Zombies seen in Hills

No, the Perth Hills has not been hit with a mysterious plague turning the dead into flesh-eating ghouls. The residents had simply stumbled across a film set.

About 50 cast and crew have taken over a section of Jorgensen Park for 12 days to film new episodes of the Super Dingo web series.

A hit with online geeks, the original tales of hero Super Dingo clocked up more than one million Youtube views last year.

With a solid fan base, friends, writers, directors and producers Ethan Marrell and Paul ‘Werzel’ Montague and producer Natalie Lewis got back together to revisit the crazy fictional universe ” with zombies.

When the Reporter visited the set on Wednesday , the crew were on day six of the 12-day shoot.

Make-up artists Kate Anderson had her hands full preparing 17 actors for their roles as zombies, but her biggest challenge was yet to come: 50 zombies for Saturday shots.

Lewis said the special effects heavy shoot had run smoothly.

‘We were fortunate that we had scheduled our interior scenes for Tuesday, which was the day we had the big storm,’ she said.

‘Many of us worked together on the last episodes so it has been easy to get the zombies prepared for filming. Kate starts the make-up process at 5.30am and they are all set to go.

‘We have also had a few new crew members come on board, which is great to be able to give them their first job or to let them get a bit of experience.

‘The dedication we have seen is great ” we had people come from Collie to be zombies. I told them we did not expect them to travel so far but they were very keen.’

Lewis, Marrell and Montague, who met on the stand-up comedy circuit, like to keep a light atmosphere on the set as everyone battled the chilly winter winds in the Hills.

Zombies huddled together against the cold while crew members made a competition of catching lollies in their mouth between set-ups.

But everyone behaved professionally as soon as director Marrell called action, with actress Jemma Sharp swiftly delivering a couple of planks of fake wood to zombie Michael Bertram’s head.

The bags of fake blood failed to burst, so the crew immediately set up for a second shot, which was successful.