PRODUCTION
UNDEAD was shot in Queensland, Brisbane for somewhere between $800,00 - $1 million. It was the creative genius of Spierig brothers Peter and Michael. Who shared equal control, and contribution, within Scripting, Directing, Producing, Editing and the CGI FX. Money, the brothers say, was found through three years of saving their earnings from making commercials as well as selling everything they own, even their car. This is the first feature film for the Spierigs, having previously been making award winning commercials and short-films. The film itself was based on a trilogy of short-films the brothers made called Attack of the Undead, Rampage of the Undead and Massacre of the Undead.
Due to the budget constraints of the film, a lot of pre-production planning was involved. Almost every detail was fine tuned at this stage, in order for the film to be successfully completed on budget. For example, the end plane scene flying through all the people was carefully planned using animatics, to show cast and crew exactly what they wanted. This single animatic was 15 minutes long and took over a year to animate and render.
SOME STILLS FROM
THE ANMATICS
Most scenes are first or second takes, as the brothers had a limited supply of film stock. The shooting took 41 days, a small chunk of the 2½ years in total it took to make this movie.
The majority of this time was spent in post-production, where the brothers had to add up to 305 computer-generated images (CGI). All this was done on their home PC, causing the computer they used to crash up to 15 times a day, struggling to cope with the complicated images. Despite this, the FX look stunning and makes the film look like it was made with a much higher budget. While a big studio would have hired a multi-million dollar company with the latest technology and a team of experts, the Spierig brothers managed to create this professional look on a PC between them.
RELEASE
UNDEAD was toured through the local film festival circuit, before it’s official release. This was the public’s first bite of the visually tasty treat created by Peter and Michael Spierig. Undead was released in cinemas on September 4th 2003. Although this was a blink and you’ll miss it appearance in indie cinemas, more then a mainstream release. It made a quick jump from the cinemas to videos and dvd, coming out to hire on the 22nd December 2003. Although, it was here the movie began to have it’s most success. The movie quickly joined classics Braindead and Evil Dead as a cult fan favourite. Much of it’s popularity stemmed from internet publicity too. Pre-release rave reviews (like that from Harry Knowles at AINT IT COOL NEWS) combined with teaser trailers, created anticipation for it’s release.