It was back in the summer of 2007 that Marc Price had the idea to make COLIN, a 97-minute zombie film named after his father. After a boozy night with his friends, when they were watching George Romero’s zombie movies and lamenting that they’d love to make that sort of film but wouldn’t be able to raise the sort of funds needed, Marc awoke with a killer of a hangover and hit upon the idea of shooting a movie with a zombie as its protagonist. The idea seemed to work from a no-budget standpoint – it needed a strong lead performance with little dialogue, character and story were the key elements. Marc has done some workshops with young people in North London where he was encouraging them to do just that – focus on telling a good story, and finding a way to tell that story without the traditional budgetary obstacles.
ColinMarc remembers reading a quote by Shane Meadows about how the availability of low cost cameras these days meant there really was no excuse not to make a film. Marc was inspired, and decided to use what he had to hand – which was a 5-year-old standard definition mini-dv camcorder, and some household items that would turn out to be the movie’s prop-store. Marc got lucky when a runner friend was asked to dump a big bag full of ‘gash tapes’ – used mini-dv tapes that were no use to anyone… but which became the tape stock for COLIN.
Marc was working an evening shift at a courier company, answering the phones. Business was quiet, so his bosses allowed Marc to bring in a laptop to write the script for COLIN – and later to edit the film on his laptop in the downtime at work.
With a strong core of friends, some of whom were recent drama school graduates, Marc was able to assemble an eager team of cast and crew who would give up their time in exchange for the experience and some work to show in their portfolios.
Shooting COLIN began around Tooting in the summer of 2007, and it took 18 months to complete. Marc was working evening shifts all the while, shooting in the daytime and at weekends, and editing as he went along. Sometimes it was just Marc and the lead actor Alastair Kirton, with the camcorder. On other occasions there would be a living room full of people – recruited from Facebook and Myspace – all dressed up as zombies for a weekend. The project thrived because of the kind of cameraderie that often results on no-budget projects, where people are there not because they’re paid to be there, but because they want to be part of something that’s happening and enjoyable.
Colin MAkeup
Marc found some willing make-up artists on www.mandy.com who brought along their own materials to use – bit and pieces left over from previous shoots that they were happy to donate in return for being able to experiment freely with their own ideas for zombie make-up and get some cracking shots for their portfolios. One such person was Michelle Webb, a young make-up artist who had not only worked on several fashion shoots, but also had some latex left over from some work she did on the X-Men 3 movie shoot. Michelle and her fellow make-up artists also taught Marc and actor Alastair how to do the zombie make-up themselves so that they could take every free opportunity to continue the shoot (relying on their wits for continuity).
Marc’s flatmates – Leigh Crocombe and Justin Hayles, who were his friends from college, helped out with practical special effects during the year-long shoot, to create trick shots using ordinary household items – such as turning empty beer cans into pipebombs.
Marc had studied a media degree in Swansea, which gave a good grounding in using creative software and design, but it wasn’t film school. Marc taught himself film-making by watching as many DVD extras features as he could, by reading film books, and trying things out on his old mini-dv camcorder – the camcorder which, incidentally, broke down during the long shoot, and had to be replaced by an even older model borrowed from a friend.
ColinWith no sound recordist on the shoot, Marc recreated all of the sound design of the film on his PC at home, where he also did the sound mix. COLIN was completed without any professional post production facility work. Marc edited on Adobe Premier 6 (which was an out-of-date version) on a home PC, where he also graded and did all the sound work himself.
An example of his resourcefulness is the distant gunfire track that persists in COLIN. That was achieved by Marc recording fireworks going off on November 5th, and tirelessly removing all of the ‘whizzes’ to leave only the ‘pops’ and ‘bangs’ – perfect for that distant gunfire sound.
Marc sent some screeners of COLIN to popular horror websites, where it started to gather some fantastic reviews – his work even being compared to George Romero’s early work for its originality in the genre. COLIN received a couple of screenings at small festivals – winning Best Horror in the Revenant Film Festival in Seattle in 2008, and screening at the Abertoir Horror Festival in North Wales – but Marc was still perfecting the film right up to January 2009 when he signed with sales agent Helen Grace of Left Films, who’d heard about the film from the Abertoir organiser, and who believed in its potential to breakout to a wider audience, regardless of its budget.
They decided to take the film to screen at Cannes film market in May 2009, in the hope of finding distribution. There amongst the several hundred other films competing for attention, COLIN became a success story. The press engaged with Marc’s talent and dedication in making this no-budget film, when news got out of the true budget of the film, and Marc was interviewed by journalists from BBC, ITN, CNN, Daily Mail, The Sun, amongst others. By the time COLIN had its second screening, some of the most influential eyes in the international film business were curious to see this little camcorder movie.
MArc Price Word began to spread about COLIN – particularly online. When CNN ran their report on COLIN at Cannes, it became their number 1 most emailed story of all world news over one weekend. People all over the world were sharing the story about the £45 movie – or $70 or 50 Euro movie as it was also becoming known – having a chance of making it in the mainstream.
There were cynics who refused to believe that a feature film could be made for no more than £45, but from Marc’s point-of-view, he intended to make COLIN for zero cost, so the purchase of a crowbar as a special prop, some extra mini-dv tapes the day they forget to bring tapes from home, and of course some cheap tea and biscuits for the zombies one weekend, meant that the film went way over-budget!
Festival invitiations started to arrive, and lots of aspiring film-makers were emailing to find out more about how it was possible to make a film for so little.
A month after COLIN had screened in a tiny 40-seater cinema at Cannes Film Festival, Marc was invited back to Cannes by Saatchi and Saatchi for the Cannes Lions advertising festival to give a presentation and show clips of COLIN in the 3,000-seater Grand Lumiere auditorium in the Palais. He talked about his no-budget techniques to a packed audience of the world’s ad execs.
Several UK distributors took an interest in COLIN and soon after Cannes, a deal was done with Kaleidoscope Entertainment who committed to a theatrical release of the film for 23rd October 2009. When news of the distribution deal was announced in late July, the press and public interest grew. COLIN was featured on the BBC’s 6 O’Clock and 9 O’Clock national news, and there followed features in the Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Star, and reports on Sky News, CNN, and many others. Marc has been busy doing daily interviews with the world’s press by phone or email – with stories on COLIN being run by TIME magazine in the USA, and in national media in Spain, Greece, Sweden, Brazil and Bolivia.
It is still 2 months until the UK cinema release of COLIN, but the interest continues… there will be some interesting weeks ahead for Marc and the COLIN team, with some very exciting events in prospect for the release of the film.
Marc, meanwhile, is still manning the phones on the evening shift as there are still bills to pay, which keeps his feet firmly on the ground. He is also keeping himself busy with the preparations for his next film, THUNDERCHILD – a world war II movie set on-board a bomber limping home from a mission. Marc had already written the script for Thunderchild in the weeks before Cannes, and his success with COLIN bodes well for the prospects of this film going into production very soon. Marc intends to keep to the COLIN ethos for THUNDERCHILD, although on a slightly bigger budget.
From Raindance
About the Author
Helen Grace has a background as a producer and film-maker, and last year she set up LEFT to work with other film-makers on the promotion, sales and distribution of quality low-budget films, that might normally be under-represented in the market. Helen is the sales agent for COLIN and is a producer on Marc Price’s next film THUNDERCHILD.
