University of Bolton’s Special Effects students helped create marauding zombies for a Manchester monster movie with a difference.
The film is ZomCo: Waste Management and Body Disposal, a comedy-horror about a refuse company clearing up the city’s streets after an apocalyptic zombie invasion. It was written and directed by Ash Tidball. It was Ash’s first solo film and he funded the project himself, therefore he needed help creating the un-dead. That’s where the students from Bolton came in.
Ash said: ‘For the complex task of special effects and making the ‘un-dead’ element of the film work, I was able to work with some fantastic and quite frankly, amazing young talent from the University of Bolton. Working with Richard McEvoy-Crompton as our head of the special effects team has been a fantastic experience. We were able to cherry pick some amazing students that really made a difference. In fact, I learned a lot from them!’
Richard McEvoy-Crompton is a part-time lecturer in Special Effects at Bolton and has worked with Ash in the past. Richard was confident from the start his students could rise to the challenge. He said: ‘A shoot of this scale was always going to require a large team so I invited some second and third years to help. Another former Bolton student, Cara Frost, was the make-up supervisor for the project and ran the make-up team. The first years were then brought on board to create riot scenes for the trailer. They all did a fantastic job.’
Now the project is complete Ash has big plans for it. He said: ‘There will be a version for film festivals in UK, Canada and the USA. It will be launched online and we will be promoting it as a pitch for a show. I see that as it’s a film, there are still other great opportunities to come from shorter versions.’
Due to the success of the partnership, future ventures are now a possibly. Richard said: ‘Both myself and Ash were delighted with the work carried out on this show and I’m sure we’ll be working on more projects together in the future.’
Pictured: Zombies in ZomCo body bags. Pictures taken by Ben Stephenson on location.