Living dead show that age of austerity needn’t be a bloodbath for film makers

On a normal suburban street hordes of bloody zombies lurch toward an ordinary house outside which actress Caroline Wagstaff stands rooted to the spot in utter terror. “Run!” urges her boyfriend, aka actor Paul Collin-Thomas, armed only with a baseball bat. As she flees for her life, they fall on him. It’s carnage.

Director Damian Morter calls for another take and 100 zombies return to their start points on a street dressed with rubbish. A car winds its way through the undead throng and parks on its owner’s driveway. In houses up and down the crescent faces are pressed against window panes. Seconds before the first assistant director calls “action!” they melt away, the watching driver disappears inside his home and, as torrential rain starts to fall, the living dead advance once more.

The take is abandoned and actors, crew and extras scurry for cover. Several shelter in a local’s garage. A short while later the sky has cleared sufficiently for the living dead to attack again. Meanwhile Derek Portman, the director’s father-in-law and owner of number 28, looks on in amusement. “Why aren’t you doing this?” a neighbour asks mischievously. “I’ve done my bit. I got eaten – by my wife!” quips Derek.

Derek and his lumbering chums form part of The Dying Breed, just one segment in a gory anthology film entitled The Eschatrilogy being made on shoestring by 32-year-old Morter and his wife Nicola, 29. A two-man production team working as Safehouse Pictures UK and based in Cudworth, on the outskirts of Barnsley, the Morters have completed their film on a budget of just a few thousand pounds by drawing in volunteers from all over the UK.

“I reckon we spent about £3,000 on it,” observes Mrs. Morter. “What a lot of low-budget people are doing is giving false promises and false hope to people. Basically we decided to do it for a show reel – not to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes but to show people what we could do with nothing.

“I was really honest from the start. We said there was no money in it but if you wanted to be involved in something that’s pretty special and has a really good script, then it’s your chance to shine at what you do – from a make-up artist to an up-and-coming director. I got a massive response.”

The Eschatrilogy was shot mainly around Sheffield with several key scenes filmed on the Morters’ doorstep in Cudworth. It was a remarkably trouble-free shoot, primarily because locals and neighbours had been informed well in advance.

“We work around 50 hours a week. If you really want to do something and make a business take off in this climate you’ve got to put in the hours,” says Nicola. “That was our plan: churn out three features in a year, make a little bit of noise, prove that we can write really good scripts and get the cinematography to go with it. Hopefully this time next year we’ll be doing the same but with some money to play with.

“We are restricted on so much that we do. For me it feels like I’m begging, borrowing and stealing half the time. If people are going to put in 110 per cent for free, what are they going to do when I’m paying them? Even if we don’t get any money we’ll just carry on until we get a bigger profile. Regardless of money we’ll carry on – whatever the weather.”

From £3,000 to £70,000, the budget for comedy/horror Inbred, which was shot in and around Thirsk by a small team led by director Alex Chandon.

For producer Rob Speranza, a 38-year-old ex-pat New Yorker now based in Sheffield, the trick is in building contacts, relationships and trust.

“I got commissions for short films, built up my relationships with both crew and other production companies and equipment houses and basically made it feel like they were coming up the ladder with me,” says the Brooklyn native. I might say ‘Right, guys, I’ve got five grand on this short. Now I’ve got ten grand. Now I’ve got 15, 20 grand. Now I’m making a feature and it’s 70 or 100 grand.’ So they track my progress. And I very much feel like they were almost willing things to do well.

“You can establish those kinds of relationships in a place like Sheffield, where I am, or Leeds, because there are less people making films. We’re not a giant city like London or New York or LA where everybody and their brother calls themselves a filmmaker.”

Unlike The Eschatrilogy which is populated by unknowns, Inbred features Joanne (This is England) Hartley as the leading lady and veteran Seamus O’Neill, soon to be seen in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, as a malevolent pub landlord. Speranza is a hands-on producer who keeps a close eye on his budget. On a film like Inbred where every penny counted it was a case of accepting limitations, rising to challenges and being canny with content.

He calls Inbred “a cobbled together kind of shoot”, but in a good way. He says: “That’s the kind of thing you hear about up in the north – cobbling together from lots of different sources a budget that’s somewhat respectable. When people do budgets they have to try and keep that in mind.

“You read a script, there’s a billion locations, loads of stuff – explosions, car crashes, loads of extras… things like that. If you know that you don’t have the support of a really big production company or financial source then keep it down. Or know that you can provide a lot of that stuff digitally and it won’t look crap.

“You can do it. If you’ve had some success with your shorts and with other investors and they’ve been happy with you in the past, you call upon those guys again. That’s the way I’ve done it.”

Manchester-based writer/director Ian Vernon shot Rebels without a Clue on the chilly hills above Huddersfield in just 28 days. His budget: £50,000, though most of his hard cash – he re-mortgaged his home – went on hi-tech equipment. The baseline cost of shooting the film was about a tenth of that.

“I have accumulated the equipment over years so I’m not paying for hire costs. When I did my first feature after doing nine shorts I did have finance. I wanted to buy as much as possible so that, long-term, I could produce.

“My second film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Rochdale, was made in theory for no money whatsoever because I already had all the equipment. Technology now means you can make something of really good quality on a small camera so you only need a really small crew.

“On the first production everybody was paid a minimal wage, but they were also on deferred contracts if the film ever sold. There are a lot of no-budget productions being made where they have got the drive to make films but sadly they’re really not up to scratch. I admire them for it but it’s almost like we’re getting a saturation of films because anybody can make a feature. It’s not easy but technology has made it easier. It’s whether it’s quality over delivery.”

The Eschatrilogy, Inbred and Rebels without a Clue are active on the festival circuit and the Morters, Chandon and Speranza, and Vernon are travelling with them. They’re made with passion, grit and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. What’s more they are plausible, quality productions made on tuppence. With drive, ambition and a little help from one’s friends, who needs millions?

In tomorrow’s Yorkshire Post, how the county’s theatre is facing the challenge of arts funding cuts.