Breakup Armageddon
By Staff Writer Sophia Pezzini
A group of Boston University College of Communication students featured breakups and zombie-like chases in their short film, “Breakup Armageddon.”
Co-directors and BU COM juniors Janice Lee and John Sanderson were assigned a final project for their film production class involving the full production of a movie no more than 10 minutes long. The result was “Breakup Armageddon.”
This title currently stands as a working title as they hope to change it to “something less dorky,” Lee said. The crew completed production on Sunday.
The short film is the story of a girl who has anxiety about rejection. A zombie-like mob of men, and a few women, chase her and try to “break up with her,” according to the film’s Facebook page.
“With the rise of the zombie genre, it was the most relevant idea,” Sanderson said. He said he wanted them to act like a zombie group in pursuit would act.
The idea for the plot was a collective effort and was, “based on one of the crew member’s personal experiences,” Sanderson said.
Lee said the metaphor for the film was meant to be a “commentary on the idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.”
The group wanted to highlight the point in a friendship when a woman gets “dumped” by a man she is not really dating, Lee said. She said that the story line, though, takes a supernatural twist.
The group filmed the mob scenes of the movie in different locations around the city.
Directors of photography, COM senior Sean Devin and junior Andrea Chrunyk, followed a crowd of actors from the Screen Actors Guild around landmarks such as Exchange Place in the financial district.
The crew filmed the entirety of “Breakup Armageddon” with rolls of 35-millimeter color film, which presented them with some serious limitations, Lee and Sanderson said.
The expense of funding film, instead of digital, was inhibiting, Lee said. She said that while the students did not need to buy their own equipment, they did need to buy their own film – color film costs about $100 per roll.
One roll of film makes 10 to 11 minutes of a movie, and “thankfully,” Lee said, BU funds their editing programming, which costs $150 per hour to transfer.
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