Does Bryony Bite Off More Than She Can Chew With Her Internet Zombie Movie?

Many a film director has sat in the office of a movie studio executive and suffered the existential humiliation of having his or her “vision” commandeered by a roomful of guys in suits. Bryony Matthewman can top that — she decided to make a zombie movie and let anyone with Internet access throw in their two cents’ worth. The inevitable roadblocks, power struggles and hard-won triumphs are the gist of the BBC’s web series, Bryony Makes A Zombie Movie.

Matthewman is a YouTube vlogging wunderkind who saw her online popularity as an opportunity to tap into a particularly vast pool of resources to help parlay her creative ambitions into reality. The twenty-something graphic designer — known as paperlilies to her online fans — first began uploading her one-woman comedic riffs to YouTube roughly two years ago. Bryony’s good looks, quick wit and creative chops landed her a wider audience than the average vlogger can realistically hope for: her Britney Spears spoof has garnered over 2.7 million hits to date. Such accomplishments landed her on a Top 10 list of YouTube’s most-watched Londoners, further raising her profile.

After being bitten on the arm by a passing maniac on the London tube, Matthewman came up with the idea of making a zombie movie and launched her proposal into cyberspace. She invited anyone who was so inclined to contribute resources toward, or at least weigh in on, casting, script development, FX makeup requirements and whatever else a full-scale production might warrant. Her followers clamored to jump on the bandwagon like…well, like zombies hot on the trail of fresh brains.

According to BBC’s Martin Trickey, it was just days after Matthewman’s rallying cry that Jonathan Davenport from Hat Trick Productions contacted BBC3 Controller Danny Cohen and Trickey with the idea of documenting the experience. Both Trickey are Matthewman quick to point out that neither BBC nor Hat Trick are assisting in the making of the film — they are merely documenting Matthewman’s attempts to breathe life into a tale of the undead.

Matthewman admitted in one post on the IZM forum that the BBC’s involvement in documenting the making of the film was sucking up more of her time than the actual making of the film. Furthermore, Matthewman incurred the wrath of many of her once-besotted fanbase by making a number of executive decisions in the filmmaking process without consulting them beforehand. With a Halloween 2008 screening deadline fast approaching, it doesn’t seem likely that a polished final cut will be unfurled at that juncture — more like a rough collection of dailies. Zombisode 19 offers something of a hyper-micro-encapsulation of events thus far.

The Zombisodes posted on the BBC site are not accessible outside the U.K. However, it appears that all the episodes can be found on YouTube — although it requires some effort to sort and line them up in something resembling chronological order, which may dissuade viewers with little patience. Following the conclusion of the series, Hat Trick will also release a 30-minute documentary to be aired on BBC3 — which, again, puts an intriguing segment of the saga out of reach for many international viewers.

This is far from the first attempt to pull together a user generated content (UGC) motion picture — it’s not even the first attempt to pull together a UGC motion picture about zombies — Day of the Living Dying, which allegedly claimed the world record for zombie extras in an independent film, was Veoh’s re-animated offering in the UGC arena. But there’s appeal aplenty for a diverse cross-section of viewers. Fans of horror will enjoy the insights into how to construct the perfect exploding head or exposed jawline and how to steer zombies clear of giant plot potholes of cliché within the genre’s formula.

Filmmaking aficionados, meanwhile, will enjoy the fishbowl view of a filmmaker on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  While you might expect a high exploding-head count in a zombie movie, it often appears that the only cranium on the verge of bursting is that of the much-beleaguered Matthewman, as she gets a crash course in Filmmaking 101. And admirers of the fast-talking, charismatic Matthewman are certainly getting their money’s worth as they watch their heroine brave the backlash of online superstardom in her attempts to forge something more substantial than amusing two-minute vignettes.

From any perspective, it is fun (albeit the slightly cruel kind of fun) to watch our young aspiring mogul stagger toward her goal with the gobsmacked, drained-of-life stare of the walking dead.