FIDO Behind the Scene Stills

[Atari Charles]

Hi everyone,

I am unsure if this is the ideal place to post this so hopefully a moderator can move this to the right location if this isn't it.

Anyway, back in 2005, like many, I was a zombie extra in the movie FIDO, which is now on blu-ray. I ended up getting an extra part on the Zombie Film Fido as a funeral zombie, a scientist (for a commercial within the movie), and a body double for Billy Connolly for a few final car shots for the movie after Billy left town. All in all it was a cool experience. Anyways, I've been holding onto these digital pics for quite awhile and figured it was time to share them with the world as the film has already been released on DVD and Blu-Ray. These pics were taken using a 4 or 5 megapixel Canon camera and were taken by me, fellow extras, my girlfriend and etc.

So here are zipped files of the two sets of pics for your collections:

Fido June 2005

http://www.mediafire.com/?ea0mo4xy2yy

Fido July 21st and July 22nd 2005

http://www.mediafire.com/?jf0ebt13bwd

The zip picture files are stored on my storage site and they are 100% safe, so feel free to download them.

Enjoy!

Charles

[Atari Charles]

My post from All Things Zombie.

For decades, I always wanted to be a zombie in a zombie movie and got my wish when FIDO came to Kelowna and Vernon, BC, Canada for filming. Quite a few people from the area got to be extras as zombies, citizens, scientists, and so on. I tried out for the boyfriend of the school teacher but lost out to a guy whose acted before in a variety of primetime soap operas. Still I would rather be a zombie any day.

I do now understand why zombies have poor vision, especially in the daytime. There are these contact lenses they put in the zombies eyes giving the dead look and now I know and can literally see why zombies can't see well in bright light. What happens is when any light is shone in a zombie's eyes whether it be the sun, headlights, a torch, the zombies yes can't focus on the light so with these contacts(in the case of us acting zombies) the eyes cannot focus and the light travels over the entire curvature of the eyes making a big glare of bright white, which hurts the eyes. Really weird. It makes it really hard to see, the eyes can't focus, but as it gets darker outside, the eyes, even though they can't really focus, the lack of light eases the pain on the eyes and shapes are easier to see and make out what they really are. Hence why I think zombies mostly use their ears to pin point where prey might be. Also it was really hard to make the eyes focus on anything. Imagine taking a leak using the porta-potty washrooms on set as a zombie with these contact lenses in. Weird.

I made myself totally available during filming, so that way the guy who casts extras knew I'd be a sure thing should he phone for a certain part. Unfortunately and sadly during filming the actor(I believe he was in about 25) who was Billy Connolly's body double, ended up passing away on set. Around the same time or soon after Billy Connolly flew out of BC as all of the filming was completed for his part, or so the film company thought. Later they released or perhaps decided that they needed to film a some car scenes, so that's when they gave me a call to do some body double scenes as FIDO. For the scientist and the funeral zombie parts, there was no special treatment or even dressing rooms aside from makeshift outside ones that were separated into two camps, men and women. Occasionally they'd let us use an empty dressing room on the trailers themselves. Luckily for the Fido body double, I actually got my own private dressing room for the day, which was pretty cool and I suppose somewhat special treatment. I even got to wear the suit Billy Connolly wore as well as the coveralls he wore as well. They may have chosen me due to the similar size and maybe look, although I don't think I look like him at all.

The two disappointments about the film FIDO is that the zombie and other extras were not credited in the closing credits, which is too bad. Also the picture section of the DVD/Blu-Ray is very limited and only focuses on Billy Connolly getting made up as FIDO. The film makers took a lot of still photo shots of a variety of scenes in the movie, even the other actors and extras getting made up, and good clear facial shots of the various zombie extras in full make-up, so it was a shame none of these shots were included in the DVD/Blu-Ray release of the film, even though there would have been room.

All in all, the film was a unique take on the zombie genre and I was glad to be a small part of it.

I would have loved to be a zombie in one of Romero's films but Toronto is a long ways away. Maybe one day.

[Atari Charles]

Just a bump in case anyone else is interested in downloading the pictures.