Zombie film featuring Oklahoma talent, film locations to be featured at Red Dirt International Film Festival
Mar. 12—One of the main goals of the Red Dirt International Film Festival is to showcase the talented people from Oklahoma and the region among its selection of entertainment. This includes the filmmakers, actors, musicians and all other members of the artistic community who put in the time and effort to produce the content shown at the festival.
"Zombacter: Center City Contagion," directed by Patrick Sean Bingham, was produced with local cast and crew. Bingham said the zombie film was filmed in multiple locations not too far from Stillwater. Bingham said there were eight locations where filming took place in May 2019, including a few in Oklahoma City, one in downtown Guthrie, Guthrie Haunts and even a few buildings on the campus of Langston University.
Bingham said most of the filming was done at night over a two-week period, a time that he said went by with him hardly noticing.
"I'll be honest, that two weeks is a blur to me," Bingham said. "We had a really small crew to work with, some really dedicated folks, but a lot of the work that went into this was transporting our gear to the location, filming, setting up the sets with all the props that we brought, and then breaking it all down. I would have to go home that night, download all the film that we shot, review it and make sure we had all the scenes that we needed. So we were all operating on a very, very small amount of sleep. I think I lost about 28 pounds during that two weeks because I wasn't eating very well. But it was a lot of fun, they tell me, because I have to remember through other people's memories of this."
He said it took nearly a year for the post-production work on the film due to the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was first released on Vimeo in November, and has recently been added to Amazon Prime. Bingham said the Red Dirt International Film Festival will be the first festival to screen "Zombacter."
Bingham said the reactions to the film have been a bit mixed, but feels that is because zombie and horror films can be seen as niche films. He said some like the nonstop violence of some zombie films, while others like the horror genre for the nudity. He said others also like dark comedy, and that there are many versions that constitute a zombie film. He said "Zombacter" doesn't fit into any one niche in terms of the genre.
"This film crosses all of those boundaries. It doesn't sit square in the middle of any of the niches, and that was really by design," Bingham said. "The whole idea was to create a science fiction zombie film that is about as realistic as you can get when it comes to offering an explanation as to why these people are seemingly coming back from the dead. This is not 'Gone with the Wind.' This isn't going to win any Academy Awards or anything, and it's not high brow by any stretch of the imagination. But at the same time, there was a lot of science and research that went into the movie."
Bingham said when he started writing the screenplay for the film back in 2003, his goal was to explore the real-life possibilities of how the dead can come back to life. He said he wanted to offer a scientific explanation for the reanimation of the deceased creatures without having it be a supernatural explanation or some kind of lab accident that brought people back from the dead. Bingham also said all of the characters in the film come from various real-life experiences.
"Whenever you see a character in the film that's kind of mercurial, whose behavior seems odd, this is real life," Bingham said. "They're the most exciting pieces of my real-life experiences and I put them in this film."
"Zombacter: Center City Contagion" is one of 27 feature screenplays set to be showcased during the 2021 Red Dirt International Film Festival. A trailer can be viewed by searching the film's title into Amazon Prime, and will be available for viewing during the film festival, set to take place this weekend.
Zombacter: Center City Contagion synopsis
"Professor Jake Northrop is horrified to learn that his experimental, bio-computer bacteria turns people into flesh-eating monsters. While most of his accidental creations are lumbering idiots, some are very different. They can outrun you. They can outthink you and they're hungry! With the help of Bill Santini (a homeless veteran) and a small group of survivors, the professor must run a gauntlet of ghouls to escape Center City and find a cure for the zombie plague."
