World War Z was a great zombie film because those were zombie performances. It wasn't just a bunch of people walking around slow. They did close-ups on zombies who were performing, as a mindless dead thing. They were creepy and scary.
Tom SaviniThey're [zombies] us, you can also have the wrestler zombie, the clown zombie, the Jay Leno zombie and the nun zombie. I've never seen the clown werewolf or vampire. But because zombies are us, at the lowest possible level, they're a lot more versatile for storytelling.
Tom SaviniFilm is a truly magical medium. You can create illusions of reality, make people think they've seen things that they really haven't - like blowing a guy's head off with a shotgun.
Tom SaviniUnless you're a psycho, there's no such thing as a vampire and there's no such thing as a werewolf. But there certainly are people who could be controlled by a drug like Scopolamine, to lose all will and do your bidding. That's what the whole voodoo zombie thing was about, with chemical mind control, so it is possible to have real zombies. Maybe the [doomsday] preppers weren't so wrong. I thought they were idiots. How can you prepare for a zombie apocalypse?
Tom SaviniMaybe some people got sick, but what I saw was people applauding the effects. When the helicopter zombie stood up, people applauded. When a guy gets the top of his head lopped off, are they applauding that some horrible thing happened to a person, or are they applauding how it was technically pulled off in a realistic way?
Tom SaviniIf you’re thinking about coming to Tom Savini’s Special Make-Up Effects Program just STOP. Stop THINKING about it and just DO it. Aren’t we talking about making your dreams come true? Our students’ attitude is ‘This is school?’… because they are having so much fun every day doing what they love… and… they get a degree!
Tom Savini