This feature article was previously published under a different project.
The phrase “quiet on the set” gets yelled out time and time again; what a lot the casual movie goer is not aware of is how silent it really needs to be. Hundreds of people are involved in the development of the movie, a stray cough or sneeze can easily mess up a shot on the film set, which may end up as a multi thousand dollar mistake. Many missed details go into creating a film, and they often get lost when viewers only see a finished product, however it’s a long tough process. A process which Corey Lamb hopes to pursue.
On the set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, where “quiet on set” also held significance, Corey Lamb was tasked to manage the air conditioning system, making sure it was turned off when the set was rolling because of the humming noise produced by the air conditioning. Despite the many people who worked on the set that day, he ended up by himself in the AC room on the second story of the building, being completely blind of what was happening on the set, the only form of communication with the set hinged on the use of walkie talkies. About 10 hours of day came and gone, and his radio battery suddenly emptied; panic ensued. Knowing he would be fired if he left his post, Lamb decides to arbitrarily switch the AC on and off, not ten minutes a group of his set members might as well have broken down the door to the AC room and began the typical yell first and ask questions later routine. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” they said.
Corey Lamb finds himself at the cross-section of college graduate in physics, production assistant, and a published author. Lamb plans to take on the journey of directing and producing his own film and submitting his work into a film festival. His inspiration began at the age of 17, after watching the original Clerks movie, written and directed by Kevin Smith. Lamb learned that Smith had developed the film when he was younger as a dream project of his. “Why not me,” Lamb told himself.
Other than Kevin Smith, Lamb draws inspiration from James Wan and Leigh Whannell of the Saw fame. The pair met in film school and collaborated on the project and brought it Hollywood, where it would end up as a sizable film franchise. Horror films have always appealed to Lamb; the zombie subset in particular always kept his attention. Lamb says he tries to stay current with the latest trends to see what his peers are creating, noting that the horror genre in particular has risen recently. He describes his own project as a zombie philosophical comedy with a different perspective. “I’m definitely noticing trends in horror, but for me filming, I wouldn’t want to duplicate anything, I would try to make it my own as much as I could.”
Lamb was born in down town Houston, TX, then grew up in Baytown, a relatively small city not too far from Houston. He then moved to Beaumont, also relatively close to Houston, to attend college where he would acquire his degree in physics. However majoring in physics only happened after Lamb spoke with his physics professor and had a deep discussion about physics. Previously, Lamb wrestled with math or electrical engineering as his major, but ultimately decided on physics as he felt it was applicable to many things and not limit his interests in other areas. His first foray into the film industry would begin after college on a somewhat spontaneous drive to Atlanta, GA.
Another source of inspiration comes from a close friend of Lamb’s, Molly, who worked in the film industry as a set production assistant. Lamb still remains in contact with Molly and hopes to work with her again in the future. He mentions that she is just having the time of her life and how inspiring it can be to see how much fun she is having. She managed to bring him in on the set of the movie Baby Driver, where Lamb would start his first film related job.
Among bringing coffee and food to people on the crew, Lamb’s first official job was to keep pedestrians from walking onto the set. The film producers would rent out sections of the streets to film scenes with car chases and many other scenes that occurred outside. Although Lamb only worked with the film for a couple weeks, the experience and first step proved to be invaluable. He was able to network with many others in the industry which led back to a couple other jobs. Lamb would also meet his first boss, an assistant director. His first boss encouraged him greatly as the boss saw a lot of himself in Lamb. He told Lamb about the time he would sleep on couches in abandoned houses and some of the things he did to save an extra dollar here and there.
Before working in the movie industry, Lamb found himself working in the movie theater. “I saw just some of the people who would walk and look at the choices of movies with their mouths hanging open and kinda stumbling and they kinda reminded me of zombies, and I started thinking about it, and I just started scribbling things down and I liked it,” he says. The basic premise of his future film was born. Lamb mentions he always had an interest in writing, telling stories, and that creating a movie felt like a logical progression. “I’m kinda crafting my own vision around what I’m writing and it’s just taking a step further.
As far as his own movie goes, Lamb has already assembled the screenplay from short stories. The stories are from the perspective of a zombie, featuring the character’s inner monologue in his head. The zombie creates stories for the other characters he meets and tries to rationalize things from there. A noteworthy point in the story occurs when the zombie notices many other zombies are following him and he imagines himself as their leader, however he then realizes they were only doing so because of the smell of fresh meat that he had stepped on.
In Lamb’s personal life, his biggest supporter comes from a likely source, his mom. “She’s always been a huge supporter of [my work] and I know if for some reason I would drop everything and just live off of writing, she would still support me and be super proud,” he said. Other than his mother, Lamb includes his book readers as big supporters. “The feedback I got from them was really positive and a lot of people made me feel I was doing the right thing by writing and I wasn’t just terrible,” he adds.
Lamb has outlined a few steps in this film planning. It begins with getting a better camera and equipment. Lamb then hopes to find actors to play his characters in the form of his friends that are willing to work as cheap labor or drama students from a local college. As far as music goes, Lamb wants to attempt to do it all himself, while ambitious, he would not be afraid to ask for help from friends or going back to the college well. In true indie fashion, Lamb plans to film most of his movies outside, specifically the woods or on the street, just to avoid having to build his own sets. “It’s tough when you’re financing it yourself, because you’re limited on how much you can spend and it gets real expensive to even film a low-budget movie,” Lamb said.
Apart from using the perspective of the zombie to narrate this film, Lamb anticipates incorporating humor into his movie. He believes there’s many different stories one can tell with zombies as the medium. Lamb wants his future viewers to focus on some of the themes other the gore and action normally present in a zombie flick.
Other than the incident with the air conditioning on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Lamb alludes to another negative experience he wouldn’t say on record. However, his most positive experience comes from making friends in the industry and bouncing ideas off of them. He has sent copies of his stories and ideas to people who work in this industry. “They told me they think it’s absolutely great ideas and I should pursue turning them into something, hearing that coming from someone in the industry who could be very honest with me and tell me that if it was crap made me feel really great,” Lamb said.
Lamb considers sometime in 2019 to be a realistic time frame to submit his movie to a festival and would love to begin filming in the summer of 2018.
There are thousands of books published every day, and of those thousands of books are hundreds of zombie stories. Lamb believes his ideas are different from others, “I try to take the most ridiculous ideas I can come up with and make them make sense and make them into a compelling story,” he said. Lamb aspires to be unique, and separate himself from the mostly similar horde of zombies and flesh out his own original zombie film.
