Invasion of the Undead: Frequently Asked Questions

While we're on a short hiatus from shooting Invasion (we pick up again June 12th) we thought it would be a good time to answer some questions we're regularly asked regarding the movie and MonsterBuster in general. Here goes:


When will Invasion be released?

We're aiming for Fall or Winter 2013; Halloween would be ideal for obvious reasons but it's extremely unlikely given that we're still going to be shooting scenes and FX pick-ups all the way through August. Beyond that there's a lot of post-production work that needs to be done before the movie will be audience-ready, and with everyone in MonsterBuster working day jobs on top of their duties on Invasion it's tough to pinpoint an exact date. We'll definitely update this blog and our Facebook page with news on the movie as we move forward.


How do you plan to release it?

The current plan is to submit to festivals and coincide an online release (both streaming and as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack) with our largest festival premiere so that as soon as people hear about the movie they're able to watch it. We're fully planning to self-distribute; our budget (approx. $17,000) is low enough that we feel we have a decent chance of making our money back if we release it ourselves instead of relying on (and potentially getting screwed by) a distributor. If we don't get into any festivals we'll likely submit review copies to different film and horror websites to hopefully generate some buzz. We're also planning to rent some local independent theaters and non-traditional event space to host screenings and Invasion-themed parties.


Are you really donating the profits from Invasion to charity?

Yup! If you read our Indiegogo campaign description you'll know that we plan to donate 10% of our gross profits to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. We're also planning to donate another percentage to a charity that's directly affecting one of our main cast members; we'll make a formal announcement once we iron out all of the details. As to why we're doing this, it's just our way to give back to the community that supported us; Invasion was crowd-funded through Indiegogo, and while the majority of the budget ultimately came from an outside investor we literally would not be making this movie without each and every one of our Indiegogo supporters. Besides, we're in this to make movies, not money, and if Invasion is a big enough success to justify a sequel we should still have more than enough profit left over to gear up for production on a follow-up even after donating to charity.


What are you shooting on?

We're shooting Invasion with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera; we're primarily shooting ProRes instead of RAW to minimize file storage (on our ultra-low budget hard drives are kind of a big deal). We may also shoot some scenes with a 5D Mark III once the RAW hack by Magic Lantern is fully stable; we're shooting a lengthy flashback scene in August and the full-frame sensor of the 5D may be a nice, subtle way to give this sequence a different look from the rest of the film.

The Boogeyman loves the Blackmagic Camera!

Just how many monsters are in Invasion?

Now for the fun questions! The different creatures that infest Allison's mansion are Belle, a slimy undead Scarlet O'Hara with a stop motion creature head (you can see a test of her in our main Indiegogo video); the Sons of Z'athax, Blind Dead-inspired skeletal wizards that are the foot soldiers for the invasion and come in two varieties, regular and über; voodoo zombies, traditional Haitian zombies led by 'Big Z' that are obligated to serve the Hillstead family until Allison breaks the curse on them;  Guy Smiley, our Big Bad; the Mummy, a snazzily-dressed Egyptian sorcerer first seen in Allison's webisode; and finally Z'athax, a gigantic cobra-like demon that serves as the movie's 'last boss'.

All of our creatures will be created practically, either through make-up or stop motion animation. While we have a few CG environments (mainly the exterior of Allison's mansion since we couldn't find an old Southern plantation-style home on our budget) we have no CG creatures!


'Last boss'? What's with all of the video game references?

8-bit Desmond, Jake and Allison, as created by Fred Grant. Can you tell Fred loves Mega Man?

Narratively Desmond is an avid gamer who enjoys beating insanely difficult retro video games the likes of which would make the Angry Video Game Nerd cringe, but beyond that Invasion takes a lot of visual cues from video games, most notably in in its fight scenes, which are modeled after the epic boss battles in adventure and role-playing games like Zelda, Final Fantasy and Ys. We here at MonsterBuster Entertainment love video games; don't forget we made Mario and Luigi and Metroid prior to Invasion. We're even planning to include an original 8-bit style game based on the movie as part of its Blu-ray/DVD combo pack.

Ever play The Uninvited? So have we.

Speaking of Metroid, whatever happened to that? And what about the other MonsterBuster shorts?

If you regularly read this blog you know that we have a lot of projects in the works; hey, we love making movies, and an unfortunate side effect of that is that it makes us a bit over ambitious at times. Our only project currently in production is Invasion, but here's a quick update on the rest of the movies we have on deck:

Metroid - Fred Grant's fan trailer is complete and on YouTube, but we haven't uploaded it to our own channel or featured it on our website because he was primarily using it to promote the Indiegogo campaign for his upcoming feature Dekiru and we didn't want to risk being associated with another Indiegogo campaign so shortly after finishing our own. We're planning to upload it our channel once Fred gets a free moment away from Dekiru to write a blog entry detailing its production.

Katelyn Brammer's Harmony and Bath Salt Cannibal - Both of these shorts are completed and are currently being shopped around to different festivals. We'll post them online as soon as we can without interfering with any possible festival acceptance.

Jay Holloway's Werehooker - We teased this follow-up to Werebum on our Facebook page in January; it's almost complete barring a few audio changes. We haven't decided yet whether to submit it to festivals or simply post it online (it's really just a three minute mock trailer as opposed to a full length project) but we'll make an announcement both here and on Facebook when the time comes.

The Werehooker!

Desmond's webisode for Invasion - Yup, this is still happening. The current plan is to release it in July alongside the first trailer for Invasion.

Super Mario and Luigi and The Statement of Randolph Carter - We still plan to make both of these shorts, but they're currently not on the schedule for this year.


Finally, what about those trading cards I keep seeing on Facebook?

It's just something we're making for fun; most of us grew up collecting the Marvel Universe and other similar trading cards, and this is our homage to them. If you like them though, let us know! We may print a small number of sets to help promote Invasion if the interest is high enough. Regardless we're certainly planning to release more cards on Facebook throughout the summer; the slate of characters were planning to include are Mario, Luigi, Jerry and Peach from Mario and Luigi; Belle, Mary, Ashley, Mr. Dunsmore, Big Z, the Sons of Z'athax and Z'athax from Invasion; May, Christie and the Man from Crowscare; the Werebum from Werebum; some as-of-yet undecided characters from Bath Salt Cannibal; and the Werehooker, Werepimp and Mary from Werehooker. We may also include Detective Steel and Vesper Kind from The Red Herring to celebrate the first anniversary of the play's release.

There's plenty more of these on Facebook.

As always, thank you for reading and for your continued support!

Voodoo Zombies, Belle, and a Girl Scout

15 days of production on Invasion of the Undead are wrapped!

Allison (Marie Barker) and Ashley (Josie Levy) cautiously investigate a strange noise.

Introducing Belle, the first of Allison's uninvited house guests.

Jake (Dylan Schettina) examines a lock of Belle's hair. 

Allison descends into her Inferno-inspired basement.

John Reed as Big Z, our main voodoo zombie.

Even with the voodoo curse lifted Big Z isn't too happy to meet Desmond.

Allison attempts to talk some sense into the horde of voodoo zombies before Big Z chokes Desmond out.

Another weekend wrapped...

We're slowly but surely moving through production on our first feature film... more stills coming next week!

Allison zones out on her front porch while Desmond and Jake deal with the creatures inside.

Desmond still manages to be a smartass even when bloody and bruised, to Allison's chagrin. 

Jake (unsuccessfully) warns Desmond about the supernatural dangers they're about to face.

Desmond and Jake's trunk is littered with all sorts of occult artifacts and old video games.

A heart-to-heart in the woods.

There's evil in these woods...

Our Tombs of the Blind Dead-inspired Sons of Z'athax close in on Desmond.

Location Shooting!

This past weekend we wrapped our two location shoots for Invasion of the Undead.  On Saturday we headed to Canton, Georgia to film at Harvest Moon Natural Market, an independently-owned natural and organic grocery store that will double as SaveMore Groceries in Invasion. The two managers who greeted us when we arrived several hours before the store opened were extremely accommodating and even prepared delicious breakfast wraps and smoothies for our crew. Saturday also marked the first appearance of a new addition to the Invasion cast: Mark Ashworth, star of the Doritos "Goat For Sale" commercial that aired during this year's Super Bowl, plays Dunsmore, the manager of SaveMore who is constantly at odds with Desmond and Jake (mostly Desmond). Mark is absolutely one of the nicest and most professional actors we have ever worked with and he was an absolute pleasure to have on set.  Relying on mostly practical lighting, we were able to wrap in the nick of time at 8:57 am, just minutes before the store opened. If you live near Canton definitely check out Harvest Moon; independent grocery stores are becoming increasingly scarce and Harvest Moon is certainly one of the best around. The employees are some of the nicest you'll find and Alisha, the owner, is very supportive of the local art community as evidenced by her support of our film.

Jake scours the Codex Demanicus for information about Z'athax in the SaveMore stock room.

Dunsmore (Mark Ashworth) isn't letting Desmond and Jake off easy this time.

Who's that shopping in the background? MonsterBuster propmaster John Holbrook!

Desmond has some words with Jake while Dunsmore looks on.

Sunday brought us to Videodrome, a video store that should need no introduction if you're a film buff living in Atlanta since it's one of the last of its kind. Videodrome will stand-in for the SaveMore video department where Desmond passes time when he's not killing monsters. Emma Greene, a talented local actress who previously appeared in our Witch make-up video for xteeener,  reprised her role of Mary from the original Invasion teaser trailer that premiered at our 2011 film festival and was as charming as ever. Fun fact: the SaveMore customer that Desmond blows off is actually Greg Garrison's dad Steven, who eagerly volunteered to be an extra for the chance to act opposite his son. Going to a video store to pick out a movie is quickly becoming a thing of the past but Videodrome keeps the tradition alive and offers virtually every movie for rental regardless of how mainstream or obscure it is; we even found a laserdisc of Greydon Clark's 1988 killer cat classic The Uninvited behind the counter. Please support them if you live in Atlanta!

The SaveMore Video Department is crowded as usual.

Magical artifact or pancake fork? Desmond sides with the latter. 

Mary (Emma Greene) should be used to Desmond's antics by now.

We resume shooting this weekend; check out this blog and our Facebook page for more pics next week!

Invasion of the Undead: Weeks 1 and 2 wrapped!

We've wrapped our first two weeks of production on Invasion of the Undead! Roughly half of the movie is now in the can, but from here on out we'll only be shooting on weekends to accommodate our numerous crew members' day jobs. How is the movie looking? Check out these mock lobby cards containing images from the film and judge for yourself!

Note: These images and captions do contain spoilers, so try to forget them before you watch the movie later this year (we're aiming to release the movie in the Fall, ideally around Halloween).

Allison has a lot of unpacking to do, although that quickly becomes the least of her worries...

Never play cards with Ashley Amberson, Wilderness Scout-in-Training. You'll lose.

Introducing Desmond and Jake, our two heroes.

Allison reads about the mansion's horrific past in a tattered diary.

Desmond and Allison have a heart-to-heart on the trunk of Desmond's beat-up 1987 Saab.

Jake has seen better days. Invasion's lighting style is heavily inspired by Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Creepshow.

The demonic leader of the invasion. His smile will be animated on top of the awesome make-up by our creature creator Tricia Gaulesky.

Allison begins a magic ritual under Jake's guidance.

Invasion takes a lot of cues from video games, most notably during the climatic sword fight in which Zelda-style title cards introduce our hero and villain.

Allison takes a stab at consecrating the Trident of Paracelsus. 

A gigantic creature looms over Desmond. 

Jake may have been possessed by evil and decapitated, but he's still one of the good guys. 

Looks like it's game over for Allison.

Each of these images are just our first attempt at color correcting the amazing footage from our Blackmagic Cinema Camera, meaning that the final movie will likely look even better than what you see above. Shooting resumes this weekend, and we'll post more mock lobby cards to this blog and our Facebook page early next week!