As artists about to enter the industry and a college generation stuck behind a screen for most of it, I wanted to make a project that was fun and would give my friends, the other hard working students, a chance to one day look back and relive the 'ole glory days' in the fun and goriest of ways.

ZOMBELLINI is a dark comedy found footage that takes place on none other than the dreaded Fellini Stage.

Survivors seek shelter inside of an abandoned bar than realize one of their survivors is missing. It becomes obvious that tensions are high but they don’t get a chance to boil over before the missing party member stumbles in, dying. That’s when the other survivors decide they’ve had enough, it’s time for a final stand. They hold their ground until “CUT!”

It reveals itself to be a student thesis film in progress. Chaos erupts on set, not from zombies but from the fast paced and hectic nature of a set, especially a student ran ones. 

While showing the Behind The Scenes Cam the set, the 1ST Assistant Director calls in the zombie extras, only to find out, they’re ACTUALLY zombies!

The remaining cast and crew barricade themselves inside of the set and attempt that the their characters just did, survive. Until one of them decides, the show must go on and they try to film more of the short. 

Things don’t go as planned, unless you planned for chaos. In the end, a few survivors hid behind the bar giving video confessionals to anyone who might find the video, until someone does what they usually do, forget one of their lines.

 

Zombies, the undead and walkers; all different names for the same haunting creatures.

While they tend to the be individually easiest of the horrors to survive, the terrifying part about a zombie apocalypse is the inevitable defeat, when running doesn't mean anything anymore. It is the fear that tends to make survivors in these situations make irrational decisions based on conflicting opinions and strong personalities. 

That last part sounds a lot like some student film sets? I can't agree or disagree with you, but we all know that art imitates life.

You've got a lot of "whys" and, well, we've got a lot of answers.

This is an idea that I had the first walked time I walked on the Fellini stage my freshman year of film school. I didn't know exactly what would happen, but after years of being on student sets, I was able to figure it out. I wanted to take the dynamic personalities that existed on set and throw them into a high stress situation, life or death being the most high stress I could find.

I chose this thesis because it would be a fun project for myself and my other classmates to embark on; something a bit more memorable and messy than the average thesis. We've got time to make up for because of the pandemic and I want kick it off! 

 

What's next for Zombellini? Once we finish production this month, we will be using the funds to cover cost of any money spent. Anything beyond our projected budget will go towards professional post-production, starting with sound mixers then adding visual effects to enhance certain scenes (More of those beautiful blood and guts) and finally a killer score.

We want ZOMBELLINI to premier on The Los Angeles Film School's silver screen by the end of August, but with the contributions, we can make it happen sooner. Once released, we will be putting into many different festivals for many different categories. We want this project to give the opportunity for all departments to shine, so everyone has something they can be proud of as well.

Because of the nature of filmmaking over the last few years, we decided that we'd make this project easy and fun. We've got a decent sized crew, so we will be doing the COVID compliance shuffle, having the different departments in the soundstage at a time, then having only the vital crew members on stage while the others are outside on standby, being entertained by crafty and other zombie movies.