DIRECTOR Marc Price and actor Alastair Kirton talk about making £45 zombie horror movie Colin, relying on friends and creativity and what the movie says about humanity.

Marc also reveals plans for his next movie, about the crew of a World War II bomber who find themselves in difficulty… The interview took place at The Movieum of London.

Q. How do you make a film for £45 and make it look so good?
Marc Price: It was more about what we had available to us rather than what we spent the money on. So, we were aware of the locations we could shoot in that could look quite desolate and it was all shot fairly local to our area in Tooting. We also had some amazing actors who added so much depth to the characters we wanted to create. We obviously needed to have a couple of sequences that I wanted to see as a zombie fan… those bigger action sequences. But if you break the film down, for the most part it would be me with a camcorder and Alastair [Kirton] and the actors who were down for the day.

We shot the set pieces as separate things to make them easier to manage. Saying please and thank you helped a lot. Instead of simply telling people they were extras and pointing to where they should be standing I was making people tea [Laughs]! And if we were trying to solve a problem, it was never a case of: “You can’t talk to me… stay away until it’s been solved.” They could join in and say: “Have you tried that?” If something didn’t work, we didn’t reject the suggestion, but incorporated some of those ideas. Filmmaking is essentially all about problem solving and we were just in a position to be able to do that with amazingly creative people who really helped us. It was thinking about the project as a whole rather than anything selfish.

Alastair Kirton: It was also just going into it with massive amounts of enthusiasm. Everybody that was involved just loved being there.

Q. How easy was it to get into the mindset of a zombie, both physically and mentally?
Alastair Kirton: The two things went hand in hand, actually. Finding the physicality was one of the first and most important things to do. So, we gave ourselves a bit of time to experiment and see what we wanted to do. Marc gave me Day of the Dead as a reference, and also Dawn of the Dead. There were a couple of zombies in there that I really liked. And once we were able to find the physicality you back away from the mindset slightly and you just… it was really about reacting to what was in his periphery. It’s a child-like reaction and only really being aware of what was happening close by.

Q. Was it a conscious decision to make your zombies George Romero-style slow rather than fast, as in the Dawn of the Dead remake?
Marc Price: Yeah, I thought it would be fun with Lee, the first zombie, if we let him play it like the first one from Night of the Living Dead. He had quite a bit of spunk that guy… he was slow but very determined. I thought the interesting thing about doing that for fans who may despise the fast running zombies is that you don’t really get an answer until you’re watching the film and realise: “Oh yeah, they’re not running!” I’m personally a fan of both zombies. I love the Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead and I really do think there’s room for both.

Q. Has Romero seen Colin?
Marc Price: I don’t think so but I know a journalist has mentioned the film to him and what got me very excited was that a journalist would think it was worth mentioning to him! I’m not sure if it would entirely be his cup of tea but it was definitely made as a sort of loving nod to the films he made. They were the zombie movies that were most influential to me. Part of me thinks I should quote some unknown zombie films as inspiration… but it really is the Romero ones. I have a vivid memory of seeing those films and how they affected me. I was, of course, irresponsibly far too young to have seen them, but they’ve grown with me. As a child, they had a totally different affect on me as they do now but I still love them.

Q. What do you think Colin says about humanity?
Marc Price: One of the things I think is interesting about telling the story from the perspective of a zombie is that the violence that the zombies commit on the humans has no motivation to it. The zombies will attack anyone and if you’re closest to the door, it’ll probably be you. It’s that simple… there’s no motive beyond that. But when the human characters are killing the zombies, whether it’s for a noble cause like saving someone, self-preservation or whether it’s just because they’re very cruel, there’s a motivation behind it.

If you look at humanity through the eyes of somebody who isn’t actually human, it’s an interesting way to take it all in. We certainly wanted to put that across. But it’s also important that the audience has ownership of their interpretation of that. I wouldn’t want to say: “What we were trying to cleverly do here is a metaphor for this…” I’m really curious to hear audiences’ responses to it. Some responses so far have been fascinating. But it’s not our job to rob that interpretation of anyone who gives up their time to watch the film.

Alastair Kirton: Well, I really enjoy hearing what the audience has to say about it. There’s such a range as well in what people read into stuff. I like the family scenes and things like that but there’s so many different interpretations of what’s going on in that.

Q. How important was the internet in helping to get Colin made and promoted? I gather you also used it for recruitment purposes?
Alastair Kirton: We kind of use MySpace and Facebook as a way of co-ordinating the shoot and getting people together. A lot of people were either friends or friends of friends, and people came down and brought other people. So, it was brilliant being able to use that to keep people informed on that basis, as well as what’s been going on since in terms of the release. Marc also put on the trailer and a selection of shots early on to give people an idea of what it looked like and what we were trying to make. There were also some out-takes. But it gave people an idea that it would be a worthwhile thing to come down for.

Q. Are you surprised by the fact Colin got a cinematic release? Did you ever see it being a cinema release on day one of filming?
Marc Price: Not at all. We sent it to a lot of horror sites to review and it got spread around via people who had copies. We thought maybe a very small DVD release somewhere. So, the idea of a theatrical release is very, very frightening because the movie was shot on a camcorder and was designed for a television screening. But I saw part of it during the Raindance Film Festival, because I find it terrifying to see it with an audience, but it was an amazing response. It looked better than I’ve ever seen it.

Alastair Kirton: Not really. We never really end gamed it. We were always just making the film that we wanted to make.

Q. Has it opened doors for you?
Marc Price: I like the idea of having complete control over how we tell our stories. So, we can hang on to our low budget ethics for our next film. Even though we’ll need more of a budget for it, we can treat it like it’s a job and people can get paid. With Colin, it was about building relationships and finding people we can work with on future projects.

There are five main cast members in Colin, for example, whose range isn’t even closely indicated as performers. But through getting to know them and spending a lot of time with them on the movie you become friends, you see them in other projects and you get to know their range. So, that’s where I am. I now have over 100 people I can cherry pick for future films. And that’s amazing to me… that everyone involved with Colin has been so supportive and enthusiastic about what’s happened with it.

Alastair Kirton: So far, a lot of the stories have been about how the film was made and the low budget nature of it. I’m looking for an agent at the moment. But I think once the film is out and people start seeing it and talking about the film itself, and hopefully about my performance and things like that, I’m hoping that some stuff might happen. Otherwise I’ll be working with Marc again… [laughs]

Q. Are you working on your second film?
Marc Price: Yeah, the second film has a working title of Thunder Child, which is the name of a World War II bomber, which is where our story takes place. It’s on a mission somewhere over Europe and is on its way back, quite badly damaged, when a creepy creature attacks one of the gunners! It doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s appropriately set up.

But the idea is to make a film that’s very tense with these seven characters. So, by the time we get to the point where the creature attacks the audience should feel that none of the characters are expendable. It’s attacking a character we know and slowly killing him while the rest of the cast attempts to figure out a way to help him – but they can’t jump off the plane or bail out because they’ve just bombed this area below. It’ll hopefully be very tense and fun.

Q. Finally, what makes zombies so enduring?
Marc Price: I think that if you look at the ’90s and films like Independence Day with The White House exploding, we’d never seen these monuments getting levelled. But it’s kind of ironic now that the destruction of monuments doesn’t seem to affect us in the same way. I think that the invasion of suburbia, our homes and our families, by this indefatigable, unstoppable force like zombies is frightening and personal. And it’s so much more frightening than a national park like Disneyland being invaded by Martians. I think that’s the enduring appeal of zombies.

Alastair Kirton: I just think that they can be really entertaining movies. They can be really scary, but you can also take them somewhere funny – like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.

Colin is released in cinemas on Friday, October 23 and on DVD on Monday, October 26, 2009

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