Dead Road - Corrado Gadaleta

Posted by Steve on 12 May 2010 | 1 Comments

Tell us about your sci-fi web series.

Dead Road is a post apocalyptic zombie story that takes place two years after the "outbreak." It follows the lives of a few survivors and their day-to-day adventures. It's a continuous story. It's leaning more towards drama and horror, rather than just rabid gore (boring). There will be some gore here and there; and things will get messy towards the end of season 1. There will be 11 episodes in total.

Where did the idea/concept for your web series come from?

It's something I've wanted to work on for a long time. The concept is heavily influenced by the old 70's Italian zombie films like Fulci's Zombie. As well as the soundtrack - there are similarities to Frizzi's old scores. Dead Road's story itself was inspired by Romero's (original) Day of the Dead. Should be pretty obvious to all the Romero fans out there.

Name some of your sci-fi influences. Any favorite movies, TV shows, novels?

My earliest influence is the original Hokuto No Ken (anime) TV series from 1984. It was my introduction to sci-fi, drama and splatter. As well as animation. From there on it's a wide variety, from zombie films to action movies. Other early artistic influences were Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava. But the one film that inspired me to become a filmmaker was John Woo's Bullet in the Head, a true epic film!

Tell us about the technical production of your show. What camera & equipment did you use? Editing software & hardware? For visual effects, etc?

I started shooting on a Canon XL2 camera, but I've recently upgraded to a Canon HFS11 in order to finally produce upcoming episodes in HD. Can't really get anything better since Dead Road has absolutely no budget. I use a variety of mics, whatever I can get at the time. Outdoors I use available light; indoors I use minimal lighting gear. The editing is done on Final Cut Pro 2. And the special effects are now being done on After Effects, in combination with real make up effects. In later episodes there will be a larger amount of these effects. The hardware is a combination of Mac and Alienware PC. The soundtrack is completely original and recorded from scratch on a Tascam Pocket Studio 400. Everything is pretty basic since I'm doing every single task alone and on my own, except for the editing which is done in conjunction with Vito DeCandia.

Can you tell us any interesting facts or trivia about your show? Any funny stories?

Well, there are plenty of funny moments, which have been captured. I plan to release a gag reel at the end of the series. One interesting fact is that Edwin Rivera (who plays Chris) has been a Shemp zombie in every single episode. In one particular episode he appeared as both Chris and a zombie. Guess which episode? He is also our military consultant, having served in the US Army a few years back. He also does both zombie voices in episode 3.

Another interesting thing for you technical people out there; the last 30 seconds of episode 2 was shot in two separate locations and two months apart. But it's pretty seamless and you can't really tell. Same thing for episode 3, it all looks like one location, but it's really two different areas. One last fun fact, the female zombie's voice in episode 5 was dubbed by yours truly!

You can find Dead Road online here and on Twitter here.

Dead Road - SciFinal Page

Cast, crew, and more Behind the Scenes from Dead Road below:

Behind the Scenes on Dead Road

Dead Road on the beach.