Cesareo Garasa interviewed Rickey Bird about our short film INFECTION that is currently in the Horror Block Film Festival AKA #HBFilmFest with Rue Morgue. A special thanks! To all the people that voted already! All you have to do is hit the LIKE button AKA the Thumbs Up Button to vote!
Here is a preview from the article by Cesareo Garasa in The Bakersfield Californian
Bakersfield's Hectic Films has been making some big strides since 2014's "Naked Zombie Girl" had its premiere at the legendary TCL Chinese Theatre last October and even spawned its own comic book (which can be found under the "store" tab on www.hecticfilms.com).
So when the opportunity arose to submit a short film for competition in the HB (Horror Block) Film Fest, putting the company in the running for the $10,000 top prize, Hectic Films' co-founder Rickey Bird decided that entering was a, uh, no-brainer....
"Please take a moment to like this film on YouTube. We did. 3 of 4 stars. "– The Omelet Team
Our Current status is 2nd Place! Keep up to date with the film fest HERE
We're excited to be a part of this contest hosted by Horror Block and Rue Morgue. The grand prize is $10,000 for best horror short, so we entered our zombie short film INFECTION. We shot this film in a parking garage late one evening with only four people; epic special FX artist Nick Reisinger, camera operator David Karnowski and one of Hectic Film's best grips Anthony Galland. We had been planning a day shoot but we unfortunately ran out of light. Making the best of the situation, we went to a local parking garage. We were lucky, and the parking garage was deserted so it was a perfect filming location. Nick used his talents to turn Anthony into a zombie quickly, and we were ready to shoot!
We pulled into the parking garage and unloaded the little gear we had at the time. David was armed with a Canon 5D and Nick picked up the Canon 7D. Nick caught all the extra shots so different angles would feel the same and natural. We started this project only wanting to do one thing: have a man fight a zombie and then turn into one. We used the fact that the garage was deserted to help create the atmosphere we wanted. We checked our surroundings and came up with the best type of situation that would happen in that location. I feel that we came up with a good plan. So we shot for a couple of hours and fortunately no one came through there while we were filming, which made it great!
One thing we did mess up with is you can see Nick in one of the shots! If you haven't already, check it out and see if you can find him. If you have watched it already, then watch it again and keep your eyes open for him! (See the clip here) Once we finished, I cut the footage and sent it over to our best editor, Jason Sanders. He added few effects to the footage; for example the shot of the police car was just a regular car but Jason was able to add lights on in post. Once Jason had shined up the footage, we sent it over to Landen Belardes and Nick Stockman to create the score. They put a great mix together and once we added it, we had a completed film.
Hopefully if you're reading this, you want to give us a hand to win this contest! This is how you can help: all we need you to do is click on that YouTube video above or click here. Then you hit the like button on YouTube. If you don't have a YouTube account, you can start one HERE.
Please leave us a comment even if you didn't like it! If you did like it, you should be leaving a comment anyway. :) We greatly appreciate the support we have already received by so many awesome people! With your help, we know we can win this thing! So again, please check out the video and hit the like button. Share it with your friends and anyone you know that likes horror. Post it on your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Also check out Horror Block aka Nerd Block. They send you epic stuff every month for cheap! :) It's a cool way to get something unexpectedly exciting in the mail once a month. Check them out!
Check out Rue Morgue Magazine as well! They are an epic horror magazine that is a MUST for any horror fan! :) And they support indie horror which is alway a plus! :)
Meghan and I were asked to be on this awesome/epic podcast Monster Party. If you like horror movies, sci-fi or just any type of Monster Movie... This is the podcast for you! We talked a lot about our film Naked Zombie Girl, but we also got into some awesome discussions about zombie movies. We also bring up some epic zombie movie classics and some zombie films I had never even heard of. So you get an idea of some of the films I have posted some trailers of the films that were mentioned in the podcast!
It has been a great ride for our short film Naked Zombie Girl. NZG played in over 15 film festivals, walking away with 5 awards. You learn a lot by watching different people watch your film. Also you learn a lot just watching it yourself on the big screen over and over again. I feel the team and I have now know what we can do to improve the feature film of NZG. Over all it has been a great experience and I would like to thank the team at Hectic Films for making it all possible. I would also like to thank the people that have watched/supported it all this time. We have teamed up with FRI to make this into a full feature. We will keep you posted!
I hope you are all ready for the feature of Naked Zombie Girl!
We had a great time working with this band Forget Your Friends. They were open to just being creative which in my opinion is a great trait. We shot this in Taft, in an epic apartment! The shoot took about 5 hours but we used the crane in a lot of shots so going back and forth took up some time. We also did some slider shots. The space was small so we ran into some challenges with certain angels. We were going for a grind house poor quality look, which sometimes it is hard to find a balance in between the two. I think we found it on this edit. And I also really like the song Scream Queen and just this bands sound in general! We all like it so much we are going to include it in our feature film for Naked Zombie Girl.
Please let us know in the comments what you think about the video!
Scream Queen Music Video by Forget Your Friends from Hectic Films Productions on Vimeo.
Tear Her is a play on words for Terror. We decided we wanted to make a film like the old horror movies you would watch on VHS back in the 90's. With the screwed up tracking, you know that blank tape that had something recorded on it that was a sure promise to be the scariest thing you ever had seen! Well thats what we tried to do here. Put together a short film for Halloween, but mostly for those kids that grew up in the 90's and remember just how creepier things were on tape! Written and Directed By Rickey Bird and Shot by Robert Bejil. Starring Erica Stroup and Ray Vargas. Please share with your friends! Thanks for watching! :)
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