Pre-Production

A Day on the Life of a Post Apocalyptic World

Here are some notes on our first idea: a day of survival in a post-apocalyptic world surrounded by either 'infected' people or be the only living beings around. Here are the notes from the group meetings for this idea: -

• Post-apocalyptic world
• Shoot mostly in one room - to avoid possible location problems and save time
• Incorporate sounds to show outside environment - e,g screeching of infected, groaning  scratching, gunshots etc rather than seeing them as it would save time with make-up and eliminate the risk of unconvincing make-up.
• Use make-shift weapons with easy to find materials, take the labels of cans and make them a bit dirty, crumpled and use After Effects to changed the 'use by date' to give the audience an idea of the year, create a newspaper dated something like 2030 and make it look old to again show the general date and that it's been a while since the apocalypse.    
• We looked at the Last of us trailer - which ties in well with our theme, also the use of the father-daughter bond playing a big role in the game was an inspiration to our idea to have 'emotional' attachments between the character so that it's isn't just another zombie film.
• One of my favorite film franchises is Resident Evil and so a lot of my inspiration for this idea has come from this. I love the continuous feel, that sense of running to stay alive and not staying in one area for too long.
• We looked at The Walking Dead, which is an amazing series that most of us have watched and loved.
• We also looked at I am Legend, as there were some interesting elements we wanted to discuss - the bond between the character and his dog, that he can't go out at night (Vampire Zombies), also that the smallest things like him bolting the doors as soon as it was getting dark hinted well that he was in danger, the notice on the cupboard door about the 'infected' was subtle but worked very well drawing the audience in.
• We talked about how adults would have been brought up in pre-apocalyptic world so would be traumatized and miss it. Whereas children would be born into the post-apocalyptic world so that's all they know and would be battle hardened.