Pre-ProductionThe first draft of Sunday Night Zombies was completed on the 31st of March 1999, by Adam Lopez, Maria Lopez and Vince Pasqualino in Canada. It was then sent over to the UK, where Henry Burrows, Howell Parry and Stephen Davis made some further changes, arriving at its third and final draft on the 7th April 1999. Spoiler Alert!
To read the Canadian first draft,
click here. Friday 21st May 1999 Today we wandered Toronto to track down two important props for the film - a toy gun for Tony, and a woolly hat for the Zombie when he's in disguise. |
Principal PhotographySunday Night Zombies was filmed over the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd of May 1999, in Niagara Falls and Toronto, Canada. Saturday 22nd May 1999 Today we shot all the wedding scenes in the back garden of Ida and Carmine Lopez's house in Toronto. It took most of the day, but we got through everything eventually. Highlights included Jaime screaming her head off before "action" had been called, Adam doing a five minute speech to the zombie before we realised he was wearing the wrong pair of glasses, no audience turning up for the wedding (but lots of chairs...) and all the zombies growling away to each other in their own strange language... Later that evening Adam proposed to Maria at his party, and she accepted! Strange that a few hours earlier we were filming him marrying someone else... Sunday 23rd May 1999 Today we hired a car and drove down to Niagara Falls, where we shot the opening scenes of the movie, including the marriage proposal - after Adam's real-life experience of this last night, he found it quite easy! It went mostly to plan, including finding the animatronic Frankenstein's monster from the script, but when we tried to shoot the proposal scene by the side of a street there seemed to be a never-ending stream of noisy cars, bikes and people. All part of the fun, of course. And when we filmed the very first shot, in front of the famous Falls, we had a huge audience of tourists on the cliffs above us! |
Post-ProductionThis stage of making Sunday Night Zombies took a long time to complete, mostly because of other projects of a higher priority. The movie sat on the original tapes until the 13th of January 2000, when the best takes were captured into digital format and stored on CD as raw footage. The trailer was put together on the 16th of April 2000, in time for the world premiere of Foiled. Editing started on the 4th of October 2000 and was all complete except for the Niagara "on the town" sequence by the 8th of October. Then on the 30th of December 2000, the last scene was edited, the soundtrack was put in place, and the last few sound effects were added. The movie premiered in Manchester on New Year's Eve, 2000. |