stNZ62_Total

20 / 64

MAY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
20
visit FEATURE DVD &BD
“It was a completely different story but
there was one scene where the characters
bumped into this director and assistant director
who were shooting a zombie film and didn’t
understand that real zombies were attacking
them,” he says. “That script got put on the
backburner but I went back to that little seen
and expanded on that concept of having real
zombies attack a zombie film set.”
Shot in and around Dunedin – apparently it’s
the first feature to be shot there since Scarfies
(1999) – the movie was funded through the
New Zealand Film Commission’s Escalator
scheme and he and his team have worked
wonders with a limited budget.
However, Pigden admits it was hard-going.
“I think our biggest challenge was working
within the budget of $250,000,” he reckons.
“It was very tight. Obviously, when you are
doing a zombie film, you are having to do a lot
of special effects and make-up involved, there
is a lot of action and spectacle that you are
trying to get across. All of those things are very
challenging when you have a small amount of
• I Survived
A Zombie
Holocaust
is out on
May 22
money and creatively working
around that was one of the most
difficult things.”
He is full of praise for the work
of his effects team and his game
cast, a number of whom had
to endure a fair few indignities
on screen. They include Harley
Neville – actually a partner in
Pigden’s production company –
who plays the hapless hero, and
former Shortland Street regular
Reanin Johannink (last seen in
All Cheerleaders Die), the spoilt
lead actress on the fictional
zombie film.
“The cast were amazing,”
Pigden says. “I was looking for people who
were completely invested in the characters
and were prepared to go the extra mile.
On a low budget film, you have to have
everybody on the same wave length,
giving it their 110 percent and prepared to
go further than what would normally be
asked of them. I think every single cast
member did that and I think that is
reflected on the screen.”
I Survived A Zombie Holocaust
premiered first at London’s Fright Fest and
in a New Zealand, it will be one of the first
local movies to be available simultaneously
at the cinema, on DVD and online.
However, Pigden would like to release
a special DVD edition of the film further
down the track.
“Our original cut came in at well
over two hours, so there is a lot of stuff
on the cutting room floor,” he explains.
“The scenes that were taken out were
mainly for timing purposes and what ended
up being trimmed away were scenes
that were not particularly relevant to the
central stories. This version for me is the
best version of the fim. But I would love
to come back to do another
edition with an in-depth
documentary detailing the
shoot and including a lot of
deleted scenes.”
Guy Pigden
talks to John
Ferguson about
his first full length
feature, the Kiwi
splatter comedy
I Survived
A Zombie
Holocaust.
W hen it comes to mixing
gags and gore, New
Zealand filmmakers has
always punched above their weight.
From the early films of Peter
Jackson, through to the splatter-
stick of Black Sheep and onto last year’s hits
Housebound and What We Do In The
Shadows, our gift for horror comedies have
won over many genre fans, both here and
abroad.
It’s a heritage that filmmaker Guy Pigden is
very aware of – and one he is keen to uphold
on his full length feature I Survived a Zombie
Holocaust.
“I am a huge fan of Peter Jackson as a
filmmaker,” Pigden enthuses over the phone
to STACK. “ I was maybe 10 or 11 years old,
and someone gave me a copy of Bad Taste,
and I remember it blowing my mind. Then I
watched Braindead and have been a huge fan
of his ever since. My intention for this film
was to try and make a film in the same spirit
of his early films.”
For I Survived a Zombie Holocaust – not
to be confused the BBC reality TV series I
Survived a Zombie Apocalypse – the fledgling
Kiwi filmmaker has certainly come up with a
cool new riff on what has become an overly-
familiar genre. Here, a film crew shooting a
low budget zombie flick in a remote location
find their set over-run by the real undead
from a nearby town – how do you tell the real
zombies from the extras in their make-up?
A cheerfully gory splatterfest that also
pokes fun at some of the conventions of the
genre, Pigden first came up with the idea
when writing another zombie flick.