Tube Bite inspired film making on BBC Three

Last week I published a post about Bryony Matthewman who was bitten by a bloke on the Tube and it inspired her to create a zombie movie, written, auditioned & produced collaboratively through the internet. Somehow the BBC got in touch with me & I ended up sitting outside the ICA at the Tuttle Club on Friday interviewing her.

Photo by Andrew Mwai

Bryony gets tons of people asking her about the London Underground biting incident, and what happened to the man, whether she reported it, etc etc, but is fairly philosophical about it. I suppose it's something you'd want to wipe from your memory rather than dwell on. But luckily the experience made her wonder whether the guy could have been a zombie and if some of the weirdos we meet on the Tube are actually the living dead.

We spent a while chatting about the shenanigans & challenges involved in getting a bunch of people together through online forums, YouTube & blogs to actually write a zombie film. Despite the time & location differences & artistic strops, Bryony managed to stay relatively sane and pull it all together.


She was pretty pleased with the video blogs on YouTube where people were reporting & filming cases of Happy Chomping (like Happy Slapping but with err.. zombies) & the video diaries of people wondering if their family were turning into zombies.

I asked if any of the film was shot on the Tube, as a lot of it is set in London (there's also footage from New York, South America & Germany). "We actually filmed some outside Tube stations", Bryony said. "We felt it would be too much of a headache to approach the London Underground as they have lots of restrictions on filming on the Tube itself, and we wanted to try to get something out quickly".

Photo by Andrew
Mwai - from his World Zombie Day Set

"We do have some nice bits of footage from a Zombie Walk that took place in London in late October for World Zombie Day. Some people filmed their journey there and back on the London Underground & gave it a weird commonplace mood. As they were just filming on mobile phones this really added to making the film a lot more personal, which was one of the aims. We wanted to try to get people wondering what the hell was happening from all the YouTube video blogs"

The film World Wide Dead, still isn't completely finished yet (although had a mini premiere last week) but Bryony's determined to make it a success and I wish her well. TV producers, Hat Trick loved Bryony's idea and followed the project for the BBC. You can see the result "Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie" tonight on BBC Three at 11.45pm.