stuff I was th person they referred to on anything they didn't understand, principally because I am the one who did the shot list. One of the simplest and biggest problems was the classic "too many cooks", everyone was trying to do their thing and work their bit out and everyone just got in everyone's way. Im not surprised as in a small set we had 5 crew, 5 cinematographers, 2 tutors and 1 actor and there was another set with the same just next to us. Me and Stella (our producer) suggested some people come off set and sit out of the way but nobody listened. I think it would have been much smoother if we had spoken to the cinematographers before hand, we also should have finished dress making and makeup testing the week before. Our set looks really nice and well lit in the photo's, I haven't yet seen the footage but am pretty hopeful about how it looks. I enjoyed the green screening and shooting in general but did more organising and floor managing than I think was my role. I think I should have taken on more responsibility at the start so that the crew were more prepared to be organised by me and didn't feel I was taking over.

Anyway hectic drama aside we got everything we needed and it was a generally successful shoot. Here are some of the images of the set:

I will be popping into uni to edit the footage soon.

Set Dressing

We had to do some of the set dressing for our Creative project today, our aim is basically to create a girls bedroom with a mirror in. So we set about turning two blank walls that create a corner of a set into an actual space. After basic wallpapering we began by adding a fireplace making one wall a feature wall for our all important mirror. We also cut a whole behind our mirror for the hand through the mirror shot.

We only had limited resources so the wallpaper wasn't very girly, so Joeley Beckett, our art director, started to cut out bits from other wallpaper to decorate the wall with decoupage flowers. My first job was to black out the back of the fireplace, without any black pain I resorted to using black sheets and staples. This may actually work better as it doesn't reflect any light. I helped with sticking down some decoupage whilst the wallpapering was finished and then began to hang drapes. This again is to make the room feel more like a lived in girls room, it also hides some of the dodgier bits of wallpapering. We made sure we were only dressing the relevant parts of the set, keeping in mind buts of the wall will be covered by the bed and some bits wont be in the film at all. I then worked on the curtains, as we had no curtain rail or curtains I impovised some semi closed curtains with a staple gun and some pink material, the challenging part of this was making the sheet look like curtains, I used blue tack to help me shape them a little before letting Aaron finish off the job by covering them with gold netting per out art directors instructions.

Here is a pic of the set before half done

 and this is it near completion

 again nearly finished but with the lights off

I then began to shot list our film, we have a full audio visual description but were told we can only use 3-5 shots so have altered our vision a little. Here is our shot list for next week:

Fingers crossed it goes well!

Working Safely in Uni

In todays lesson we went over some basic health and safety stuff and worked a little with power tools. This allows us access to power tools in the future which will be helpful for set and prop building. Most of the stuff was pretty basic, sweep up sawdust, how to use a transformer properly ect ect. I am pretty familiar with this sort of thing as I have done some building work but it is good to be allowed to do woodwork in the eyes of the university.

We also talked to the safety officer, mainly about lifting safely and not damaging our backs. Again I have done a lot of this before but it was good to get a refresher. Finally we looked at the walls we will be using for our sets. It will be a challenge to get them looking professional with little resources and funding but the set walls themselves seem relatively cheap and effective.

Visual/ Audio description for CPR

The setting is a girl of 18’s room at night, the only light source are some fairy lights (and this is established by a l/s of the room with the girl asleep?????). M/S of girl’s face and shoulders as she wakes up peacefully. The reason she awakens is she can hear a noise coming from her mirror. The girl gets up and approaches the mirror, as seen pov from mirror’s perspective. The camera tracks up her body edited with flashes of muddy identical feet, hands and eventually her face. There is something wrong with the way the muddy version’s extremities are positioned. Over the shoulder shot of the girl, we see her muddy doppelganger in t

he mirror. Everything is exactly as it is in the girl’s world but in the mirror world everything around the doppelganger is on fire but she doesn’t seem alarmed. She mirrors the girl exactly but with odd, jerky movements. From an aerial shot we see the girl reach toward the mirror and from a side view we see the doppelganger mirror her but with jerky movement, as if something isn’t quite right in the mirrorverse. When the girls hand connects with the mirror, the surface ripples and the girl withdraws her hand quickly in shock. A c/u of the mirror reveals mirrorverse girl’s face, lighting in the mirror flickers over her face reflected from the fire around her. Her mouth opens in a silent scream. Jump cut to the reverse shot of the girl whose face becomes splattered with blood and reverse shot to the mirrorverse girls whose mouth remains open whilst blood pours down her chin. A shot from over the girls shoulder as she turns her head away from the mirror to wipe the blood from her face reveals the mirrorverse her to be moving independently of her origin. She moves jerkily toward the mirror. Only the audience can see her moving as the protagonist is facing away from the mirror. Cut to a stop trick of the mirror which shows the mirror then suddenly a hand reaching through it. The stop - trick is to create a sense of unreal speed and jerkiness from the mirrorverse self as she tries to get through the mirror to grab her counterpart. C/U of the girl gasping for breath and the dirty fingernails of the mirrorverse self marking her neck. Cut back to first m/s of girl’s face and shoulders that's shown as she awakens but this time with a gasp instead of peacefully, revealing her still marked neck.
END.