Zombies, undead and rotting corpses, behold your leader!

We’re very excited about this.

Filming starts on Thursday 6th August at the Big Chill. From 7pm we’ll be filming the highlight of the zombie festival “The Running Feast”. This will be presided over by King of the Zombies, Noel Fielding and will be staged as a live event with music from Toddla T and other special guests. Captured humans will be released and chased through an obstacle course by hordes of hungry zombies. Will you be one of them??
In order to take part you’ll need to be a Big Chill ticket holder and look like one of the undead. Once the entertainment area has openend up (around 3pm), you’ll only be able to get into the Open Air Stage field if you’re a zombie. There will be zombie-themed DJ sets and other entertainment to keep you in the mood. Make up stations will be on site during the day, but we’d love people to turn up already zombified – we want to see your rotting corpses!

Zombies will be especially welcome at British Sea Power’s live accompaniment of Man of Aran and Winged Migration. Then there’s more undead fun with zombie movies from from dusk till dawn in the Film4 Cinema Tent, featuring two of the ‘…Dead’ films by zombie movie legend George A. Romero, John Carpenter’s haunting The Fog and Sam Raimi’s cult horror-comedy classic, Evil Dead II. And if you feel like strutting your undead stuff, you can shuffle over to the zombie disco in Big Chill Nights.

Throughout the weekend smaller events will be taking place, including a zombie battle of the bands, an undead fashion show, zombie weddings and a zombie rave. If you want to take part in any of these events let us know, either by emailing us or come and say hello at our Zombie HQ by the Film4 Cinema Tent.

Zombies will also be particularly welcome at the Dereliction Drive-In, a post-apocalyptic drive-in cinema where you can join graffiti gurus Pete Fowler and Kid 30 in pimping your undead ride. Chill out to mixes from beyond the grave from Monsterism, Hexstatic and Osymyso, or add your own ghoulish sounds to the mix with our AudioBoo crew.

The culmination of the weekend’s life and death antics with be the ceremonial burning of the zombie on Sunday night – a 20m wooden effigy of living death itself!

It’s going to be amazing, join us and bring out your undead!

Frightfest 2009 Main Screen Timetable

Thursday 27 August

18:30 Triangle
21:00 Hills Run Red
23:15 Infestation

Friday 28 August

11:15 The Horseman
13:45 Beware the Moon
16:10 American Werewolf in London – remastered
19:15 Shadow
21:25 The Horde
23:30 Macabre

Saturday 29th August

11:30 Smash Cuts
13:45 Heirro
15:45 Millennium
19:00 Giallo
21:00 Trick ‘r Treat
23:15 Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl

Sunday 30 August

11:30 Dead Snow
13:45 Human Centipede
15:50 Coffin Rock
18:45 Night of the Demons
21:00 Dread
23:15 100 Best Deaths

Monday 31 August

11:00 Zombie Women of Satan
13:15 The House of the Devil
15:30 Case 39
18:30 Heartless
21:15 The Descent 2

Frightfest 2009 Discovery Screen Timetable

Friday 28 August

12:00 Best Worst Movie
14:15 I Sell the Dead
16:15 I Think We’re Alone Now
18:45 Colin
21:00 Black

Saturday 29 August

12:00 The Horror of Writing
13:45 Evil Things
16:15 Fragment
18:45 It’s Alive
21:00 Pontypool

Sunday 30 August

12:00 Black
14:40 Pontypool
17:00 I Think We’re Alone Now
19:00 I Sell the Dead
21:00 Best Worst Movie

Monday 31 August

11:00 Colin
14:15 It’s Alive
16:15 Fragment
18:45 Evil Things

Festival and day passes will be on sale at London’s Empire Leicester Square from 11am tomorrow to people in the queue, and from midday you can book via phone (08714 714 714) or online. Single tickets will be available from 1 August. For more ticket details check out the Frightfest website

Scariest thing you’ve seen recently?
Sam Raimi’s new film Drag me to Hell had dozens of jump scenes in it.  I watched it recently in a small cinema in my home town, where the sound was cranked up really loud and people were screaming in the aisles. The film itself wasn’t the best, but I applaud any film-maker who can strike terror into the audience like that. It even made me jump a couple of times and normally I can see the jumps coming a mile off! If you want to leap out of your seat, go see that film!

Recommend a book/film/game
I’ll recommend one of each:
The Walking Dead graphic novel series is a must read for zombie fans.
Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue is a brilliant Spanish/Italian zombie film from the 70’s that was actually shot in the UK. This film is dripping with atmosphere and importantly, flesh devouring zombies!
Finally, Resident Evil 5 currently occupies my PS3 and is a great 3rd person zombie shoot em up.

Give us a link to something zombie!

My good friend Nick Nicholson from the Philippines starred in this cult classic zombie movie shot over there in 1988 called Zombie 4 – After Death. Nick was in Platoon and Apocalypse Now and involved in many movies over a 32 year period in the Philippines. This scene features Nick fighting a horde of terribly choreographed zombies and will give you a few laughs I’m sure. Nick’s been very ill recently, suffering a heart attack, so I thought it would be great to mention him and wish him well. If you want a few pointers on how zombies shouldn’t behave, this is the clip!

Kevin Gates is writer/director/producer of The Zombie Diaries.

We wanted the zombies in our movie to be as realistic as possible. Because we were filming in an unforgiving documentary style, the zombies had to look good. Our special effects team did a lot of research looking at grisly photos of real corpses and we also looked at lots of other zombie films where the make up really stood out. We also preferred slow moving zombies, like those in George Romero’s movies.

Directing zombies was a lot of fun. We had some sessions with a choreographer, who trained up several of the cast and crew. From there we were able to teach people the basics of how a zombie should move. From our point of view though, it was more about what they ‘shouldn’t’ do. We didn’t want the clichéd arms out in front as that looks silly. But we encouraged people to do their own thing, as long as it didn’t look stupid. There were a few occasions where zombie extras fell over theatrically when they were killed and this had us all in stitches.

I don’t think zombies are that scary to be honest. If you stick a zombie out in the daylight on a bright sunny day, there isn’t a lot to be scared of as they’re pretty slow moving and you’d have to be quite stupid to get caught by one. We made them scary in The Zombie Diaries by showing them mostly at night, or by setting up scenes and having the zombies sneak up on people, or emerging from a dark corner of a room. It’s more about how you show them in the film and by creating tension that makes them scary. The scariest zombies on film in my opinion are the ones in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters. These were really filthy-looking, maggot encrusted zombies that actually looked dead. The fantastic make up work also meant that when they did get hold of you, they were likely to rip your throat out or gouge out your eyeballs!

I think the whole zombie sub-genre of horror came back in from the cold in 2002 with 28 Days Later. But strangely, 28 Days Later isn’t a zombie film in the traditional sense as they are infected humans and not ‘dead’ as such. But the success of that film led on to other movies doing well like the remake of Dawn of the Dead and Britain’s own Shaun of the Dead. We then had George Romero’s Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead as well as 28 Weeks Later and the current wave of zombie films is still strong with the forthcoming adaptation of Max Brooks’s excellent book World War Z by Brad Pitt’s production company.

I don’t think zombie films have ever gone out of fashion, but there’s a cycle to everything. Zombie films were big in the late 70’s and then again in the mid 80’s.  It then took around fifteen years for the cycle to start again, but it’s here to stay for a while longer at least. I think film-makers have also tried to be more contemporary by introducing new elements such as the ‘fast’ zombie in the remake of Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later.

Are you doing another one?
Well, The Zombie Diaries has been a big hit across the world and released in dozens of countries including a big release from Dimension Films in the US. We hit number 4 on the Virgin chart here in the UK and on the back of that success we’ve been approached by a big distributor to make two sequels. If all goes to plan, we’ll be shooting them back to back late summer, so there will be lots more flesh eating to come!

In case you missed it first time around, you can pick up The Zombie Diaries at Amazon.co.uk.

It may not be zombies, but we reckon you’ll like it anyway.

Frightfest takes place over the August bank holiday (27-31 Aug) but tickets go on sale at 11am on 4 July for people buying in person, and midday via online and telephone sales. For more details check out their site.