When making What to do when the dead come back I didn't really think of how it could be used in the outside of this course, since it's only a one off film and not part one of a larger saga, then it can't really be made as a TV series. The best place commercial place for this film would probably as part of a horror anthology tv show, a collection of short horror stories in one episode, like Tales from the Crypt or the Twilight Zone, both of these shows are not currently running anymore, although there are reports that M. Night Shaman may reboot Tales from the Crypt. one still running horror anthology series is a bbc3 show called The Fear which shows a collection of short horror films to see which one is the scariest. Another potential Anthology is The ABC'S of Death which has 26 short movies, themed around a letter from the Alphabet, this features films from already established directors, however, the first one did have a movie that wasn't from an already established director, T is for Toilet by leeds Beckett graduate, Lee Hardcastle, who was able to get his film in after winning a competition.
There is a market for What to do when the dead come back, mainly for the theme with zombies, the zombie fanbase is so bug that there are summer camps for adults who want to learn how to survive in a world ruled by zombies. But there would be an even better market if this film was included as an anthology with an already established fan base.
What to do when the dead come back has built a lot of skills that could potentially lead into a career after finishing university.
The first being a puppet rigger, as What to do when the dead come back uses 2D digital puppets, compared to the puppets used in one of last years animation, The Unbelievable Truth, these puppets where very advanced. The first puppet took about a month to make whilst the second only took 2 weeks, as i did a lot of experimenting and trial and error with the first puppet (rigging a character for The Unbelievable Truth would only take about an hour at most) . Due to the amount of time it took to rig the characters together, this technique would be best used for a series or something that had a long running time. Using this technique for something like a 3 second ident would be unwise. If the characters are all shaped similarly then we could quickly make multiple different characters, as a we need to do would change the image/texture of the puppet, an example of a series with similarly shaped characters would be those lego mini figures (the only difference in shape comes from the characters head) so this technique could be used in a show or advert about Lego characters.
Other than rigging, this short had an excessive amount of editing put into it, as there are essentially 2 stories happening at once. the first story is the main plot, guy goes into zombie infested world to get his pregnant wife olives, and the second plot, the PSA. In order to avoid confusion among the audience, as they would need to focus on two things at once. the main plot is used as the foundation for the PSA, if what is happening on screen remotely matches what is being said in the PSA, then the story will be a lot easier to follow. I've also done a lot of editing before doing the animation course and even wrote my dissertation on it.
Finally there is also the writing. I don't see my self writing characters or character dialogue, but i can see myself coming up with the scenarios for the characters to be in. I think the plot to What to do when the dead come back is pretty interesting and unique, as it brings in a new idea into the zombie lore, zombies identifying the living through their heart beats, as zombies will not have heart beats (because they are dead). This idea has an interesting pay off at the end, as at the end of the film a zombie has a confrontation with a pregnant woman, someone who would have two heart beats. In the film this leads to the zombie attempting to eat the woman unborn child.
