The History of "Zeppo: Sinners From Beyond The Moon!"

Zeppo began as a short film to be part of an anthology. Jerry Williams and crew began in August 2004. It was the year 2004 when Jerry Williams had completed 2 short films and decided he needed one more to make an anthology. That third short film was "Zeppo." It was around August of 2004 when Jerry and friends began shooting footage for "Zeppo" the short film.
Then came the MEIC conference and film festival in Lexington Kentucky November 2004. Jerry's first feature film "Purvos" was screening as part of the film festival where one of the judges was Eric Butts. After viewing "Purvos" Eric declared "I have to work with these guys!" November 4th, 2004, Jerry Williams and the "Purvos" crew gather outside a screening room for the midnight screening of "Purvos," this is where Eric and Jerry met for the first time! Jerry had the footage for his short Film "Zeppo" and needed an editor, Eric Butts wanted a new project to work on and fell in love with the idea of "Zeppo," the two spent the next hour talking about the project and realizing how much the two were on the same page with everything!
In March of 2005, after some delays with Jerry's previous editor, the footage was finally handed over to Eric who was very excited to start working. March 25th, 2005, Eric completes the rough cut of "Zeppo" the short film. That night Eric viewed his work multiple times, falling more and more in love with the movie upon each viewing. He then called Jerry and left him about 20 voicemails explaining how great it turned out! This was where Eric suggested turning it into a feature film! Jerry agreed to hiring Eric as the producer and the two began the early stages of what would become "Zeppo: Sinners From Beyond The Moon!"
Over the next few months, Jerry would work on a new draft of the Script and he and Eric would then have script meetings at White Castle, where the greasy little hamburgers help to influence the stranger aspects of the script. Towards the end of April 2005, the script was finished and Eric and Jerry began preproduction. They had planned to start filming in July, but the actress, Stephani Hiese, who had played the Dark Queen perfectly in the short film, Informed Jerry she would be moving across the country in the end of June! Eric and Jerry both agreed she was too good to replace and they didn't want to re-shoot a bunch of the short film footage, so at this point production was sped up!
May 5th, 2005, The cast and crew that had been hired all gathered at co-producer and co-star Casey Miracle's house for a brief meeting about what the overall plan was at the time! After the meeting, Stephani Heise and Chadwell stayed behind to begin filming on the feature length "Zeppo." This was the first time anyone had worked with Eric Butts on a set and all were pleasantly surprised by how knowledgeable and prepared he was. This was also the first use of green screen, the set was made of nothing more than some plastic sheets, cardboard signs and a piece of green poster board and worked out very effectively.
Now, production was up and running. Eric and Jerry were finding it quite freeing to not have to care about continuity or how cheap the sets look as this was part of the design of the film. Which also opened them up to a lot of improvising and at times, even make up complete scenes on the spot! Then the problems started.
First off, around June 2005, our lead actress Elysse, decided to get breast enhancement surgery. Eric and Jerry had already shot 90% of her scenes as "Sage." It was only a week before her surgery she informed anyone, Jerry and Eric rushed a bunch elements together in hopes of shooting her out before the change, but she was unable to find the time! This ended up being kind of cool, as now you can see the same actress's bare breast before and after!
The next problem was a big one! About 20% of the script took place inside the fictional strip Club "Benito Spanglers" and they had no place to film in. Being such a small production they could not afford an insurance bond, which meant no one was letting them in their place of business! Production went on hiatus. Eventually, Eric had the idea to set all the scenes outside of the strip club and maybe create a sense of mystery about the club's interior. At this point Jerry re-worked the scenes to happen outside and they were able to use William S. Tolliver's place of business. They blacked out the glass with trash bags, added a bunch of cheesy signs, and had a strip club! The scenes worked out even better this way!
Filming picked back up in October 2005 with the Benito Spangler scenes. When it came time to shoot the bouncer's scenes, the actor bailed out of shooting! The cameras and actors were set, but there was no bouncer. Jerry got on the phone and recruited Billy W. Blackwell. Ten minutes later, he was on set and ready to go and ended up giving a brilliant performance!
Filming was back in full swing, but they still needed a President and a new Empress Molly. Around this time, Eric Butts was browsing the Troma website, when he noticed an advertisement for hiring Lloyd Kaufman to be in your film! Eric grew up on Troma films and was an uber-fan of Lloyd's, Jerry had also been a longtime Troma fan, so when Eric suggested they make an offer to Lloyd to play the president, Jerry was ecstatic at the idea! He approached Lloyd and after some time working out a schedule, Lloyd signed on the play himself as the President of the United States! Eric and Jerry were blown away. At this point they had the idea that if they got Lloyd, maybe they could get Debbie Rochon to play Molly!
February 2006, Lloyd Kaufman flew into Lexington. Eric and Jerry pick him up at the airport and they head to set! Jerry and Eric knew Lloyd would be amazing, but were still blown away by his brilliant improv skills and could not have been any happier with what they got! At the end of the night, they took Lloyd back to his hotel room! The next morning Eric woke up to an E-mail from Debbie Rochon herself. She "loved the script" and was excited about the roll. She had some time coming up soon and was eventually scheduled to fly in two weeks later!
Debbie Rochon arrived to they excited faces of Eric and Jerry who had been big fans of hers as well! This was a huge day for production too, since this was the first time they would be filming scenes in complete green screen environments, plus Eric would be unable to be behind the cameras, as he reprised his short film role of Yanov. "It was stressful enough, shooting major greenscreen and having a ton of dialogue, but I had to act with Debbie Rochon!" Eric says. It ended up being one of the smoothest shooting days of the whole production! Eric and Debbie clicked instantly and clearly have an amazing on screen chemistry!
At this point, shooting was finally coming to a close. The last few pieces took the longest. June 2006, the final shooting day on what had now been titled "Zeppo: Sinners From Beyond The Moon!" took place at the home of Casey Miracle. The house had now been dubbed "Miracle Studios" due to the fact 60% of Zeppo was shot in and around his house. The final piece was the dance sequence. Once again the greenscreen was set up and the music was queued and everyone danced the night away! Jerry then said "That's a wrap!"
July 2006. After a month of capturing and logging the 50 hours of footage, editing began! Editing took place from July through November. Most of the movie was shot with two to three cameras, so there were plenty of choices to be made, but after four months of Eric and Jerry working together nightly, the two agreed on a final cut.
January 2007 was the beginning of the CGI work. Normally a movie like this would never get away with attempting 400 visual effects shots, but this is Zeppo! Jerry and Eric brought in one of the movie's co-producers, Pat Bowling, to handle the 3D modeling and animation as he had done on the short film, but now everything was to be re-designed from scratch and the three had a blast creating the space ships and buildings of Planet Zeppo. The work took longer than expected, with 400 shots and no previous experience, there was a lot too learn, especially for Eric, who would be handling everything from keying to roto-scoping and compositing, basically, Pat Bowling created the materials and Eric put them all together! Finally, in June of 2007 all the shots were finalized and approved... Then there was a hard drive crash, the hard drive that contained 90% of the final VFX completely crashed with no hope of recovery in the middle of Eric backing it up. After a couple weeks of looking for options, the crew finally found a slightly different back up and made it work while loosing very little time!
The next few months were hectic as the three year deadline approached! Scheduling most of the cast to come back for looping and ADR was next to impossible! Most of the dialogue replacement was done within the last month before the premier and a lot of cast members had there voices replaced, some for not showing up and others for comedic effect. Even Eric's Mom and Dad got in on the act. His mother replaced all of "Tippy" the presidential aide’s voice and his father replaced "General Keaton." Ultimately, some of the best throw away lines came from this fun and creative process!
At the same time, Eric Butts, was working out the music, being an accomplished rock musician made taking care of the writing, performing every instrument, recording, mixing and mastering the 17 original songs of the soundtrack very simple! This was accomplished in about two weeks time and since has sprung some popular tunes. He was most excited at the opportunity to do a full score for the movie, something he'd long wanted to do. Unfortunately, this came with little more than a month to go before the premier and gave Eric little time to do some learning, however, the 50 plus minutes of orchestral music turned out quite well, if not perfect!
All that was left now, were the sound FX. The problem was the premier was now two weeks away and Eric would still have to mix it all. Within the span of a week the sounds were gathered, edited and placed. Had this been any other movie than Zeppo, this would have been unacceptable, yet in this case it lends it's self to the "lame" charm of the picture.
The premier was held November 3rd 2007 at "The Kentucky Theater" in downtown Lexington Kentucky. The film was mixed on the 1st, checked on the 2nd and burned to DVD overnight, Eric never wanted to cut it this close, but like most works of art, it escaped!