I, Zombie

Last Saturday, I ran down to Bolingbrook, Illinois, to join the Reactor 88 Studios team in the first day of shooting for the InSpectres proof-of-concept short. I had been asked to play a zombie.

I spent the first couple hours at the Reactor 88 office, sitting for makeup. The talented and lovely Margret Ebert labored over me to make me uglier than I’d ever been, and she did a hell of a job. In advance of the shoot, she bought a suit at Goodwill and did horrible things to it, including tossing matches at it when her butane lighter ran out of fuel. When I got there, she made me look worse than the suit.

Once I got on the set, I had the easiest job of any of the actors. I had no lines, not even “Brains!” I just grunted and groaned a lot.

The strangest part of the day was lunch, when I weirded out everyone in the local Subway. Then I realized I couldn’t eat a sub without messing up my makeup, so I made do with a cookie and soda instead.

The trickiest part of the day had to be the fight scene I had with Brian Barber. We mixed it up pretty good, and the weather was so hot at one point that my makeup started to melt off of my face and drip onto his. This only inspired him to scream louder, so hopefully it comes out even better in the final cut.

The cast and crew and director Darren Orange were all fantastic and clearly there to have fun and make a film. Everyone was excellent. I made some new friends, played a little Guillotine while waiting to be called to the set, and then groaned myself hoarse. Good times.

We should have a rough cut of the film to show at the Reactor 88 event at Gen Con: Reactor 88 Studios: Behind the Scenes. That’s at 7:30 PM on August 6 in the Westin, Capitol III. I hope to see you there.