It was a big box, obviously an ex-rental copy. I remember a green cover with loads of monster faces on it. I’d never heard of the film. The cover was compelling enough for me to take it home.

The VHS edition I found in a charity shop in Tunbridge Wells when I was 13.

It absolutely blew my mind.

The world felt completely real. I loved the characters, including Captain Rhodes, who seemed to me the personification of evil. There was something about the film’s joyless, desolate, nihilistic atmosphere that spoke to me at that age. I couldn’t have explained why.

“Joyless, but in an amazing way” is probably still the best description I can give it.

It became one of my favourite films of all time.

Lori Cardille as Sarah in George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead.

Years later, when I began working on In Search of Darkness in 2018, Lori Cardille was on my list of people I wanted to interview. Her performance as Sarah has a combination of vulnerability and strength that I’ve always found compelling.

In 2019, at the beginning of filming, I flew to New York for a series of interviews, then travelled to Pittsburgh to interview Lori at her house.

She was wonderfully warm. What stayed with me was how much she valued the experience of making Day of the Dead, and the confidence George Romero had shown in her and his decision to cast her.

There’s a family connection to the genre, too. Her father, “Chilly Billy” Bill Cardille, appeared as a reporter in Night of the Living Dead. His role is documented by the film’s original production company, Image Ten.

Sitting opposite someone whose performance had made such an impression on me as a teenager was very special. It cemented my interest in this world.

With Lori at her house in 2019, after our interview for In Search of Darkness.

More recently, buying the 4K release of Day of the Dead got me thinking about it again. Working on In Search of Darkness: 70s also meant revisiting Dawn of the Dead. I love Romero, and I love what zombie cinema allows us to explore about society.

Then there’s The Walking Dead. For me, that first season is a masterclass, and the opening episode is absolutely amazing. The world feels real, the characters are compelling, and some of the brutal moments really stay with you.

There are connections with my documentary work there as well. Frank Darabont, who directed the pilot, appears in The Thing Expanded, and executive producer Gale Anne Hurd appears in Aliens Expanded. AMC’s original announcement confirms their roles on the series.

All of this brought me back to a question: how would I approach a documentary about zombie cinema?

A retrospective would be an obvious route. There’s a rich history to explore, and existing documentaries have explored the genre. But I wanted to find a format that excited me—a different way of taking the audience through these films and television series.

The working title is Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.

The zombie apocalypse has already begun.

And this documentary is your training manual.

Concept artwork for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse. Working title; an idea in development.

Please pay attention. Your survival depends on it.

I imagine opening with an emergency briefing. A military officer addresses the audience. Text on screen explains when the outbreak began, how quickly the world was overwhelmed, and why this training programme has been assembled.

It contains everything we know about encounters with zombies, drawing on the evidence available to give you the best possible chance of survival.

You need to watch carefully.

We both know the apocalypse isn’t happening. But the audience agrees to enter that world, and the documentary commits to it.

There’s an element of kayfabe here, the idea associated with maintaining the fictional reality of professional wrestling. What interests me is that shared willingness to play along. Cambridge defines the term here.

With that agreement in place, we can change the purpose of watching.

A scene becomes a case study. A character’s terrible decision becomes a warning. A location becomes somewhere you might consider hiding.

We could investigate which weapons work, which don’t, and which create more problems than they solve. We could examine shelters, escape routes, supplies, and the people you choose to trust.

The history would still be there. So would the interviews, analysis and discussion. But the training manual would give our journey through the genre an immediate purpose.

You’re watching because this information might save your life.

What are we really frightened of?

There’s something inherently terrifying about a dead person being reanimated and wanting to attack and eat you. That alone is enough for a horror film.

But what fascinates me is the mirror zombies hold up to us.

While thinking about this project, I bought a load of books about zombies and zombie cinema. There’s so much to explore beneath the surface of these stories.

One interpretation that interests me is the fear of losing yourself: your body continues, but your personality, memories and ability to make choices disappear. The undead disturb our understanding of identity because they were once us—and could be us again. This University of York research explores that connection.

Then there’s the fear of everything around you breaking down. Someone you love becomes dangerous. Institutions fail. People who need to cooperate turn against each other.

I think a lot of people recognise that feeling of approaching catastrophe at the moment. There’s a sense of living through end times, of societal collapse being somewhere around the corner.

Zombie cinema gives us a way to explore that feeling. It creates an extreme situation in which our ideas about trust, authority, community and survival are put under pressure.

That’s what I’d want Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse to investigate through its training lessons.

Where should you shelter? Who gets to come inside?

Who should you trust? What makes someone a leader?

How do you protect yourself? What happens when protecting yourself puts someone else at risk?

And there’s a question about the training manual itself.

We begin with a military officer telling us how to survive. But should we trust them?

I love Captain Rhodes as a character precisely because he’s such a terrifying presence in Day of the Dead. There’s something interesting about opening my own documentary with a figure of military authority—and then allowing the audience to question that authority as the film progresses.

Perhaps the advice becomes less certain. Perhaps different case studies contradict one another. Perhaps the institution producing the manual starts to fall apart along with the society it’s meant to protect.

I haven’t worked that through yet. But it feels like a possibility worth exploring.

An idea before it’s ready

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse is one of roughly 100 ideas I’ve got sitting in a Google Sheet.

It’s a rough idea. I haven’t mapped out every lesson or decided exactly how the format would work.

I wanted to share it at this stage because I’m interested in opening up that process. I’d like to talk about ideas while there’s still room for other people to help shape them.

The part that excites me is the possibility of giving a documentary a different sense of urgency. Asking the audience to accept a role within it could create a different way of experiencing the genre, while allowing us to explore what these stories say about humanity.

So I’d love to know what you think.

Does the survival manual conceit appeal to you? What would make it stronger? Which films, television series or questions would you want it to cover?

And if something about it doesn’t work for you, tell me why.

I’m open to constructive criticism, and I’d love to connect with people interested in developing it further.

I think together we could make something really cool.

I’m really new to doing this, but I’m trying to use the questions coming in through the CREATORVC suggestion box as a way to talk more openly about how we actually do things.

This one is about how we decide which documentaries to make, how we validate ideas, and why our audience plays such a big part in that process.

Forgive the rough nature of these videos. I’m just getting started, but hopefully I’ll do more of them.

What would you like to know about how we choose our projects?

We’ve all watched a sequel and thought… surely we could have done better than that?

So what if we had a say? Where would we take the characters we love? What new adventures would we give them?

What would happen if fans and superfans got together with writers, filmmakers and artists to imagine their own sequel?

That’s the idea I’m exploring: a documentary about us developing a movie that doesn’t exist. Working out the story together, sharing ideas and debating decisions.

What if Newt and Hicks survived Aliens? What happened to Dutch after Predator?

There are so many stories I’d love to explore, and I’d love your help imagining them. This is an early idea. I want to put it out there while the conversation can still shape it.

Which film would you start with, and where would you take the story?

A Reel from @socialhikeshow got me thinking about sharing unfinished ideas publicly, and letting the conversation help make them better.

That’s partly why I started this account. A place to have a bit of a yap, share what I’m working through and hear what you think.

Everything we make at CREATORVC is crowdfunded. Our documentaries exist because people come together around an idea and decide they want to make it happen. That sense of collective agency is something I want to explore more.

I’d love to open up more of the thinking behind our projects. What we’re considering, what we’re unsure about, and the questions we haven’t answered yet.

If it all stays in my head, I’m missing what someone else could bring to it.

What part of making these documentaries would you like us to think through together?

I’ve been thinking about what I actually want this place to be.

And I think I’m probably trying to solve my own problem.

The thing that makes me happiest is having a new idea and trying to make it real.

That’s a huge part of what I love about CREATORVC. I love documentaries. I love thinking about what we could make next. I love putting teams together, finding brilliant people to work with, kicking ideas around and gradually turning something that only existed in someone’s head into an actual thing.

I’m incredibly proud of the team we’ve built at CREATORVC. There are no weak links. It’s been carefully assembled over years, and working with people I genuinely like and respect is one of the best parts of what I do.

I’d like more of that in my life.

So I’m going to use this place to share ideas.

Not finished ideas. Not announcements. Not things that have been polished for six months behind closed doors.

Ideas when they’re still messy.

I’ve got a Google Doc containing about 100 of them. Some are documentary ideas. Some are business ideas. Some are experiments. Some are probably rubbish.

That’s fine.

I don’t really know which ones are good yet.

What I’d like to do is put some of them out into the world and find people who enjoy doing what I enjoy doing: pulling ideas apart, challenging them, adding things, asking questions and occasionally spotting the little seed inside a half-baked thought that might turn into something much more interesting.

I’m not trying to sell anything here.

I’m not launching a course or building a paid community.

I just want to see who’s out there.

Maybe an idea gets ten comments and everyone thinks it’s terrible.

Great. That’s useful.

Maybe somebody takes an idea in a direction I’d never considered.

Even better.

And perhaps, occasionally, something we start talking about here actually becomes real.

That’s the bit that really excites me.

I don’t want to sit behind closed doors trying to make every idea perfect before anyone sees it. I’d rather have the conversation earlier.

So that’s what this place is going to be.

A place for ideas, experiments, documentaries, creativity and the process of making things.

I’ll bring the things I’m thinking about.

You tell me what you think.

And we’ll see where it goes.

If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, come and join me.

What’s an idea you keep coming back to? Tell me in the comments.