Coming off the success of The Tunnel, production partners Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey have released the first episode of their seven part web series, Event Zero.
‘We wanted The Tunnel to appear real in every way’, says Harvey, producer and co-creator of the hit Australian horror film, ‘but for Event Zero, we’re going for a hugely cinematic feel. Hopefully people will be caught off guard by what we accomplished with the money we had. We wanted to show people that we could tackle the big scenes.’
Event Zero is a collection of seven stories all centered on a train derailment near Circular Quay. When the emergency services arrive at the scene, seemingly unaffected people begin to die. The story is loosely based on the 1995 Sarin gas attacks in Tokyo.
Tedeschi and Harvey received funding for Event Zero through Screen Australia and Movie Extra after their concept won the 2012 Movie Extra Webfest 2.0 competition.
‘We saw Movie Extra Webfest as a great way to continue to put free content up online. This is an opportunity to do that. We’d workshopped the idea for a year before the competition, and we put together a sixty second trailer and before we knew it we got the phone call asking us if we wanted to make it,’ says Harvey.
The producer says that one of the biggest challenges was the time constriction. ‘We are working with 4-5 minutes episodes. We really had to work to find the most important sections, the most important lines and the highest points of drama for each episode.’
In many ways, Event Zero is reunion for The Tunnel cast and crew. Both Steve Davis and Luke Arnold, key actors in the film return for roles in the web series, as a Firefighter and a Paramedic, respectively. Director Carlo Ledesma also returns to direct the pilot episode.
Also appearing in the web series are stars Valentino Del Toro (Terra Nova, Gabriel), Harry Pavlidis (Home and Away, Gabriel) and Zoe Carides (Crownies, Out of the Blue).
The first episode premiered on Movie Extra’s Youtube channel, with the next six to premier online, June 11th.