Here is a taste of the vampires spotted last night in the Tempe area - be careful out there, they’re mean!

-Jillian

Here’s a sneak peek into makeup sessions last week at ASU Art Museum for my upcoming Vampires vs Zombies video, featuring 55 local zombies and vampires, not to mention the talents of local make-up artists. Our vampires will be red-eyed and thirsty, with bloodstained lips.

Carlos (above) and Ginger (below) create vampire looks!

Vampire look, created by Sandra (above), modeled by Greg (below)

Vampire eyes (above) and mouth (below), created by Greg; modeled by Paul

Join us!

~Jillian

I’m in residence at ASU Art Museum in Tempe, AZ. I’ll be working on a few different projects, the first of which starts next week. Details on how you can participate, below:

“Jillian Mcdonald, artist-in-residence at ASU Art Museum seeks participants in a video installation for her November exhibit at ASU.”

Interested parties will attend an information session and audition on October 15th at 11 a.m.; attend a rehearsal on Oct 22nd starting at 11 a.m.; and be videotaped together on the afternoon of Oct 31st in the desert. The information session, audition and rehearsal will be held in the project’s gallery at ASU Art Museum. No acting experience or knowledge of vampires and zombies necessary, however feel free to do some research online.

Zombies may also, if interested, participate in a further performance on the Light in early November. Contact Jillian Mcdonald, info below, to receive notifications.

Also seeking enthusiastic makeup artists - with or without experience. Make-up artists will come to an information meeting on Oct 15th at 2p.m., and a workshop Oct 16th or 23rd at 11a.m.. These meetings will also be held in the project’s gallery in ASU Art Museum. Make-up for the video will be done at the museum on the late morning of Oct 31st. There is no cost to participate, make-up will be provided.

Please sign up with me directly if you are interested in participating in the project (phone 917.443.8107, email jmcdonald[at]jillianmcdonald[dot]net). Feel free to send questions or concerns. Interested parties who cannot make the scheduled dates, please inquire about alternative times.

*images from Vampire Hunting, Zombie Loop, and Undead in the Night

Although I haven’t seen it, I predict the best thing about the upcoming Zombieland is Woody Harrelson, reprising his redneck uber violent role from Natural Born Killers. The zombie film has come a long way, and finally gets what it deserves - a superstar! The film features a group of young vigilantes, led by a very buff Harrelson, who survived Zombieland so far by “being very careful”. Case in point: they wash their hands with Purell, in the age of swine flu and Zombie breakouts. Those smart cookies are the other leading male, Jesse Eisenberg, who looks and sounds an awful lot like that nice naive Canadian Michael Cera, and a pair of cute girls who wield a mean chain saw.

Note in the trailer a customary reference to another horror film moment: the banjo duel in Deliverance:

And if you’re not into zombie comedies set in the desert, how about a zombie film set on a Norwegian ski slope? Dead Snow is not funny.

In mid-September I’ll be in Buffalo filming Red Rum (working title), a new video for exhibition at Hallwalls in January 2010. I will film in kitchens and bathrooms around Buffalo, NY, so if you have some and are willing to participate, please contact me or John Massier (info on poster, above) for details.

Red Rum, its title a reference to The Shining where a young boy predicts “redrum” (backwards, murder) before a hotel elevator bursts with blood and all hell breaks loose, is a video with a haunted horror theme. The scenes take us through a cavernous home where blood - a predominant prop in horror films—drips from faucets, runs down mirrors, pools on stairs, and seeps from cupboards. This blood appears disembodied until the camera slowly reveals its haunted source. Meanwhile the camera visits many neighbouring houses that also drip with blood, suggesting a murderous streak. Red Rum, filmed on location in Buffalo during the artist’s residency in September 2009, features local actors, students, a choir, musicians, and homes.

At long last, the documentation is completed! It’s also on Youtube…
Note: the sound doesn’t start right away.

PontyPool, tag line “Shut up or Die”, is a film from Canadian director Bruce McDonald [2008]. Zombies invade a town in Ontario and the only human defense is utter silence, the zombie virus spreading via language. Read more on the use of silence in horror film, specifically in The Descent. It’s a tricky concept considering our natural impulse to scream or yell when startled by excessively violent creatures or threatened with extreme bodily harm. Not to mention the convention of sound overuse, especially as shock effect, in many horror films. In PontyPool much of the horror is not seen by the protagonists or the audience, but rather described to the radio show staff core characters, via the helicopter weather guy.

In other 2008 Canadian zombie news from directors named Bruce, Bruce laBruce’s Otto or Up with Dead People is a film with a cute gay goth boy zombie protagonist. The trailer claims it “Brings Sexy Back…From the Dead”. This one looks more funny than scary - at least from the trailer.

Clara Isaksson, the wonderful super-intern for Undead in the Night at Lilith Performance Studio made Godnatt Ivar as her first stop-motion film in school. It’s excellent, and has a horror theme!

At the top of a list of notes about the zombie film I want to make one day is this sentence, “film from the zombie’s point of view” which as far as I know was not done before at any length - until now. Enter Colin, a new British horror flick that does just that. My friend Ellen Pearlman was the bearer of bad news.

From the press release:
“Our hero Colin is bitten by a Zombie; he dies and returns from the dead. We
follow him as he wanders through suburbia during the throes of a cadaverous
apocalypse.”

Mark Price who wrote and directed Colin, claims on CNN the film cost $70 to make through Nowhere Fast Productions, his own outfit. That seems highly unlikely and more of a publicity quote than anything. According to CNN, American and Japanese distributors at Cannes are vying for the prize - look for it soon!

Trailer:

The battle scene or us vs. them. In this case, it’s a question of who is who:

Field of the Dead and Undead is a video that I am slaving over working on since last fall. It is all rotoscoping, which at the worst of times is obsessive, slow and labourious, and at the best of times highly meditative. Sometimes something surprising happens, like the layers go missing, creating magic accidental images: