TRAPPED with zombies in DEADLANDS 2
Source: http://www.fangoria.com/
Maryland filmmaker Gary Ugarek, writer/director/producer of DEADLANDS: THE RISING, sent along a few photos (see more below) and info on his follow-up movie DEADLANDS 2: TRAPPED. Like its predecessor, this zombie opus was originally conceived as a short (as first reported here). “Chris Kiros and Elias Dancey of Art Held Hostage productions were developing a project titled ZOMBTHOLOGY, and were looking for directors to make short films for it,” Ugarek tells Fango. “The wraparound story stars Tiffany Shepis, who is kidnapped, held hostage and forced to view these films by her captor; mine is currently the first she has to watch. I began writing a screenplay titled THE ESCAPE, about four strangers stuck in a movie theater during a zombie apocalypse trying to plan an escape and find help—but of course, as in the first DEADLANDS, the ghouls were a bit more agile and made their attempts feeble at best.
After changing the title of his 26-page script to TRAPPED and adding $5,300 of his own money to Art Held Hostage’s $1,000 budget, Ugarek nonetheless came to believe that “it really couldn’t just be a short. Being confined to a 20- or 25-minute running time was hard for me, as I felt this story had so much more to tell. So I said to [Kiros and Dancey], ‘How about I make a feature-length version, cut it down to meet my obligation for ZOMBTHOLOGY and also release my own director’s cut of how I see the film?’ They agreed, and off to work I went.”
Ugarek expanded his screenplay to 56 pages—“I keep my scripts short, because when I’m on set I may see something extra I want to do and just shoot it”—and set about casting. DEADLANDS 2: TRAPPED stars Chris Clark (who appeared as one of THE RISING’s walking dead), Joseph D. (ALL HALLOW’S EVE) Durbin, Corrine Brush, Ashley Young, Alexa Davidson and Josh Davidson, another returnee from THE RISING. Jim Krut, the “helicopter zombie” from George A. Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD, plays the head of the government biological research facility who unleashes the undead plague. Cinematographer Krystian Ramlogan, a Howard University Master’s candidate in film, brought several classmates on board the project. “Krystian preset the DVX100B cameras we used so the movie would need very little color correction in postproduction. However, he and his crew’s school schedule was tough and we often had to shoot without them, but Krystian gave me a hands-on lesson about lighting the first weekend, so everything I did while he was unable to attend nearly matches his work.”
For the main movie-theater location, Ugarek used the Hagerstown 10 multiplex in Hagerstown, MD, where the original DEADLANDS premiered in April 2007. “I approached the owners, and they agreed to let me come in and unleash hell there,” Ugarek says. “We shot every weekend from late September until mid-November 2007, broke for Thanksgiving, and returned one weekend in December and had to stop for the Christmas holiday, as the theater was way too decorated to shoot in—and it’s hard to recruit zombies when the temperature is in the low 20s or 30s. We came back in March 2008 and began shooting the remainder, and we finished all principal photography for the theater sequences the last weekend of April 2008.
“You’re probably thinking to yourself that this film has elements of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DEMONS and many other horror films wrapped into one. That is true to an extent: The references are there, and if you know your zombie horror you’ll spot them, but I promise they fit nicely and aren’t so heavy-handed that you’ll feel like you’re just watching a cheap version of those movies. You may also be wondering how far $6,300 can go for an epic zombie film; well, let me tell you. it can go pretty friggin’ far. I amassed a lot of equipment on the first DEADLANDS, plus I made many contacts with other filmmakers and invited them along for the ride, and to use their equipment. During major sequences, we had up to four cameras rolling, full lighting and other equipment available, and the sound mix is Dolby Digital. Unlike THE RISING, which is a road movie, TRAPPED is confined to the theater most of the time, so no need to spend the bucks closing roads to stage traffic jams like before.”
Ugarek admits that TRAPPED wasn’t initially intended to be a DEADLANDS sequel, but that he expanded the title due to the success of the previous movie on Tempe Video’s DVD. “I believe it’s 10 times better in terms of story and overall production value than THE RISING, but I decided to play it safe and just bring it into the DEADLANDS franchise. The great thing about TRAPPED is that you won’t have to have seen THE RISING to follow this movie—much like Romero’s films change characters and stories, with zombies as the common ground.”
TRAPPED is currently deep in postproduction, and while Ugarek plans to submit the movie to Tempe, he’ll be shopping it around to other distributors as well. “I would like to see some dollars up front so I can give something to the people who busted their asses on this project for the last eight months,” he says. “Though I told them that in today’s market, it could be a long time before we see any returns. So I’ll put it on the festival circuit and do a small theatrical release through the independent Diamond Cinemas chain, which has seven theaters in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware. One thing about the DEADLANDS films is that they were never really about the money; it’s about the genre I love, one I’ve been a deep fan of for over 30 years and one in which I hope one day I can helm a proper epic version with a budget that will make zombie-horror devotees proud.
