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The Girl & the Zombies
May. 5th, 2009 09:17 amSo, Friday night Cynra & I took in Zombie Girl at the Hot Docs FF. The film documents a young film-maker's first efforts at making a feature length zombie film.
No, a seriously young filmmaker. She's 12.
The film is about Emily Hagins, a young filmmaker from Texas. Emily was a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings films, and a fan letter to Peter Jackson gets her in touch with internet nerdmaster Harry Knowles (masterfully played by Ethan Supplee... Wait, no, wrong movie). After one of Knowles' patented film marathons where she saw cult horror film Undead, she begins to make shorts, and eventually decides to create her own zombie film, Pathogen.
Independent film-making is a fascinating beast to watch. Doubly so when it's by someone who had to get taken to see her inspirations by her mom. Her mom Megan is one of the anchors of the film. While Megan is always supportive of her daughters The back and forth during filming is an interesting examination of the maturation process. Emily is the director, surely, but eventually mom has to put her foot down and say that filming is done for tonight.
Watching kids play at adult roles is always a strange thing. There's a lack of knowledge of both themselves and the world that makes you dread to see how things can go wrong. Pathogen gets derailed early in the film-making process, but Emily soldiers on, with the shooting time stretching into two years (after school and during vacations, with months long breaks where things just get disrupted).
The film is finally finished, and exhibited (with help from an independant filmmaker's grant that Emily shows no interest in, but which her mom is quite enthusiastic to get) at the Alamo Drafthouse. An amusing fact is that you never see a single frame of finished film from Pathogen. You do get to hear lots of people talking about how difficult it was to do the final production work, and how bad the sound was, so that may be for the best.
No, a seriously young filmmaker. She's 12.
The film is about Emily Hagins, a young filmmaker from Texas. Emily was a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings films, and a fan letter to Peter Jackson gets her in touch with internet nerdmaster Harry Knowles (masterfully played by Ethan Supplee... Wait, no, wrong movie). After one of Knowles' patented film marathons where she saw cult horror film Undead, she begins to make shorts, and eventually decides to create her own zombie film, Pathogen.
Independent film-making is a fascinating beast to watch. Doubly so when it's by someone who had to get taken to see her inspirations by her mom. Her mom Megan is one of the anchors of the film. While Megan is always supportive of her daughters The back and forth during filming is an interesting examination of the maturation process. Emily is the director, surely, but eventually mom has to put her foot down and say that filming is done for tonight.
Watching kids play at adult roles is always a strange thing. There's a lack of knowledge of both themselves and the world that makes you dread to see how things can go wrong. Pathogen gets derailed early in the film-making process, but Emily soldiers on, with the shooting time stretching into two years (after school and during vacations, with months long breaks where things just get disrupted).
The film is finally finished, and exhibited (with help from an independant filmmaker's grant that Emily shows no interest in, but which her mom is quite enthusiastic to get) at the Alamo Drafthouse. An amusing fact is that you never see a single frame of finished film from Pathogen. You do get to hear lots of people talking about how difficult it was to do the final production work, and how bad the sound was, so that may be for the best.
