As proof that any zombie holocaust can be turned into a deeply touching moment if it’s simply run backwards and set to slow music, nerd musician Dan Bull has given the Dead Island treatment to Shaun of the Dead.
The Dead Island promotional trailer stirred up a whole lot of controversy when it came out last week. The short film tale of a family falling victim to a zombie horde in slow motion as a melancholy piano played in the background was bad enough in itself, but the in-your-face death of a young girl, the moment around which the entire clip was built, proved to be too much for a surprising number of viewers. Even among jaded, cynical, non-parent gamers, the tug on the heartstrings was mighty powerful, to the point that some observers actually complained that the use of the girl was “manipulative.”
Setting aside for a moment the obvious argument that that was the whole point, we now have a chance to see the same effect applied to another, less overtly button-pushing zombie massacre, specifically that of Shaun of the Dead, the 2004 zombie rom-com starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Bull, half of the team who gave us the “Take Me to Oblivion” rap last year, chose the most emotionally weighty segment of the movie, which is kind of cheating – it would have been fun to see the style applied to the album-throwing bit – but it’s nonetheless a bang-up job of editing and the effect, for me at least, is even more powerful than the animated Dead Island video.
I suppose the lesson here is that just about any sad moment can be made genuinely affecting with the right editing, and that a real-life zombie holocaust probably wouldn’t be as much fun as we like to think. Still, this is great work, no?
via: Den of Geek
