Zombie films often require a vast budget compared with many other genres due to many of the expenses needed to create a convincing effect - 28 days later had an $8,000,000 budget. The environment in which the story is told must often been altered in conjunction with an infection, or merely a horde of zombies that physically change the setting. This is a major expense to the institution because to make the storyline convincing, every aspect of the mise-en-scene must be thought out and payed for - this could be anything from damaged buildings to mutated animals.
The costume and make-up has to be incredibly complex to intensify the fear factor on the audience, this must be strongly considered for our project because unfortunately we don't have a Hollywood budget.
This means that in our teaser trailer we can only include aspects which won't require any astronomical budget. However zombie films have been existent for a number of decades, so influence towards our project can be found from pioneers of the genre, where the technology was incredibly basic and there were limited effects at their disposal. In films such as
White Zombie (1932) and
Revenge of the Zombies (1943) subtle make-up was used, typically had white faces and blackened eyes - held wide and expressionless. This can easily be achieved using average make-up and some skillful editing. An alternative would be to not actually show the zombie's themselves in the trailer, but merely imply their presence, however this is fairly unconventional in modern zombie films.
Signs (2002) while not being a zombie movie is another great source of influence because it didn't explicitly display the aliens for a long period in the film, instead the audience was shown flashes such as its foot just escaping through the crops. There are in my opinion actually many advantages to this; it leaves the audience in strong suspence because they don't know exactly what the danger is; in terms of mass distribution it allows the film to have a lower BBFC rating, in fact Signs was only a 12. Many zombie films have taken an extreme approach in the appearence of the zombie's, but director George A Romero instead used normal clothing in
Night of the Living Dead (1968), but crucially this is still used in more modern productions such as
Shaun of the Dead (2004), and this method is fully at our disposal. In conclusion I would state that while we are being ambitious in our choice of genre, considering the equipment we have to use, but in looking at aspects of previous productions we can still create the fear factor that is so essential.
-Stephen-