Zombie Western

So, I've started work on a new project. To be honest, its my first project that I could call my own post college. I've always wanted to shoot something on the ranch, ever since we first moved in August, 2005. We were actually able to shoot the awesome show, Mountain Man over the course of a year and a half, off and on (mostly off). We put a lot of work in to shooting the first season of that web series, some of which can be seen on the interwebs right now. In shooting Mountain Man, I really realized for the first time, how much mileage you could get out of shooting up at the ranch, given the right setting and tone of the project.

Sos, recently I started working on ideas for a full feature to be shot, mostly on the ranch, for next to nothing. Mountain Man was made with a bare bones crew and virtually no budget, except out of pocket. However, I knew that out out of pocket days were over, and most of my peers were still unemployed and trying to work on their own projects. My passion has always been horror movies (although not exclusively) and I knew that doing a horror would be more conducive to the budget constraints.

After Mountain Man, I got a jobbie doing post sound for a no budget horror movie called BIODEAD. I got to know the director and producer, who pretty much did everything except the sound design. I realized that with the right mindset, you could really pull off a fun and entertaining horror movie that could actually be bought. Rent it on DVD next month. I demand it!

And that was all the encouragement I needed to convince myself that I could make a feature, given all of the equipment that the ranch has been able to accrue over the years. I was thinking a camping slasher movie. you know, kids camping in the desert/ranch and a boogie man monster thing eats/slices them. With all the remakes in theaters to that effect, it wasn't difficult to come up with a plotline or two. But they were pretty stale at best. To be honest, I'm not sure exactly where the idea for the zombie western came from. But whenever I mentioned those two words to anybody, they would instantly know exactly what I was talking about. That interested me a lot.

So, I started doing some research on my favorite westerns, the Sergio Leone's, and Deadwood. I was already familiar with the zombie genre and the main themes therein. All that remained was trying to mash 'em together (I know, I'm so post modern, I make you sick) in a meaningful and entertaining way. How hard could it be?