THE LIVING DEAD.

Undead is an Australian feature film, which was directed and produced by the Spierig brothers (Michael and Peter) in the year of 2003. Undead is a horror film starring Felicity Mason, Mungo McKay and Rob Jenkins.  This film also contains elements of action, sci-fi and comedy. The making of the film (Undead) highlighted the many challenges encountered during all three stages of the production process.

The story line for the film Undead is simple, the film begins in a normal simple peaceful small town named Rustic Berkeley, where life is sweet and people are friendly. But all that is about to change, when suddenly an avalanche of meteorites races through the sky, bombarding the town and bringing an otherworldly infection. The living dead are awakened leaving desperate survivors who were unharmed to find a way out, now caught in a nightmare of zombies hungry for human flesh. Together the survivors battle their way through a plague of walking dead and discover that there is more transpiring than just an infection.

Upon the making of the film the Spierig brothers were faced with a number of problems, during all three stages of the production process. The film was entirely funded by the Spierig brothers and their family and friends; therefore the major concern which was encountered during the pre-production and production stages of the film was the budget. On the first day of production both of the Spierig brothers claimed to have spent their entire budget on that one day, due to creating interior locations from scratch and having to create hundreds of makeup effect appliances. Due to the budget constraints every aspect of the film had to be planned carefully meaning that there was no room for mistakes or error. In other to overcome this situation the Spierig brothers were forced to incorporate cost saving techniques, which included gathering as many free resources as possible, such as paint, costumes, make-up and all sets had to be kept at the lowest cost possible. The majority of the film was shot in a warehouse located in Queensland Australia.

Not only were the Spierig brothers faced which budget concerns, casting took over two months during the pre-production stage because the Spierig brothers wanted to find the most suitable actors for the correct roles. Mother Nature also got in the way, many members of the cast and crew became sick and unable to work due to the extremely wet cold conditions meanwhile filming. With the reduced crew, filming became a long and extremely difficult task to complete; the Spierig brothers and crew were push to their limits.

Within the post-production stage, the Spierig brothers were tested once again. In order to complete the film the Spierig brothers were forced to take the work of editing the film themselves. Furthermore due to the limited budget the brothers were to create all the visual effects on their own personal laptops computers. Their computers lacked the industrial standard, which meant Michael and Peter working on their laptops battled with continuous hardware and software failures. Making the process time consuming and extremely frustrating, over 300 visual effects were created for the film taking over two and a half years of hard work and determination to complete the film.

Personal I believe that the concerns and problems myself and my group with face, will be during the production and post-production stages (filming and editing) this is because we lack the experience and knowledge towards editing. In order of completing and make a successful production all crew members, must work hard and be determined to completing the set task.