Harcourts M1 wanted a teaser to promote the sale of a castle called Rumble. One of the few things we hadn’t done was spill some blood and guts and so we wrote Zombie Open Home. The staff and agents did their own make-up and wardrobe while we whipped up some gore.
Filmed in under two hours. Three rehearsals. Three takes. Had planned to use it as one take but needed to shorten it, hence the dearth of cutaways. Thanks to David Fredlein for his blood recipe and Scott Bradley for his zombified directions, and his awesome edit. Anthony Lowe mixed and pumped the blood.
The Courier Mail said: IT’S an unusual way to market a property to say the least. When Logan-based real estate agent Julie Andrews took on the listing of what is one of Queensland’s most unique properties, she decided it needed a unique campaign. Zombies. That’s because Rumble Castle at Waterford, south of Brisbane, is one “out of the box”, says Ms Andrews. The Harcourts agent said she had never come across anything quite like it and that it had been a labour of love for owner/builder Brian Rumble when he first began the project in the mid 1980s. “It’s extraordinary,” she said. “He built the house quite literally stone by stone, beam by beam from mostly recycled materials.”Ms Andrews said there had already been a huge amount of interest in the unique property after only 48 hours on the market. That interest was helped by her unique teaser ad posted on YouTube this week, which features zombies piling out of a castle only to be shot down by the agent who then wipes her hands and says the property is now ready to be viewed. “It was just something quirky and something interesting that was going to go viral,” she said. “We wanted to attack as much of the planet as possible with the Castle Rumble opportunity … and the best we knew how was to either shock or scare people with a video.“ Initially we came to them with a tamer concept, because we weren’t really sure just how far to push the boundaries from a real estate perspective and in terms of going to the media with a shocking video. “But … when Brian and co. saw it, they were shocked but impressed by how fast it had moved through the social networks.”
Harcourts YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8Ws6fPr1ss
The Sunrise show report: https://vimeo.com/103680721