01
THE "DEAD NIGHTMARE"
SHORT SERIES
Director & Creator: Michael Schilling
Welcome to Dead Nightmare. A story about humans surviving in a vicious zombie infested world. The story centers around several survivors & the hardships they face as the world they once knew, decays around them. There are non-linear parts to the story, in which certain details come to light in future episodes.
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I started this project in 2014 and the amount of cast members & zombies have grown over the years. We spent over 13 hours one cold night in October 2014, filming most of what makes up Episode One. I really have to take my hat off to our amateur actors. They put in the time & endure my constant, "Let's do one more take.."
We currently have five episodes available for viewing on Youtube (approx. 1.5 hours of content) and are currently filming episode 6. I look forward to bringing you more content in the future on my youtube channel "Michael Schilling." I will be posting tutorials, some interviews with the cast, & also include what their wins/opportunities have been as amateur actors on this project. And most importantly I will continue to post updated pictures of the zombie cast and survivor crew.
Make sure to Like & Subscribe to my YouTube page!
03
The One Man Show
That's me over there on the right. One good lookin' fella if I do say so myself.
So where does one find the time to do all of this stuff?? Good question. Besides having a full-time career as a Data Analyst and having a family to take care of; I'd say about 80% gets done late at night when everyone in the house is fast asleep.
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I won't lie that the project is a ton of work and takes dedication & patience, but don't most hobbies and passions? Since I didn't go to cinema school or any other arts education, I had to learn almost all of the technical stuff by tutorials and trial and error. I learned keying and green screen effects while doing some create your own story narratives. Then I added visuals of my friends getting "taken out" in different ways.
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Make sure to check out the "Resources" page for links and info on other film-maker's YouTube shows & websites where I learned a lot of useful techniques.
02
ABOUT US
Behind the Scenes Info
For the most part this started as me being a one-man show. Most of the time I feel like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest b/c I write, produce, direct, edit, lead make-up artist, etc.
I finally got a little smarter and started asking for the help of my great friends & family, who have proven to be awesome at helping make this project come to life.
We now have a few assistants that help with make-up (Elizabeth Cook, Gina Guider, and my wife Stefani). Two of my close buddies Jeff Gillette and Dustin Shelton have started learning how to run the boom mic setup.
I also look to others advice when it comes to dialogue changes, b/c I am clearly not an amazing writer; but I do have quite the imagination. So I got that going for me... Which is nice.
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- Five Episodes Available
- Over and 1.5 hours of episode footage
- Over 50 unique zombies have been made up to date