HoH:  First off I'd like to personally commend you on what was an outstanding zombie piece.  I get a little skeptical when comedy gets mixed into horror - but I can honestly say that Zombie Movie was as funny as it was disgusting.  We had originally been anticipating a November 2005 release - but its only now being made available to the public.  Could you explain a bit about what happened along the way?

Asquith:  The games company Valve had planned to release Zombie Movie online last year but held out for technical reasons.

HoH:  Filmed and produced and all in New Zealand?

Asquith:  Yes, 100% Kiwi owned and operated. We shot the film at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand. Studio A had been empty since The Lord of the Rings wrapped and Jamie Selkirk, the editor at Wingnut Films, kindly gave us the keys for couple of weeks. Originally we had planned to shoot outdoors in a real street but that would have been a nightmare with regards to lighting. I think the main reason we achieved the look we did was due to starting with a dark space and only adding lights as needed. We had total control in a studio.

Zombie Movie crew watching the monitor...

  
HoH:  When and where will it be available to watch...

Asquith:  You can watch it right now and it wont cost you a dime! It's available through Steam, Valve Software's broadband platform for delivering digital content directly to your desktop. Visit our website for more info: www.2chums.com .  You can also check out the trailer at youtube.com  or on our myspace page www.myspace.com/2chums .

HoH:  Could you shed a little light on how 2Chums is related, if at all, to Valve...

Asquith:  2Chums Moving Pictures is a New Zealand based independent film production company that has no association to Valve Software (Halo/Halo 2). Currently the only relation is that I’m currently working for Valve as a character artist and Ben has done some design work for them.

HoH:  What kind of a special effects budget did you work with - the zombies you had outside the car were great.  I'm a gore fan and I was glad to see some nice ripped up undead faces in the crowd...

Asquith:  We didn’t have a lot of money to do the effects but I was able to raise the bar since, at the time, I was a make-up artist at WETA workshop. I spent a few late nights sculpting all the prosthetic pieces and made all the molds myself on the weekends. My boss Richard was kind enough to let me use the facilities at WETA for fabricating the foam latex pieces. All the prosthetics were made with the excess foam latex from making hobbit feet.  Ha! 

Asquith directing the dead...

HoH:  There was almost a tint of yellowness, a putridity, to the color of the film.  It was subtle, yet commanding addition to the atmosphere - really added that "death" feeling to the environment...

Asquith:  We decided early on we wanted a yellow jaundiced look to the zombies. I just think that looks more disturbing than greens and greys. We also planned to have the zombies appear more rotted as the film progresses. So the last scene has all the decayed maggot infested zombies. I think we augmented that with the subtle sound of buzzing flies in the last scene.  I actually did a lot more zombie make-ups than appear in the film. But once we got into editing we realized how much the zombies really didn’t matter that much. The film is about these idiots stuck in a car and how they are dealing with each other. So we trimmed a lot of gratuitous zombie shots out. Fortunately we took lots of photos of all those cool make-ups.

HoH:  Your short commanded the horror festivals last season.  Any chance we'll be seeing something from you and/or Stenbeck this year?

Asquith:  We are considering another short, not related at all to Zombie Movie but it would be an unofficial second part in a trilogy of shorts. We came up with the story one afternoon and it brought us to tears with laughter. So there’s that, but I’d rather dive into a feature film since making shorts is a sure path to financial destitution.

Front hood camera shot...

HoH:  Last but not least - had read on your website that you have a feature film and television series in the works...  Can you give a little insight as to what might be ahead with that?

Asquith:  I have a few feature screenplays at various stages of development.  One is a zombie movie, a serious horror film set during a war. The television series has been a baby of mine for several years now.  It’s a horror/adventure/comedy in the same vein as Dr Who and Sapphire and Steel.  Ben is back into comics and has a few personal projects he’s getting off the ground. Rest assured that 2Chums will return to the silver screen in the near future…

House of Horrors would like to thank Mr. Asquith for taking the time to speak with us - we're definitely looking forward to seeing more from 2Chums real soon.  In the meantime, hop on over to 2Chums.com and get all the info on how you can see Zombie Movie, right now, for free.

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