On a budget of R50 000 and a mere 13 days to shoot, a cast and crew of 15 creatives willing to work pro bono had to defy all odds to create the feature film Last Ones Out.
South Africa’s first zombie movie debuted at the Durban International Film Festival 2016, where the audience got to see what it took behind the scenes to craft this ambitious feature film.
The making-of journey is as worth watching as the film itself, inspiring anyone who has ever faced a setback in chasing a dream. Stumbling blocks became stepping stones in producing this innovative feature, which follows the lives of four survivors of a viral outbreak and their attempt to find a way out alive in the midst of a zombie apocalypse in southern Africa.
“That set the tone perfectly,” says filmmaker Howard James Fyvie after the premiere. “From the get-go people were gasping, laughing, and sighing at all the right moments.” Fyvie found renewed hope for the film, after he quit his day job to take a year for this project in 2014. He hoped to take a leap forward with his career by getting a feature film under his belt, by learning the craft, and by making contacts in the industry.
Fyvie wrote the script partly under duress, because he had one month to write it, but says he was inspired by his love of genre, beautiful settings and road movies.
Fyvie describes the process of sourcing his resourceful team as being like a movie in itself. “You discover that creativity and passion is like a train. If it starts moving forward, people jump on. If it stands still for too long, they jump off,” he says.
Actor and producer Greg Kriek was responsible for bringing Christia Visser and other known SA actors on board. “We got some of SA’s best talent, and they all helped us work on the project for free,” explains Fyfie.
In 2015, Last Ones Out was selected by the NFVF to be a part of the Cannes Film Festival Market. “Cannes was interesting,” says Fyvie. “That place is mad. Firstly, we only had a rough draft of the movie to show specific investors, and to be honest, you never want to show a rough draft. We learned that the film needed to be complete before people could understand the whole vision.” Few could believe the budget, especially considering that in dollars the film spend is little more than $3000. Even in rands, a low budget movie amounts to at least 50 times that.
Fyvie and Kriek funded the film by sheer determination, pooled savings, crowdfunding support, a R25 000 loan from a friend and a R10 000 donation from Kalahari Pictures. Clearly quite connected in the film industry, they borrowed equipment from friends. “I phoned up John Devries and asked if I could borrow his Blackmagic cinema camera. However, the camera is a nightmare to work with, so I had to first build some kind of hand-held rig with a makeshift battery pack attached to it, it was hilarious,” describes Vyfie.
“I gave this to our DOP Timmy Henny, who had never used a Blackmagic before. He mastered it within a few minutes,” says Fyvie. “Henny brought in his own Canon Prime lenses, and a Ronin Steadicam, which was awesome. We shot most of the film on that Steadicam rig.”
The entire film was lit with three little LED lights of Henny’s. For one exterior they rented a 2K HMI. “We just didn›t have any other resources for lighting, nor any cash, so we just decided to shoot everything close up.” In one scene they used their mobile phone torches, and in another they used a barrel of fire for light.
The movie was filmed in six locations in Cape Town in November 2014. “I filmed pickups by myself with a few of the scattered cast in March and April 2015,” says Fyvie, who spent the rest of 2015 editing it on his Macbook Pro 15-inch Retina. Colourist Rob Odendaal did the colour grading on his Davinci machine at POST in Woodstock, and at his house. Sound designer Hans Raubenheimer did the sound on Logic, from his studio in Gardens.
Post-production posed the biggest challenge, Fyvie says, with him editing for eight months, on and off, while shooting occasional pick-ups when he could find a camera and actors. “It’s you and a team of others, all motivated, all excited. You write the script under pressure for two weeks, then you shoot for 13 days, then celebrate with a big wrap party, and then everyone disappears, and you›re left by yourself to handle the entire editing process of a full feature film, while managing post production, and trying to bring in an income as a film maker.”
For instance in April 2015 Fyvie realised he needed a title sequence. “At this stage, I was so over the whole movie. Everyone else was in other parts of the country, my DOP was overseas, the sound guys were gone, nobody wanted to work for free anymore on a train that was in its station.”
Fyvie borrowed the Blackmagic camera, phoned a friend and went to Dunoon township and filmed the opening of the movie. “I remember having to hold the camera, the reflector, the microphone, and all the lenses at the same time, while directing Zama Mfihlakalo, keeping an eye out for crowd control, applying blood makeup on his face, and listening intently to make sure we were getting audio.”
While filming the climax scene on day 11, Henny ran into some trouble and broke his hand, so Fyvie was forced to grasp the camera and shoot the rest of the scene that night.
The score was composed by Johannesburg composer Zethu Mashika, whom Fyvie had met at Talents Durban in 2013. “His music lifted the film to the next level,” says Fyvie.
Currently Last Ones Out is looking for distribution in SA, and the film will be available on VOD in the near future. Fyvie has an action comedy that is sitting with KZN Film Commission and says: “We definitely won’t move forward on a film again without a budget. We cut our teeth, now we’re aiming bigger. We’re looking to make massive, big budget commercial films that move us emotionally and challenge us intellectually.”
Key crew list:
- Cast: Greg Kriek, Christia Visser, Tshamano Sebe, Vukile Zuma, Zama Mfihlakalo, Jack Hein, Cele Du Plessis.
Film Makers:
- Writer / Director / Editor: Howard James Fyvie
- Producer: Greg Kriek, Howard James Fyvie
- Director of Photography: Timmy Henny
- Composer: Zethu Mashika
- Colourist: Rob Odendaal
- Sound Designer: Hans Raubenheimer
