How I killed it (or rather, how I was killed) on Z Nation
Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.
While trying to distract yourself from yesterday’s heartbreak, did you happen to catch last night’s Z Nation? If so, in the Season 2, Episode 10 episode titled “We Were Nowhere Near the Grand Canyon,” you’d have seen one of my favorite writers zombified.
No, I don’t mean George R. R. Martin! Besides, that was a couple of episodes ago. I mean this guy.
That’s right-me!
So how’d that happen?
It all began when I realized this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, Sasquan, would be held in Spokane, the same city in which Z Nation is filmed. And as I told you before, when I asked Craig Engler, my former Syfy boss of 13+ years who co-created the show, if I could stop by to watch filming the Monday or Tueday before the con, he promised (or was that threatened?) I’d get to do more than that.
What I didn’t realize then, and what I didn’t want to tell you until now for fear of spoiling the show, is exactly what that “more” turned out to be. I assumed I’d end up as part of a huge zombie mob, and therefore unlikely to make it to the screen, or if I did, be part of the background scenery. But I was surprised, when I received the call sheet Sunday night for the next day’s filming, to see only two zombies would be on set August 17, along with actor D. J. Qualls, who plays the character of Citizen Z.
Seeing there’d be only two of the undead that day made me realize I’d have a shot at an on-screen death. Which is what every zombie wants, right?
I arrived on the set at 5:45 a.m., where I was soon joined by my undead coconspirator, Wade Morisette Hays, who as it turned out had been a Z Nation extra many times before. Here we are in our burned/frozen/thawed zombie get-ups before filming began.
It took the team approximately two hours to transform me. The final step of this involved sprinkling me with salt and sugar so as to mimic a frozen condition, which as it turned out, resulted by midday in me attracting flies as my sweat began to melt them both. I don’t think that was an intentional effect, but flies landing on a zombie only adds to the realism, right?
Many people helped me look my worst, as well as making sure I didn’t get hurt as I took the falls, over and over again, for my two (yes, two!) zombie deaths.
Here I am with stunt coordinator Alex Terzieff, who took good care of me, both in walking through the scenes and showing me how best to fall, and ensuring I could fall safely. One example-because of my height (I’m 6′ 4″, for those who don’t know), I needed to drop onto 8-inch mats rather than the standard 6-inch ones in order to protect my knees.
Thanks for preventing any breaks or bruises, Alex!
Three different make-up specialists made sure I was appropriately disgusting. I never caught a photo of Matt, who did most of my initial work, but here I am with Josh, the artist who made sure Wade initially looked sufficiently rotten, and who checked me out and did touch-ups midday.
Poor Claire, on the other hand, in addition to checking on-set between each scene that I hadn’t smudged off any make-up, was responsible for squirting dye on my teeth (so they’d film black) and tongue (so gore would roll down my chin) before every take. Not only did that coloring taste foul, but it had an interesting side effect which I didn’t discover until the following day … and though this is surely TMI, I’m gong to share it anyway.
For the next 48 hours, everything that (let’s see, how shall I put it?) left my body was … ahem … a bright green, thanks to having swallowed all that food coloring. I can’t have been the only zombie who’s experienced this, but it was new (and certainly disconcerting at first) to me. And now you know the true price of being an undead extra.
Over the course of the day-which didn’t end for me until 8:30 p.m.-I shot four sequences totaling several dozen takes. It was a long, tiring-and at the same time extremely fun-day, but I did my best not to eat or drink from the craft services table which was overloaded with goodies. After all, though zombies don’t need bathroom breaks, zombie extras do, and let me ask you …
… would you want to touch yourself with hands like these?
Not wanting to ruin my make-up, or transfer any of it to parts of my body which I’d rather didn’t look undead, I did my best to limit my intake, having little water and a very light lunch until, with filming over, at the end of the day, I finally allowed myself a snack.
I spotted a bowl of madeleines, which as a writer have always been meaningful to me for the way they inspired Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, and I wondered …
If Proust’s madeleine could bring back a childhood … what might one cause a zombie to remember?
As it turned out, it caused this zombie to realize how worn out he was, and so it was time to strip off my soldier garb and remove my make-up, which as you can see, only extended so far.
Most of that make-up was cleaned off before I left the set, but even so, I took a long hot shower once I got back to my hotel … and left a big tip for the maid the next morning thanks to the sorry state in which I left my towels.
After all that, I was anxious to see whether the way my scenes were shot would have me recognizable in any of them, and luckily, one did!
One of my deaths had me in shadow, and therefore unrecognizable, but I know, and now you know, that it was me.
But my other death, ah, my other death, which actually occurs within the first three minutes, was quite clearly me (as you’ll see below once you click). So now all my friends (and enemies, too) can revel in me getting shot in the head.
Or as they call it on Z Nation, being given mercy.
I only have one regret about the day, and that is-
In my non-zombie life, I wear a Fitbit 24/7, but got no credit for any steps during my 16 hours of shambling. Because the undead don’t wear Fitbits!
Thanks for killing me, Craig! I had a blast.
If you missed the episode, you can catch it when it repeats on Thursday, November 19 at 11:00 p.m. or Monday, November 23 at 2:00 p.m.-or watch it online right now!