Rob Graydon will be directing the horror short 'Z.O.V.' from his own script. "It's a zombie film told in a very, very different way." says Graydon. "I wasn't that interested in a making some cookie cutter zombie film. It took a few years for camera technology to catch up with my idea. Without giving anything away, I had to wait for HD video cameras to be small enough to be able to do what I wanted them to on this film."
Casting is already complete on the film. Veteran stage actor Stephen Ryan stars as 'Simon' the main character who's trying to hide a dark secret from the other characters trapped in an underground 'panic room' of a high tech lab where (you guessed it) an experiment goes horribly wrong. Actors Katherine Dickson and Jonathan Fortes from Rob's previous film 'La Soledad' star as 'Lydia' and 'Javier'. Dani Bathory will fill the shoes of 'Janis' and Geraldine Sweetman rounds out the cast as the mysterious, dark character known simply as 'Suit'.
The film will be accompanied by a website designed to look like one of the Z.O.V. lab workstation and will contain webisodes made to look like interoffice 'video emails' that will introduce other characters and give clues to the films many secrets. The webisodes will feature the cast as well as additional actors who will ultimately play zombies in the film.
Z.O.V. will be shooting in late August/ Early September with an eye towards a Halloween release.
Principal photography has wrapped on La Soledad. Shot on location in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Rob Graydon has directed the story of Soledad Morales, a young woman trying to connect in a same sex relationship with her girlfriend Inez while dealing with her family's acceptance.
Here is a prop from the short film, "LA SOLEDAD". We see it briefly at the end when a main character spots it at a critical moment. We couldn't get any photos of actor Joe Menchaca (who plays Buelo) as a young man to show him on a poster from his singing hey day. By pure coincidence (though I don't believe in that) I came across an old photo of my late father who was a jazz musician himself. I thought it would be a nice homage to him and we put it in the poster. The day before the first day of shooting, art director Erik Shearer emailed me and asked for a name of an opening act for Buelo to put on the poster. I was in a frantic hurry getting out of my house and I typed without thinking, "Jose Torres y los Gatos". When I got in my car it dawned on me that the opening act was pretty much a Spanish "Josie and the Pussycats".
