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Happy Halloween: My Fake Trailer for 'Zompires!'

Ryan Koo

10.29.12 @ 1:40PM Tags : career, selfpromotion, trailers, watch, zompires

A global pandemic breaks out just in time for Halloween… and election season.

I actually shot this two years ago and never released it, but in the spirit of Halloween I thought I’d post it here — a couple of days before Halloween, given we don’t know what the frankenstorm is going to do to our power/internet/etc here in NYC.

When I shot this trailer, I felt Zompires! was one of the simultaneously smartest and stupidest ideas in my notebook, and that was an intriguing combination (plus I hadn’t done any comedy stuff recently). But even though it was just a trailer, it didn’t seem like the right thing to release at the time, especially as MANCHILD was the idea I really wanted to pursue. However, given the political clime of this particular Hallow’s Eve, Zompires! seems even more relevant today than it was when I put this together. Also, the actress in this trailer, Vanessa Y. Lane, wrote me last week asking for a copy, and I realized I’d totally forgotten about it — and re-watching it I thought, “hey, this is actually pretty funny, I should post it!”

Here’s the pitch I sent to the actors before our one-day, no budget, no lights shoot:

Zompires! asks: what would happen if a virus infected half of the earth’s population — but instead of turning us into mindless, flesh-craving monsters, the virus actually made us SMARTER? If the infection activated the 90% of our brains that we supposedly don’t use, how would that change our lives? And what if it also happened to turn us into creatures that look like a cross between a zombie and a vampire? Zompires! posits that we would be filled with immediate, existential dread; that we would instantly quit our day jobs; that looking in the mirror would cause us to lose all sense of vanity; and that our familial and romantic relationships would be thoroughly tested. It’s an absurdist, existentialist meditation on religious and political divineness in our country — with totally absurd makeup.

I hope you got a good laugh or two out of it! If you did, please share it around!

Credits

Writer/Director/Producer/Cinematographer/Editor/Colorist/Blah Blah Blah
Ryan Koo

Producers
Zack Lieberman
Damian Washington

Starring
Damian Washington
Vanessa Y. Lane
Nicholas Job
Lee Lobenhofer

Music
Two Star Symphony

Zompire Illustration
Benjamin Edmiston

Protest Image Credits [CC]
Fibonacci Blue: 1, 2, 3

Technical

I shot it on a Canon 5D Mark II with the following lenses: Zeiss 28mm f2.8, Zeiss 50mm f1.4, Zeiss 85mm f1.4, Zeiss 135mm f2.8, Lensbaby Composer. I edited and post-produced it using Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Audition, Magic Bullet Suite, and Neat Video, all running on a Hackintosh.

Thanks to everyone who participated and donated their time and talents! I’m a big fan of the Houston-based orchestra Two Star Symphony and feature films should be beating down their door for original scores. Check them out! Also, thanks to Benjamin Edmiston for his original illustration of a crying zompire. It was great to be able to feature both of their works in a video (even if it took me two years to get over the negative guy sitting next to me here enough to release it).

This exists for no other reason than to entertain, so again, please share around if you liked it! And let me know what you think.

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