New vampire film shot for £45 debuts in Cannes
- 00:02:33
- ITN
New vampire film shot for £45 debuts in Cannes
A new British film shot on a camcorder for £45 is being screened in Cannes, showing you don't need millions to make a movie. The Zombie movie made by Marc Price, formerly of Swansea but now living in London, may be the surprise success of the 62nd French film festival. The film, called Colin, could get a release in Japan having caught the eye of film distributors there. Price, who has no formal film-making training, said he gained his knowledge watching DVD extras. He said: "It cost us about £45, which was spent on a crowbar and some tapes. We wanted to focus on story and character, and rely on that to hook the audience." The film puts an unusual slant on the zombie genre, telling the story from the point of view of a zombie trying to understand what has happened to him, rather than a human trying to escape and survive. "The ultimate goal was rather than going for screams, we wanted to try to move the audience, to try to get them to cry, get a real emotional response from them," Price said. "We wanted to try to avoid what other films had done, which is why we began doing it from the zombie's perspective." Colin was shot on camcorder in Swansea and London over 18 months, and the film-makers persuaded actors and make-up artists to donate their services for free to create the necessary blood and gore. "Cast-wise we had over 100 people and I'm still not quite sure how that happened. They were friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, and none of them were paid. "Lots of them were just like, 'Hey, I'd love to be a zombie', so we said, 'If you want to be a human too, bring a weapon of your choice'. That's the beauty of the end of the world scenario - people just grab whatever they can find and use it as a weapon." The Colin team is showing the 97-minute movie at the Marche des Films - the vast conference centre attached to the main festival hall, where film-makers vie for the attention of studio and distributor executives. "It's a bit weird to be at Cannes," Price said. "It's just a movie shot on a camcorder and I have no delusions that's all it is, but it's nice people watch it and it's nice to see it play with an audience." The 30-year-old, who works for a courier firm in London, said he hoped Colin would at least show his potential and maybe attract more money for his next project. "The next film we would like to make is set in a World War Two bomber, a Handley Page Halifax," he said, adding: "Seven guys returning from a bombing mission over Germany and a creepy limpet-like creature attacks them. "We wanted to do a metaphorical movie creature, but we wanted it to look like Saving Private Ryan in a sewer tank for the first part, where the guys are in this bombing mission. We were thinking of going for big bucks for this one, maybe a hundred quid." Colin has yet to find a distributor, but the trailer on the website www.colinmovie.com gives an idea of what a micro budget zombie film looks like.
ITN | May 18, 2009
