DIARY OF THE BLACK ALBUM # 6

October 5th

Everyone was really starting to get into the Halloween spirit on the film set. Since Halloween's my favorite holiday anyway - a whole month where I can watch horror movies and talk about them with everyone else without being labeled that guy who always talks about scary movies - I didn't need much prompting. Horror was in and I was at home. 

On location, in between scenes, we would play games like name your three favorite horror films. I would always sneak "Ed Wood" into my list even though it technically is not a horror film, but you've gotta love a movie about a guy who is obsessed with making bad horror films. 

Anyway, I'm detouring from my subject. 

It was night time and we were on the huge hill that ran along the side of my house. Houses were sprinkled around, then dense woods. On our shooting schedule for the night was the scene where the living dead emerge out of their graves in the backwoods bootleg cemetery LORD'S LANE.

One of our electric guys had a Gothic Marilyn Manson look and I intended to capitalize on it. He became my ZOMBIE NUMBER ONE. And all he had to do was let me bury him alive.

Now figuring out the logistics of how to bury someone alive without actually suffocating them, aren't as easy as they may seem. Since it was a pauper's grave site, there would be no coffin. Just a hole and a wooden cross.

Now I didn't want to cheat this with a funky camera angle and a series of shots. I wanted the audience to see him explode up out of the dirt all in one take. So, in order for our Zombie to breathe and not have his make-up ruined, we covered him with a thin plastic sheet. Then we buried him.

My FX man fogged up the surrounding woods with our trusty fog machine and then it was ACTION! We got the shot in the first take and I was quite happy... until my Zombie Number One keeled over and stopped breathing.

Apparently he had inhaled quite a bit of dirt. After a few minutes of retching, however, he was fine. 

It was all in a night's work.

TO BE CONTINUED

Zombie Number One rising from a grave in Lords Lane

Images courtesy of "The Black Album"