Guest post written by Jake Dancy

For my high school film project I’ve decided to make my own zombie film. I may only have 17 years on other aspiring film makers but I’ve watched just about every zombie movie that exists out there.

My old sister suggested the idea because I make movies for all my other class projects and since this would be the ultimate choose-you-own-theme project, I should do something that I’d really like and be proud of. So I chose it and so far this summer I’ve filmed several hours, which will end up being about 20 actual minutes of movie time. The finished project will only be 30 minutes – my advisors told me a full-length film was too ambitious – so I’m pretty close to being finished with it.

As far as special effects go, I’ve been limited to Halloween makeup and buckets of fake blood. But my sister who’s been home from college this summer has looked up a lot of special effects makeup tricks on our wildblue satellite internet services and done the makeup for all my actors. I’ve also looked up a lot of clips of zombie movies on wildblue internet to get inspiration, heavily drawing from George A. Romero’s work.

We’ll see how it turns up. I’m probably going to upload it to YouTube or Vimeo so that I can send it in a link on my college applications.