Above: Unlike zombies, when batteries die, they stay dead. Unless they’re rechargeable. Then you just have to wait.
GamesBeat: So how is the battery life when you’re filming like that?
Plenderleith: Bad, yeah. The worst part was when we were filming Part Three. We did all of those farmhouse scenes in one day, and we had 50 zombies all made up and in costumes and everything else. I was really worried that we weren’t gonna get through it because I had only one camera, one iPhone 4s, and that was it.
I did use this one backup battery booster. I’ve forgotten the name of it now, sadly, because I’ve lost it. I clipped it in and taped it onto the iPhone, and by the end of the whole day, that phone still had about 80 percent. That hat was a great solution. I’m sure it’s difficult nowadays with the new ones. I’ve got friends that go, “My iPhone just lasts forever!” I’m like, “Yeah, fuck off.”
These last like an hour, and then that’s it, it’s gone.
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GamesBeat: “Yeah, you’re not filming a zombie movie with yours. You’re on Twitter.” I was imagining the iPhone as a light on a miner’s helmet, but that wouldn’t give you the right perspective.
Plenderleith: Well I did try that. I had it up higher, and you our head can’t get into the right position because it has to be your eyes. You’re looking down, and it doesn’t look right. It literally had to be in front of my eyes.
Nowadays, they have glasses with the camera right in front of your eyes. I look at that and think “That’s a much better idea!”
Above: The Smart wearable HD camera that Plenderleith wishes he’d had.
GamesBeat: You look at that and think, “People are so spoiled now.”
Plenderleith: They don’t know how lucky they are.
GamesBeat: So was that the only thing you had to invent?
Plenderleith: There were quite a few tricks we had to do. For instance, there is a bit at the end where you have to jump off the climbing frame. This is literally a 20-foot thing. It doesn’t look as big when you see it in the game.
I thought I’d jump off and that’d be fine. But then I actually got on the top of it and I thought “I’m not jumping off of this.” I’m gonna literally break my leg like your character does. So we just set up a tripod and faked it. It looked like you were looking down, but actually the camera was on a really long tripod that we straightened all the legs. Somebody just stood there holding it and then we went “Wrrrrr” and lowered it down toward the ground and that was fine. We did it in one take, it looked great.
There were other things we did like there’s a scene where you’re on a bike and you get run over. That was my car. I couldn’t really run over a bike with a human rolling over the top of a car, so we faked it. We looked up into the sky where there was a bit of the sun. We cut it to the same point in time where we had again a tripod held by me and there was another cyclist and they were going along quite happily and then they stopped just as the car came, and I just sort of spun the tripod over the top of the car and threw it on the ground.
Above: In the middle of all of that zombie punching and maggot fighting, you’re looking for your girlfriend.
I’m amazed the camera didn’t smash; it went through so much. You know, they’re really quite brittle. It did really well actually, it never smashed once. It actually smashed about six months later when I was at the supermarket, and it just fell out of my hand and dropped about two feet and just smashed. I thought, “My God, you filmed all of that footage and you were thrown around over cars and zombies and nothing happened. I drop you two feet and you just smash.”
GamesBeat: Did you have a case on it for shooting?
Plenderleith: No, funny enough the Glif is perfectly fitting to the iPhone and doesn’t accept a case. So for all of the really dangerous scenes, we didn’t have one. For the more mundane scenes, we did. When I was just holding it and walking around, for instance with the farmhouse scene I just held it.
There was one day though, the big zombie day where I had the 50 zombies. I had all these zombies, all prepped, everybody was told what to do, everybody was in position. And literally one minute before filming I was ready to go and I look down and the lens is gone. We were in the middle of a forest with this abandoned farm house. There was foliage everywhere, it had been overgrown. I’d been running around the whole day telling people where to go. And I just nearly died.
And then I just found it. I walked about three feet, but at that split second in time, my world just died. That was the worst moment. I thought “This is just not happening.” That horrible sinking feeling you feel in your stomach. At that point it hadn’t been taped on properly. So I double taped the Olloclip and didn’t lose it again that day.