Juan de los muertos

A story about a attack of zombies americans in Cuba. Now the bad zombies are gringos.

Now Alejandro Brugues tell us about his movie "Juan of the dead":

Juan was always a good idea. I'm always taking notes, developing new stories, until one stands out and I can't get it out of my head. That was Juan. Besides, I love zombie films and it allowed me to do all the social commentary, so it was a perfect combination.

There are many anecdotes. The first day we took our zombies out to the street they had to attack an old man, and one of the zombies actually bit him and took some skin off his arm. So we had real zombies! We hired that one for another three scenes. Also we had neighbors calling the police a couple of times, because they saw heads on the street and body parts and all that. And we had policemen in the shooting! But they came anyway and made sure everything was fake. There are plenty more, trust me, I could write a book just with the anecdotes. Actually, I should!

Although the film turned out very close to what I had envisioned, you always have to adapt during production. At first, I didn’t plan to shoot most of it handheld, but the schedule was so intense that using dollies and cranes as much as I wanted simply wasn’t feasible. We also didn’t have the luxury to wait for perfect lighting or ideal conditions — if a scene wasn’t shot on the scheduled day, there was no second chance. We had to move fast. But I think that’s true for most film shoots. At least, that’s always been the case for me.

The budget was 2.3 million euros. And no, unfortunately, there’s no wild or funny story about how we got the funding. I like to joke that the producers must’ve had to sell their souls or worse, but in reality, everyone involved just genuinely loved the idea and wanted to be part of the madness.

We shot the film over the course of 44 days using the Red One camera. Why that one? Simple — our director of photography, Carles Gusi, recommended it, and I trust him completely. Honestly, I don’t miss shooting on 35mm. Sure, digital isn’t quite the same yet, but we’re getting there. And the benefits are clear: digital projection is clean, without scratches or reel-change hiccups. What can I say? I absolutely love it.