So, we’re making a movie. Okay, it’s a short film, but it still needs to be promoted. We need a poster and swag to hand out when we’re at conventions and other events. That’s the direction I took this week while Sanj was busily editing and recovering from a flu.
Prior to filming with considered several ideas for an image to represent “Zombie Casserole.” Maybe a cartoon image of a zombie carrying brain in a casserole dish or a casserole dish stuffed with zombies would be appropriate. They certainly reflected the title, but didn’t tell you much more about the movie than was conveyed in the title. The plot revolves around zombies attempting to fit into society and failing miserably. We thought that having a zombie couple sheepishly proffering a green bean casserole gets the point across rather nicely.
This is part of an effort to get an IMDB page for Zombie Casserole. Alas, that is not to be, at least, not yet. We wanted to give our cast and crew recognition for their time, effort and participation with early IMDB credits; however, the site does not permit short films to be listed in post-production, only full-length features. You win this round, IMDB, but we’ll be back.
Our make-up artists, Derek and Alicia, did a wonderful job of zombifying our horde and themselves and asked if they would be willing to pose together, as an undead couple, holding a green bean casserole in front of a green screen. Here’s a sample raw photo. Some variation of this will eventually become the poster.
In the mean time, I wanted to get some pint glasses together for some promotional swag. Printing images on glass gets prohibitively expensive – maybe not for Paramount or Universal, but for those of us paying out-of-pocket we need a less pricey option. Even two tone color printed pint glasses on Cafe Press were $15/glass. With my order of 30 glasses, that put the cost at $450. Ouch. DiscountMugs.com could do the job for $202 (with shipping) which brings it down to $6.73/glass. I could drink to that, but it would come with some compromise.
First, I had to create a silhouette from the green screen image.
That’s a good start, but it needs a title and a little something extra.
Better. Now to send it off to the printer. Part of the process involves approving any changes from the printer. It went through two revisions. The first one toned down the gradient on the font which came as no surprise. The blood splatter and font is maroon whereas the silhouette remains black.
And the second solidified the font.
The font isn’t as stylistic as I would have liked. We’ve been using Mom’s Typewriter and, despite the friendly name, it makes wonderfully creepy text when shaded red. Unfortunately, the proofers at DiscountMugs didn’t think it would print well. At least we get our red font.
I received a shipping notice earlier this week and expect to receive it by December 20th. Looking forward to having my first beer to go with a Zombie Casserole.