and how it affected me. |  |
and how it affected me. | |
Dawn of the dead is my favourite film of all time. I was 16 the first
time I saw it and it was late at night and I only caught it from around
the time when they arrived at the Mall but even then I knew it was
something different. It shocked me totally and although it was 2am and I
had to get up for school at 8am in the morning I had to watch it. I was
totally engrossed and as it went on it just got better and better! I
must admit I was initially attracted by the gore and violence but as it
progressed I began to love the idea of the Mall and the fact that the
zombies were in one section while the humans lived in another. I didnt
actually know the name of the film until the credits rolled up and it
was given right at the end. I quickly scrawled down 'George A. Romeros
Dawn of the dead' on a sheet of blank paper and left it on my desk and
went to sleep. Needless to say that I dreamt all about the film that
night, it was
by far the most emotionally involving film I have ever seen. The next
night I got my brother to hire out the film from the video shop and that
night I watched it properly. The front cover of the video is the one I
now call the 'Classic' version, and I was very impressed. That weekend I
read in a magazine of a 'Directors Cut' which was soon to be released
and a competition to win one of 10 free copies of it! I quickly entered
the competiton 2 times to maximise my chances of winning and posted
them straight away. I waited about 3 days and got sick of waiting so I
went to town with some cash to see if I could buy the video. It wasn't
there. The next week I tried again, and this time it was there! I
quickly bought it and rushed home, that night when it was suitably late
and dark, I packed my bed side shelf full of cookies and milk, and sat
down to enjoy the Director's Cut of my now favourite film. It was
amazing, hundreds of seconds of extra footage
and much cleaner, crisper quality sound and visuals. It was much more
gorey and even more emotionally involving. It lasted a stagering 2 hours
20 minutes! I began to talk about it so much at school and home that it
became a bit of a legend and everyone was asing to borrow it, but I
wouldn't lend out my original Director's Cut and I didnt want them to
see the dingy old copy I had made of the rented Dawn. So the only
solution was to hold a 'Dawn of the dead' night! my parents ans family
had all gone away for a few days so I invited a few mates round ( 4 -
Me, Walmsley, Taylor, Hebron, Beckett) and we ordered in a pizza and got
the cokes in and sat and watched it on the big screen TV in the lounge.
It was great, and they all enjoyed it alot! The following day I
decided I would collect all the Dawn of the dead video's. At the time I
thought there were only 2 versions, the one I had hired and the one I
had bought, so I quickly went to town and bought the 'Classic' version,
even though I had a copy of it already. So now I had 2 versions and I
thought I had a little collection going, I was even criticised by my
brothers for wasting money on the same film twice. But little did they
know that I'd be wasting alot more money on 'the same film' in the
future. A quick scan of the internet revealed about 2 Dawn of the dead
websites, which were not very impressive at all. Gaz's Dawn of the dead
website was born. Originally it was a small section of my larger Amiga
Software website for my company Alpha Software. It was basically a few
opinions and a table of versions of Dawn of the dead. Over time with
thanks to fellow fans the table of versions grew. And I traded UK
versions for US imported versions. Soon I had the US director's cut and I
was getting more mail every day. About 3 months later I decided to make
my dawn website into a fully fledged website of its own. Ever since
then I have been upgrading my website with all the new things and
continually
updating it nearly every day! I kept on trading different versions of
Dawn and building up my collection and began to get email every day
about Dawn. Time passed and I collected more Dawn merchandise and
posters, then one day I got a copy of the magazine I had entred the
competition in, and I had won, my name was listed as a winner! A few
weeks later my tape was mailed to me and I added it to my collection, it
was later traded away because I already had several copies of it by
then. Each tape I had imported was in NTSC format, and unfortunately my
video could only handel PAL! So months passed and then finally my Dad
bought me a top of the range video which could handle NTSC. When I first
watched the US Remastered Directors Cut on my new video I was shocked
at the brilliant quality. It was a bit like experiencing it all again
with enhanced senses, the Colours were bright and clear, the HIFI sound
was crisp and I could hear things I'd never heard before. It was
amazing. Then using my
numerous demo's to publisher and finally someone was interested! My
game was published and put into the shops for all to buy, it was all
based on dawn, there was even a shopping mall level and a Bub zombie. So
I decided to make a sequel, Gloom 3 - The Directors Cut. For the
introduction I made a short zombie movie in my back garden and
digitilised it for the CD. It starred me and a few mates ( 5- Me,
hebron, Taylor, Bonna & Richard, my brother) and was very similar to
Romero's classics both in editting and visuals. Then I began working on
another commercial zombie game called 'The Dead Walk'. based on Dawn of
the dead and using the headline from a newspaper in day of the dead as
the title. I am currently still working on both games.
Dawn is my favorite film of all time, click here to see my list of all time faves!