Armed with latex, wax and a lot of beer, the two artists turned ordinary extras into zombies. As for what actually happens in Bad Date? The two directors are keeping tight-lipped; you’ll have to see for yourself.

Like Shaw and Childs, local filmmaker Justin Kelly appreciates the significant role that location and connections play in making a film. A seasoned local music-video and short-film director, he’s the mastermind behind videos for bands such as Hey Willpower (“Double Fantasy II,” which won Best Music Video at the New Langton Center for the Arts First Annual Music Video Awards in 2004) and Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes (“Strip Mall Glass”), to name a few.

You can tell Kelly bases a lot of his story ideas on the location – just take a look at his music videos. For “Double Fantasy II,” Kelly had access to a free hotel room in downtown San Francisco. How do you make a hotel look interesting? Get the kids from Hey Willpower to strip down to their skivvies and dance around the room, hallways, elevators … pretty much wherever the hotel staff wasn’t looking. Or for the Veronica Lipgloss video: Just gather a bunch of people and pole dance your way around a Muni bus, without permission of course. Lucky for Kelly, San Francisco’s legendary tolerance extends itself to half-naked hipsters dancing around a hotel/bus/whatever.

In Debris, a short film shot in San Francisco on 16mm, Kelly experiments with the surreal. Filmed on location at an industrial park, Kelly took one look at the place and thought of something we all might when faced with urban blight: flight attendants.

The film follows a disheveled group of young flight attendants as they race across an urban wasteland (and groove to music from Hey Willpower).

“In Debris, I have less of an idea of what’s going on [in the story]; more I wanted [a certain] feel, visual and landscape,” Kelly says.

With a couple of “practice” shorts and several music videos under his belt, it was soon time to put his talent to the test. His latest short film, Front, shot on super 16mm at a cost of roughly twenty thousand dollars, was filmed on location in his hometown in Southern California.

Shooting in your hometown carries with it several obvious benefits for the budget-conscious filmmaker. First, you have plenty of places to crash (and food to mooch from Mom). Second, knowing the lay of the land helps you avoid those pesky film permits. And third, if you’re from a town that’s blessed with a dried-up, barren riverbed, known as a wash, you’re gonna try your hardest to find a story there.

“I just took a bunch of weird ideas and threw them together and kind of made them work,” says Kelly.

For example, kids beating up perverts for cash, an infomercial featuring rednecks selling swords for $39.95, or 11-year-olds that hide in clothing racks, just because they’re there.

Justin Kelly

It’s a little bit comedy, a little bit camp, a little bit drama...and a little bit thriller. It’s about “being at that age where you have friend crushes, where sexuality isn’t really an issue yet, where you don’t really understand why you want to hang out with someone,” Kelly says.

From music video to film, Kelly credits his connections with his success. “Because the community is so small, it’s so much easier to network [here] than in LA. San Francisco is seven by seven [miles]. I think LA is like, seventy by seventy. There’s a lot more going on per square mile in San Francisco than in LA.”

So what’s next for our filmmakers? Once Shaw and Childs finish editing Bad Date, they plan to use their music connections to take the film on the road, possibly in support of another band. No plans to release the film on DVD, as they both firmly believe zombie movies are events in themselves, meant to be shared in public.

As for Kelly, he’ll be shopping Front around the festival circuit, with the hope that someone will fund his next project, a feature film. For more on Justin Kelly, go to denofhearts.com. For more information on Bad Date, visit baddatemovie.com.