Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Terrifying (and terrific!) Tuesday

Hey guys!
So as some of you may have heard... I had a great weekend! I was invited to act in a commercial for the Jim Ellis car dealership -- and I was a zombie! Yep, you read that right.
My dad took me to the dealership, where we would be doing most of the shooting. We were supposed to be there by 7am, which meant that I had to get up at 6 o'clock! On a school day, I don't get up until 7:30, so that was pretty early for me. Before I even got my makeup or costume on, I was already feeling like a zombie!
I'm not going to spoil the "plot" of the commercial for you; you'll have to wait until August and watch it for yourselves! It will start running when the Walking Dead comes back on. Fortunately, it shouldn't be hard to find. I think they're going to play it on Facebook, YouTube, and a bunch of different TV stations. (I'm going to be famous!)
Two guys from the Walking Dead came to do our makeup and costumes! We all looked terrifyingly gore-geous. :) There were eight actors total; two of them were "the couple" and the rest of us were zombies. There were three "featured" zombies and I was one of them! The featured zombies got extra (scary) makeup, and we appeared in more scenes.
With the makeup, some of us literally looked dead! It made it seem like our skin was rotting off... which was both gross and cool. Outside, it was so hot that some of the makeup started to melt! Thankfully, it was mostly fixable. Oh, and it was kind of weird -- when one of the guys started to sweat, his sweat turned orange! But none of the makeup he was wearing was yellow, red, or orange.... strange, right?
About two minutes before we filmed the first scene, we went through Zombie 101: where you learn to act like a zombie in five minutes or less! (I came up with that myself.) They showed us how to walk like the undead -- shoulders slumped, arms dangling, shuffling forwards with one foot dragging. It felt really weird, and some of the others were acting a tiny bit embarrassed, but it was fun too. I thought I did the "zombie stare" really well, if I do say so myself.... the key is to keep your eyes unfocused, and let them just sort of wander.
Almost twelve hours after we started shooting, we finished. My dad and I drove home, where I got to show off my beautiful, grey-green face to the rest of my family. My brother helped me peel it off -- which is more difficult than you would think! The latex/cotton that was around my eyes really didn't want to peel up, but it had no qualms about cracking when I smiled. (In case you were wondering: a room full of smiling zombies on their phones, talking, joking around and waiting for the filming to start looks pretty strange.)

On Sunday, we had a great Father's Day!!! My mom, brother, sister and I all wrote letters to my dad. We gave him subscriptions to magazines about building and woodworking, new clothes, a fishing rod my brother picked out, and a bag of Candy Crush candies -- "chocolatey drops with sprinkles", according to the package. At church, they had popcorn, games, and little photo booths for all the families. There was a drawing for the dads, where they gave away a Big Green Egg to one of the fathers at the church; a man named Pat won. He's an awesome guy, who's really nice, and everyone was really happy for him!

I hope that all of you had a great Father's Day!
Mattie