Also, we still have shirts, so please get one to help support the production and advertise the hell out of us when you are out at the great social places you frequent. Shirts are only $15 delivered to your door. Get them and help The Last Stand.

New episode coming April 1st, 2010.

Enjoy!

TLZ: Thanks for taking the time out of your day for this interview

TLS: Yeah, my pleasure

TLZ: So you’re with TheLastStandOnline.com. can you tell us a little about the site?

TLS: Well, it’s not the prettiest site on the web. It is pretty simple and straight forward. I wanted a home for the series, and something that had a blog that I could update. My buddy Josh, who has done some of the composite work as well, works that magic of the site. I noticed a lot of web series that had awesome sites, amazing animated buttons and menus, but the show left me flat. I figure people are there to see the show, not see how awesome our web guru is. I think as the show evolves and grows, the site will grow and evolve and become more “showy” without being too much. It’s really about the show.

TLZ: And the show is great! I’m really looking forward to Episode 5. Can you tell us about the series?

TLS: Well, it was never meant to be a series. There was a building I was scoping out for a different shoot, and I found out it was to be demolished in 24 to 48 hours. So I called all my friends with one hand, and wrote a script with the other. An hour later, I had written the piece and had people showing up the next day. About half of them showed, with half the gear I needed. I killed a lot of time waiting for folks to show. In the end, we filmed what is now Ep1 in three hours. I shelved it for about 3 months because I thought it was crap. When I revisited it, I thought it was pretty good, so I slapped sound on it and dumped it at a site call The Lost Zombies.

Next thing I knew, my inbox was full, with people asking “When is the next one?” After a week of this, I got everyone together and asked if they wanted to keep going, and they said yes. So I put pen to paper, and wrote four more episodes. I got a crew together, started finding locations, and in October of 09 we started filming again. We filmed most everything in October and November of 09 with episode 5 being filmed in one day in January ’10. At this point I have 10 episodes written.

TLZ: That’s great! It’s amazing how a three hour shoot came to be such a fun series. What are your plans after the 10th episode? Are you just playing it by ear?

TLS: Yeah I am. To be honest, this is what I want to do. While the episode may have been an accident, the attempt wasn’t. I have given up most everything to be a director, and my intention is to keep going with making films. If it means keeping the series alive while I believe in the story I am making, then I will. I am planning to shoot a film this summer and keep shooting The Last Stand. I would love the chance to make a film of The Last Stand, or another zombie story I have written. But I will keep doing this work until I make it or it kills me. I am 39, have had two careers prior to this one. I am not turning back now.

TLZ: The Last Stand has a great storyline from what I’ve seen. You said you wrote other zombie stories, where do you get your inspiration from?

TLS: Well, I became of fan of zombie movies with the runners and the infection stories. I was never a huge fan of the shufflers. So when things like Dawn of the Dead remake, Shawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later started coming out, I was hooked. I am a sucker for a story as well. All the special effects and gore mean nothing without the story. But I don’t have a vast knowledge of zombie movies, so I am at a disadvantage. My fear has been that, in the end, this story has been done but I don’t know it because I haven’t seen it. I just started writing in a direction that seemed interesting to me without being something that I had seen. Almost everything has been done, so now we have to find interesting ways of exploring the same ground. I took a huge cue from my Assistant Director, Rachel Bennett, who is a screen writer. She read my first drafts and said “Yeah, they’re good, but there is no depth.” She helped me to realize I wanted to explore the characters and the story more. So I started looking at ways to add texture to the stories. But I wanted to get to the point, in some way, with each episode. I watch a lot of web series (A LOT!) and so many have left me flat. There is one that I watched 8 episodes, and still didn’t know what it was about. If that had been a film, and I was an hour or so into it and didn’t have a clue what it was about, I would demand my money back. So I watch these and I strive for better, from me, because these are competition for places like Koldcast or other web series sites to play our series. If I make it better, knowing I have no money, I want someone to imagine what we could do with a budget.

TLZ: I was impressed by the effects and filming with such a low budget. The Last Stand managed to keep me interested with still having a sort of close at the end of each episode. Out the the episodes written do you have a favorite?

TLS: I had the most fun with Episode 3. Ep 2 was nothing but disasters, and I thought it would kill me and the series never happen. When it was out I had a sigh of relief, but Ep 3 was so much fun. It hinted to more to come with the end of the running dude, it had the story development of St Teresa’s being a crap place and the possible origins of the virus mutation. Then there was the action. I really wanted to do action, and that was so much fun. he building we shot in is called The Lotus; a 1929 Hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon. The hotel area has been shut since the ’60s and has only ever been used since then one other time: the open sequences of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. Nothing else has happened to that place until we came along and shot out zombies there. And nothing probably will ever again. The management and the owners hate the idea of anyone or anything happening in there. We got snuck in by a manager who was later fired for unrelated events. It was the perfect place to shoot. We didn’t set dress anything. We ran electricity for lights, got crash pads for the stunts. We put a craigs list ad out for zombies. Next thing I know, we are in this dirty, dusty, dead pigeon of a building that was totally creepy, filming where Gus once did, making zombie history for me! It was awesome. And the execution was just the way I wanted it, for the most part. I wanted my zombies to run more, but no matter how much I yelled at them to run, they all shuffled for the most part.

TLZ: It must have been a great experience! And at The Local Zombie I’ve got to ask you, how would you survive a zombie apocalypse?

TLS: Any time I think or hear that, I flash to Red Versus Blue and the zombie plan that Searg had. I don’t know if you watch Red Versus Blue, but it is HALO hilarity. He had 26 zombie plans that all involved using one of his grunts as bait. The last one was to get infected so as to hunt the grunt down and eat him. I don’t know what I would do. Avoid the cliches as best I could. Go for ammo, look for canned food. Avoid the major highways. I grew up in rural Oregon, so I would like to think I could rough it in the wild, so I think I would head to the middle of nowhere. Get as far away from people as possible. I am not resourceful enough to turn my Manhattan apartment into a fort. I certainly believe that I would have a very tough time with moral issues that arise. It is one thing to say you are going to do something, but it is another to be face with such realities.

TLZ: Very true. Again, I’d like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to interview you. I’m looking forward to what happens next at TheLastStandOnline.com. Good luck and keep up the great work!

TLS: Thanks so much. I love the support. I really appreciate every time one more person watches. Especially when they like it!

Eric Sadik
Webmaster
TheLocalZombie.com

An added bonus to the new episode is that of merchandise. We have taken our first step into a larger world! Available now are t-shirts with The Last Stand logo on it, as well as the immortalized words of Tenison: “Fight, Eat, Kill, Die.” Those are all the choices our survivors appear to have as they continue to search for hope in a zombie apocalypse. Shirts are $15, which includes shipping and handling in the USA. International orders are available by request. With these first orders is included a bumper stick with The Last Stand logo. Proudly show your support on your car, minivan, suv, or truck, and tell people how dead people eating people and people shooting other people can be a good thing. (Only during an apocalypse) Click here for ordering details!

There is more exciting news. We are now signed with RenderYard for distribution and market of The Last Stand. This group has been doing web video for awhile, and they have chosen The Last Stand to be the series that launches them as a web series viewing service. The beauty of working with RenderYard is two fold: 1) They have a European market that we don’t, so there is more access to more people to see us; 2) we are not exclusively signed, so if other become interested, we can still have our stuff on other sites, and still have RenderYard working with us. IF TLS stakes off, there are options with RenderYard to help in the media distribution of such things as DVD and screenings in theaters. Right now, over at RenderYard, you can see a banner they made for us to help push the series. Big things are happening for us!

It wouldn’t have happened without the people behind the scenes helping and our fan base that continues to grow. Thank you all so much for this. I am extremely grateful to you all. Episode 5 is due April 1st, so stay tuned and enjoy The Last Stand Episode 4: A Paved Road To Hell.

So, the shoot we did for ep5 was pretty amazing. It took place in a medical equipment facility in Wilsonville, Oregon. On tap was a small load of zombies that were nice enough to come and spend the day raiding the place. It is so nice when they cooperate with you as a director. I am afraid to say too much because I don’t want to give away plot points, but I can say that filming while strapped to a moving forklift is pretty freakin sweet!

In other news, The Last Stand is being featured on the podcast website Midnight Podcast, hosted by @MidnightCorey. The site is dedicated to all things zombie, and you can check them out by clicking the link on our episodes panes. The podcast is due to appear next week, and we will link it. Our thanks to Corey for helping us put The Last Stand out there for more people to see.

I am currently trying to compile a list of places where The Last Stand can be see, including Blip.tv, SciFinal, Vimeo, YouTube, Mevio, and about a dozen zombie dedicated sites. I will get that soon for big thanks to all those people and then attempt to find more.

Also, a big thanks to Robert, Sabrina, and Emily, podcast radio hosts on PDX.fm, for all the support they have given us.

I’ve had a knot in my stomach for two weeks straight while in preparation mode for this shoot and, yet, now that the day is over…I miss it already.

This last Saturday was a huge success even after critical disappointments that led our director, Martin Vavra, to change whole shot sequences to accommodate lacking extras as well as time constraints from a location that pulled out.

But the lead cast members showed up ready to work. Our crew was buzzing about this medical supply warehouse with baited anticipation waiting to get started. Our extras filed in, one by one.

When things got under way, it was awesome. Production has to be my favorite part of making film. If only it wasn’t over so quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be working for 16-hour days, months on end necessarily, but I could handle a few more 12 hour days.

And maybe I’m biased because, being the AD on this gig means that I’m the resident task-master and problem solver. Both of which give me great satisfaction when I feel I’ve finished a job that’s been well-done.

At the end of this particular Saturday, though, I feel as though I didn’t thank everybody in the way I wanted to, as people came and went while I was in the middle of shooting something.

So here it is: Thank you to everyone involved. Thanks to the lead cast members who were willing to forego another weekend to play infection survivors, all of the extras who showed up and hung around during the long shoot day just to run around like zombies for less than an hour. Thank you to Chuck for his kindness and sacrifice of a perfectly good Saturday to babysit us in his warehouse. Thanks to Ann and Stefan and Matt who were the best PA’s in the world. Thanks to Mike for his continued support with the set and props. Thanks to Rachel and Preston for fantastic make-up and FX. And thanks to the best director I know, who was willing to roll with the punches and not let little setbacks ruin what was a ridiculously productive shoot. Sweet Job, Martin.

Great Job everyone…now stay tuned for more about The “Lost” Stand episode…