There’s only 10-days left to date for the IndieGoGo campaign for Invasion of The Not Quite Dead. You can donate here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/invasion-of-the-not-quite-dead-finishing-funds-film-horror#.
“Invasion of The Not Quite Dead has been a real passion project for indie filmmaker AD LANE for over 10-years, a project that has crippled him financially, caused major mental breakdowns, personal health issues and yet no matter how bad things got, no matter how impossible life felt, he never once quit his dream. Inspired by 70s/80s horror films, 50’s SciFi B-Movies & modern British cinema, this is brutally raw & character driven, tackling subjects like mental illness, bullying & domestic abuse.” (SOURCE: IndieGoGo)
We had an opportunity to speak with Ad about the movies, the challenges, the struggles, and the passion. His heartfelt words will touch your heart and inflame your own passion for filmmaking. He held nothing back!
Let’s talk ‘INVASION OF THE NOT QUITE DEAD.’ In your tweet, you mentioned it is ‘a BRUTAL battle to make the film.’ It’s literally a 10-year project that has challenged you in more ways imaginable. Tell us, how did this all began?
Even that question is a complicated one, do I start at the beginning, when I was taken to watch EMPIRE STRIKES BACK at the cinema, at age 3, and my love of CINEMA became a life long obsession. Or, do I begin with leaving a bed shop at age 15, to begin filmmaking at college, which then turned my obsession from watching films to then making them? But without giving you an autobiography answer, I’d say it really began in 2003/2004, when I had battled a lodged kidney stone for 11 months, absolute intense pain, in and out of hospital every couple of days, on the strongest drug daily for the pain, for close to a year I’d lost my life, and, even towards the end of the 11 months, I’d seriously contemplated suicide, I couldn’t see a day without pain. A week shy of my birthday in 2004, I passed the stone, and I had my life back. The only thought in my head was, I want to make a feature film. It’s been a life long dream, where do I even begin? So, I enrolled at the International Film School of Wales. It was in my final year of film school that I began promoting a film I wanted to make called Invasion of The Not Quite Dead towards the end of 2006.
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The reason it became a 10-year project was simply because someone, like me, should never do something like this. I have an obsession with quality. To me, it should only be done, if it can be done right. I often joke that even Stanley Kubrick would of been frustrated and angry with me. I also just don’t know when or how to quit. I’ll find alternative ways of doing something, but ultimately the reason this project failed in my eyes was because I had to much of an ambitious idea. I was just one person. I was trying to crowd fund before CROWD FUND was a word, and I refused to do things in a conventional manner, even with shooting the film, I would add in the most ridiculous challenges to make the process more impossible. I must have subconsciously wanted to fail, but fail massively, like setting the film over a 24 hour period, which is insane as we’d be shooting it over years. I refused to have any CGI effects, so that alone is a huge challenge, making sure all the blood splatter is real, the fire/explosions are real, the car driving scenes, and the biggest one, all evening shots had to have a lingering mist.
I never for a second ever thought it wouldn’t get made or finished, but I could never have predicted the stress and the heartache it would cause sticking with a project like this. The other day someone asked “WOULD YOU DO IT AGAIN?” And, without even hesitating, I replied YES.
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You’re going to take us back to the past with the film. You describe it as ‘a brutal as hell character driven indie epic that is pure 70’s/80’s inspired old school with NO CGI.’ We’re intrigued! Why did you pick this era?
I think if I was to self -analyze ME, it would be a lot to do with films I watched growing up, I was severely mentally bullied throughout my early years and so I became a recluse. I’d come home from school at lunch time and I’d put a film on. I’d escape to a different place in time. I’d be Indiana Jones, or Han Solo, or Marty McFly for an afternoon. Films became my life and my comfort zone… So when I had the opportunity to begin mapping out Invasion of The Not Quite Dead, it was about tapping into a lot of my loves, my fears, and my anxieties, to explore parts of my own mind, and this also included my film going inspirations of my childhood. For me, a film should keep you within their world they have created, modern horror takes you out of it the second you see it go cartoon. On the fire/explosions/blood splatter, it just takes you out, so to me, the best era for horror was the 70’s and 80’s, the use of practical FX, as bad as it could be sometimes, would still be a huge improvement over CGI, so when I set out to make Invasion of The Not Quite Dead‘ I gave myself a list of things I would stand by, and if that meant spending years fighting for, then I would. Top of the list was keeping the film CGI free, making sure that the film could be as REAL as possible, to make the viewer feel sick because the situations was as REAL as possible, as my PR man Daniel White once said. “After watching an intense scene, “THIS FILM WILL HURT YOU.” He’s right . . . it will.
So, this is not quite a zombie film, but rather a unique twist on a horror film. That alone is a challenge in today’s industry. Tell us what makes the film unique, without giving the plot line away.
Yeah… so going back to challenges I’d set myself, I guess the first ever one was I didn’t want to make a ZOMBIE film, and to me the true ZOMBIE movies are ROMERO’S original DEAD trilogy, why would I want to make a low budget, POOR version of something I love, I just couldn’t do it, I have too much respect for him as a filmmaker to do that, I want to be inspired by filmmakers, not to rip them off, as so many people have done over the years, I think one of the reasons that I found it near impossible to get funding for this film was because I was determined it WASN’T going to be a ZOMBIE film, my tagline has always been NOT QUITE A ZOMBIE FILM, to at least imply that it could be a sub -genre of it, and is it? Well, I will let you be the judge of that, are they DEAD? Or, does the NOT QUITE DEAD mean something else? These are questions that you may still not know the answer to even after watching the film; remember, KUBRICK was my filmmaking hero and I will always bow down to how 2001 will always be a head-scratcher. And The Shining, what the hell was that ending about? So, to me, my influences are people, who don’t do things by the book. Whats wrong with not giving everything away and adding some mystery. I believe I successfully answered the question without giving anything away.
This film will deal with emotions. Emotions are good! You aim to make your characters realistic, so people can relate to them. Tell us more.
So yeah, going back to an earlier point of wanting this film to be as real as possible, and how a lot of horror films have 2 dimensional characters that you don’t really know or care for; well, these characters have been in my head for years. I’ve really got to know them and the majority of them are based on my own experiences, people I know and from hearing stories of people close to me. I wanted to make this film as brutal as possible and that’s not the gore work, but. instead, through sheer intense acting, making the characters go through absolute hell, and to a degree the actors themselves, too. I wanted to give my actors a chance to really shine, to bring out performances they never knew they had in them, and to still push for more. This film has a real chance at tapping into peoples emotions due to using real life subjects, like bullying, mental illnesses, domestic abuse, all very real in today’s society, and we all probably know someone who is suffering from something. This film brings out characters a lot quicker, when we see them tacking these horrendous day-to-day issues, some might say the real horror in this film isn’t the NOT QUITE DEAD, but whats going on in my characters heads.
95% of the film has been shot, thanks to the aide of 2,400 backers to date! Impressive! Tell us what has been filmed, thus far.
I’ve probably established this already, but shooting this film has been insanely challenging, especially as its been very stop and start over the years. Depending on when the project had money, and working round actors and crew timetables, for me being a stay-at-home dad 3-4 days a week, with 2 lil’ ones (Daisy now 4 and Indie now 2). and then, working round the clock doing freelance work, has made life incredibly tough. I would find that before I knew it months had passed between shoots. The longest gap was over a year and a half, this was when I was in a seriously dark place and I just couldn’t see how I could get the film back on track again, but that’s been one of the biggest battles, to keep going even when you’re life around you is breaking into a thousand pieces.
So whats still to film? With the main featured cast wrapped just before Christmas, it’s now all the gore scenes, what I class as the FUN and easy stuff. We’ve got all the big character emotional scenes out the way, and now, we can just spend our days throwing blood at things. I want to give a shout out to PIGS MIGHT FLY SOUTH and their blood. They’ve been providing the film with as much blood as we can throw at things, and they have really made a huge difference to the films gore factor, so yeah . . .gore scenes. We have a few WISH LIST scenes that includes a scene involving a shot gun, but due to our NO CGI rule, it means we gotta do it for real, with BLANKS that is, and also one of our characters is going to be SQUIBBED, so no CGI blood hit. This person will get old school HIT with the blood detonator. I can’t wait to do that scene! Another one is a big DRIVE-IN MASSACRE scene, thanks to the incredible support of BEN over at MOONLIGHT DRIVE-IN CINEMA, so that could be very messy . . . and yeah, the more we raise in our campaign, the more silly things we can do, and it’ll also be a huge help for post production. This film project has always been about when we have money we’re able to work on it, we don’t have that luxury any more. So, now whatever we raise is pretty much what we can do, and how quickly we can do it.
Currently, your crowdfunding campaign is 61% funded. You only have a few days left. You’ve already taken on huge responsibilities, to see this film to its fruition. Your 
emotions must be running high, to be so close to your goal.
I’m going to be absolutely honest here, over the last few years I have put myself in a very dark and horrible place, maybe that was the only way I could make a film like this; and so subconsciously I did it to myself, but I lost a lot of confidence and it felt like I was fighting for something with the film that maybe no one got or understood. And the film was getting criticized a lot online, so much so it felt like I was a joke and the project was a joke. It made me very paranoid, and I wasn’t able to be me online any more, so when it got to 5% away from finishing it nearly destroyed me. It took me 2 months to get enough confidence to go back online and say, “PLEASE HELP ME FINISH THIS FILM.” I honestly thought with it being a 10-year film project, with people who’d backed me years ago would want to lynch me, and it was completely the opposite. I made a brutal as hell teaser. We premiered it on the MOONLIGHT DRIVE-IN CINEMA on our INDIEGOGO launch night, and the response to the teaser was phenomenal. We had a lot of original backers leaving messages of support and backing the film again. All-in-all, the response has just been incredible. I was wrong, there is still a lot of people who care about this film project, and even more who want to see me succeed . . .and for that I am just so incredibly overwhelmed.
Editor’s Note: We want to see you succeed, too! One of our managing editors posted today: “Your true gift is in your heart, in your mind, and in your soul, and nothing can take that away from you! 🙂 #neversettle”
We admire your passion. Many don’t understand the love filmmakers have for their work. What has been your motivation and inspiration?
I think in the early years I was young, straight out of uni, my absolute raw energy and passion kept my spirits alive, but then starting a family would cause serious conflict. It got to a point, where I just didn’t feel I was doing anything right, and failing at everything, but plodding along little by little. So, I’d say that in the last 4-years, my family have really kept me going. Having kids has made the process incredibly hard work, but it’s also given me a new fight that I never had before, to make my family proud. It is really the biggest motivation I could ever possess.
I think it helps, in a weird sort of way, that I have always been NOT QUITE RIGHT, from the age of 3, I’d learn how to use the video player and obsessively watch a film called ‘THE CASSANDRA CROSSING’, rewinding and watching over and over again the big crash scene, so there was always a dark side fascination, but what I could never of imagined was how deep my obsessive nature would get, only getting more and more compulsive over the years. So, I guess there’s always the battle of fighting to not leave my comfort zone, but then the other side of me has to challenge myself to the point of YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO THAT, so that alone has kept life interesting during this 10-year journey.
Let’s talk perks. You’re offering some amazing perks for backing the campaign, like sitting in on a post-production, an aspiring filmmaker’s dream, and a ‘UK Cinema Tour Promotion.’
One thing I’ve learned over the years is what perks to excite people with. Back in 2009/2010, I was the first person using Twitter to aggressively fundraise for a project, and to make people take notice. I’d do monthly no sleep film fundraising marathons on Twitter, ranging from 50 hours to my record of 106 hours, and word would spread. This was a time before IndieGoGo and Kickstarter, that was seriously putting my health at risk, suffering for my art. So, I’ve had a few years to work out what perks would excite the fans the most, and it’s great getting backers to the set to have them in a scene. So many people have it on their bucket list, so to be able to provide that is amazing. Perks can range from their name in the credits, to see the film on the big screen, a video message from me, tickets to the premiere, and then, you have things like a signed DVD/Blu-Ray.
You’ve documented the entire journey of making this film. That’s awesome! It could be a great way to raise future funds! It can be a film itself!
I’ve documented the entire process, from video diaries over-the-years covering shoot days or the months of not shooting, this includes the great times and the deeply sad times, it’s all been captured, so yeah, the plan is to one day revisit this film and put together a feature documentary that could serve as a CAUTIONARY TALE, or it can be something that a future indie filmmaker will use to keep going themselves, that’s what I’ve done. In addition, I’ve used filmmaking docs as an inspirational source to keep me going. Docs, like BURDEN OF DREAMS, HEARTS OF DARKNESS, the BLADE RUNNER making of, all big problem productions, so seeing what they went through and how they made it to the finish line, well, that’s been essential for me to keep going.
Do you have a special message for those reading this article?
I know I should be using this section to promote my campaign, but the truth is, I’d rather use this space to inspire people. LIFE is going to seriously kick the living hell outta you. It did me, and there’s a chance it will you, but whatever happens, find a way to not quit your dream, even if you have to do a little bit every so often. That alone will keep your dream alive. For me, this has been a 10-year battle, and I say battle, because my biggest battle in the end was with me, fighting my own inner demons. There was a point I honestly didn’t think I was going to come back. I was shooting Invasion of The Not Quite Dead right in the middle of my biggest mental breakdown, and I used it to make the film stronger. That’s what you have to do; try and somehow turn the negatives into a positive, turn your life around, and keep the dream alive.
Connect with AD LANE:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrazyDLane
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhiteScreenPR/
Web: http://www.whitescreenpromotions.com/
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