Emerald Express In Review
Yes...ish. Emerald Express, the short film that was written and filmed last summer is now up on youtube for everyone to see! If you haven't watched it yet I suggest you do so now (see link at bottom of post). From this point forward I will be talking about what my thoughts are about the short film and how it turned out. So aka, SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!
Emerald Express (link)
Ok! From this point forward I will assume that anyone reading this has watched Emerald Express and has noticed a few things about it that are questionable.
As the main force behind completing the project and having been responsible for so much of it's production I will refer to myself as the "Project Leader". I wrote the script, came up with the plot behind it, invented characters, came up with locations, planned camera angles, filmed everything, and more. Other people were involved of course, I have have to give credit to everyone who helped organize volunteers, do makeup, help with the scene planning, etc.
But generally speaking, Emerald Express was my baby and as my first time pulling off a filmmaking project of this scale, I learned a lot! Ultimately, I am not 100% satisfied with the short film. If it isn't obvious to you by watching it, I'll let you know that a lot was left out. A good example of this is that all of the audio is missing! Like WTF man?? NO AUDIO WTF!!!??? How R we supposed to follow da plot????
I know! And it was a hard choice to make...but the fact was that a lot of the dialogue in the script was never really meant to mean much and when we started to film, it was all we had. In fact, originally, the "script" was just a few hand written pages describing the scenes where Shale is running from the zombies and has to eventually turn and fight them. But then the questions started flooding in...who was this guy? Where was he coming from? How did he get here? And the biggest question of all; Where did the zombies come from???
What had started in my head as a cool 3 min zombie video quickly spiralled out into a world of made up characters and fake backstories and events. It had to be deeper! It had to make sense and impress people! After doing a bit of research I managed to find something that could link Moncton to the rest of the world in a unique way. I wanted the story to take place in Moncton for a real reason that people could actually look up themselves if they wanted to! And I found it! The Emerald Express undersea intercontinental communication cable. It wasn't perfect, but it was a tether that could put Moncton on the map in a fictional setting. The idea was relatively simple. This communication cable, scheduled to be built in RL (Real Life), could be the keystone to my zombie movie's plot!
Moncton act's as a first point of contact for this cable and therefore in a global perspective is an important target for any military force with the intension of attacking North America. The zombies themselves came next. I wanted the zombies to be a new kind of weapon. The idea is that in a future war, a zombie-bioweapon exists and is dropped into cities that represent some significant strategic value. Moncton, being the landing for one of the worlds most advanced communication cables definitely made the short-list.
Ok, so now I had an interesting backstory and a plausible explanation for all of this shit going down in the near future. Now I needed a plot to carry my "Running Man" (As "Shale" was originally referred) through the story and ultimately to the climax of him kicking some zombie ass! There needed to be a reason for his heroics. The supporting characters of the two un-named soldiers were then invented. Originally the soldiers were actually a group of civilians that are stranded with Shale. It was written that he would attempt to save their lives by drawing off a large group of zombies away from them. This idea was tossed for a new idea that perhaps the character of Shale would be the only survivor of the attack, and represent the only person who was naturally immune to the virus. The two soldiers were added to give Shale someone to save. This is where things got messy. Who were these "soldiers"? Where did they come from? What are they doing there? And even though they were originally written as "good guys", in the end it only made sense that they were in fact soldiers of the enemy. This would explain why we knew so little about them while they seemed to be so prepared. The soldiers were written with the mission of "reconnecting" the Emerald Express and Shale would agree to help them to do so if it meant a free ride out of the city. Unfortunately, the scenes had been filmed and it was too late to try and go back and change the characters lines...so I said screw it and took out all the dialogue! WAhahaha
Lesson: When making a movie...make sure it works on paper BEFORE you start filming!!!
In the future we may release a version of the film either with dialogue or subtitles as well as fix a continuity error at the end of the short film involving the magical re-appearance of a certain back-pack...
Anyway, if you liked the short film and were wondering why it turned out how it did, I hope this answered some of your questions. If you want to ask me about it feel free.
Cheers,
Richard
