As Halloween approaches, the season of the zombie is in full swing, spreading throughout popular culture like an outbreak.
The University of Alabama’s telecommunication and film department will soon join the list of infected as it gears up for its upcoming television pilot, Zom-Com. Zom-Com is a 22-minute comedy TV pilot produced by TCF professor Adam Schwartz’s television production class in conjunction with TCF professor Matthew Payne’s Zombies in Culture class.
Payne, who wrote the script with Schwartz, compares the central characters to real-life storm chasers.
“The basic premises focus on a ragtag group of zombie hunters, so imagine storm chasers only instead of chasing tornadoes, they’re chasing the undead,” Payne said. “They’re trying to document them, get more information about the outbreak and bring that information back to the central government in order to get closer to the cure.”
Schwartz described the characters of the pilot as being part of an ensemble. Lead characters Champ and Jessica, both former scientists in their late thirties, act as older mentors to the younger Carlos, a mechanical expert, and Freddie, a technical expert. Jessica acts as the de facto leader of the group and as the main protagonist of the pilot.
“[Jessica] is what I like to describe as a cross between Lara Croft from ‘Tomb Raider’ and Mal Reynolds from ‘Firefly,’” Schwartz said. “She has this tough exterior but can also be charming.”
Schwartz’s television production class is in charge of the production and actual filming of the pilot, while Payne’s class is helping out more with the preproduction and promotion.
“Dr. Payne’s class has really stepped up and they are doing a wonderful job providing props and assisting the producers in finding catering and other sources for fundraising,” Leigh Rusevlyan, one of the producers for the pilot, said.
Zom-Com will be filmed in the Birmingham-Tuscaloosa area over the next few months. The production team hired Screen Actors Guild actors from different parts of the nation as well as local performers to flesh out Zom-Com’s world.
“One of the goals of the project is to really try to elevate the production value,” Payne said.
Daniel Ryan, a production designer for the pilot and a junior majoring in telecommunication and film, said the zombies that populate the world of Zom-Com will be a hybrid of George Romero’s slow shuffling zombies and the faster-paced zombies of “28 Days Later.”
“The zombies might be slow or might be fast, depending on the situation and the dramatic tension that we want to create during our characters’ interactions with them,” Ryan said.
For Payne and Schwartz, finding the right mixture of horror and comedy was an interesting challenge when writing the script.
“For the horror aspect, it has to be a realizable danger. It has to be something people buy into in terms that this is a real threat,” Schwartz said. “The comedy comes from the characters that you put into this world.”
The zombie chasers of Zom-Com have a humanitarian way of dealing with conflict with other groups, such as a gang of mercenaries that take joy in killing the zombies. Schwartz said they believe the zombies can be cured of their disease.
“They want to study them, and if they kill them, they’re not studying their behavior,” Schwartz said. “They also believe that the zombies were once people – they’re just sick people – and perhaps there is a cure.”
Payne and Schwartz were inspired by many sources in their formation of the pilot, from George Romero and “Shaun of The Dead” to TV shows like “Lost.” Payne said despite its genre, Zom-Com is very much character-driven.
“What Prof. Schwartz and I are trying to do is teach story telling,” Payne said. “We’re focusing on character. We’re focusing on conflict. The central focus is this team of folks.”
Though Zom-Com is being created as a teaching tool, Schwartz and Payne, as well as the entire crew behind it, have high hopes for its future. They plan to submit the pilot to festivals such as the New York Film Festival.
“Of course, we would love to produce as many as possible if we gain some popularity,” Rusevlyan said.
Payne hopes to host a viewing of Zom-Com at the Bama Theatre during the upcoming spring semester. The production team behind Zom-Com wants to allow the Tuscaloosa community to be a part of the project. They will be holding a fundraiser for the pilot at Glory Bound on Nov. 18.
“If students can show up and support the project, the TCF department will see how in demand these big projects are,” Rusevlyan said. “If the student body can get behind these projects there will be more and more opportunities in the future for all types of students to get involved.”
