Step One: Pick an idea.
Step Two: Find a location to shoot.
Step Three: Know plenty of people willing to donate blood, sweat and tears to help you. (Note: Fake blood also acceptable!)

Tod Regan recently met up with local filmmakers Sadie Shaw and Alison Childs, creators of the feature horror film, Bad Date. Shaw, a veteran of the horror/gore genre as architect behind the film, Charm, is also known for playing guitar in local indie punk band, The Husbands. Childs, a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and self-taught in film, moved to San Francisco several years ago looking to collaborate with a serious filmmaker. When the two met through mutual friends, they knew right away they’d work together; all they needed was an idea.

“We played with all different ideas – evil children, haunted houses, anything,” Shaw explains.

“We looked at a lot of ideas from different movies that we thought would be fun to shoot,” added Childs. “[Like] Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Brood, Night of the Living Dead. Any horror film by [Dario] Argento, George Romero ...”

“Basically, we want(ed) something with a great sense of humor,” Shaw said.

The logical choice? Zombies.

Sadie Shaw with zombie Matthew von Hartman
Zombies are a hot item right now, and nothing says ‘funny’ like people eating people, but how do you set your movie apart from every other zombie movie? Aside from a good music score (Shaw does a cover of “Blue Moon” for the film), what’s going to draw the average filmgoer? The answer is simple; tie your zombie movie to something everyone can relate to, like dating.

“We were at the Rickshaw Stop, and somehow we both [said], ‘Oh, let’s make it about a date!’ " says Childs. "That’s a finite, horrible experience that can lead to so many things ... everyone can relate. Everyone’s had some sort of shitty dating experience.” The tag line for the film sums it up nicely: “When you think it’s gotten bad, it can only get worse.”

With the premise of the film nailed down, it was time for step two: finding a suitable location to shoot. Fortunately for the team, Childs had visited Port Costa, in Contra Costa County, where she discovered an ancient seedy hotel originally built as a brothel in the late 1800s. The hotel caters to the unconventional, where for $25 a night, people “just do whatever they can’t do anywhere else, like speed, or satanic sacrifices,” says Childs.

“They sacrificed a cat in the room we were gonna rent; it got taken away from us because it had cat sacrifice in it,” Shaw adds.

With the hotel’s shady past, and the scars to prove it, the set required almost no additional alteration.

“There’s dried blood on the walls – I mean, it’s all naturally there so our set design was basically the room that we rented. In fact, after our shoot we cleaned it up better than it was before.”


Which brings us to step three in making an indie film: It’s all about who you know.
Before shooting, the two directors hosted a barbeque and invited anyone interested in the film to come and hear their pitch. It was here that they found their cast and crew.

“What I was struck by when I first moved here was that ... you might say you’re working on something and then anyone you’re talking to will say, ‘Oh, I totally know someone who might help you out’,” says Childs.

And there’s nothing like the siren call of a zombie film to bring out San Francisco’s most eccentric, which is why the group was soon joined by a couple of highly accomplished makeup artists, Ross Sewage (bassist for death-metal bands Impaled and Ludicra) and Pie Ironside (hair/makeup designer extraordinaire).


L-R: Alison Childs and Sadie Shaw
   
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