How many people are involved in the development of a typical Survival Zombie script?
The process is more complex than it may seem. First there is a survey, typically made by the commercial that closes the event, and that brings together possible places where to develop the scenes, places that the city council makes available, and the basic sites such as check-in, a spot for the initial scene and whatnot. Then, if the creative screenwriter visits the town, there is a second round of proposals regarding the locations. Since the screenwriter usually has more experience and control over the game design, he can discard locations offered by the city council that commercial himself might have considered valid. Further, there is a team that proposes scenes. As a rule of thumb, it is the screenwriter who selects the different scenes that are going to be created. Also, the Event Director or the General Director can include his “touch”, as vehicles or “extras” as special initial scenes, such as… bonzos, or a crush of vehicles if the budget or occasion requires it. Finally, it is common for a designer to supervise the screenwriter. He can also visit the town. His responsibility is to handle the flow of players, control queues, and ensure everyone has a good time. As you can see it is a real teamwork.

How many revisions are carried out during the process of building the script?
Many. It is a continuous process, since the data is changing, the forecast of players, the budget, the requests of the town hall and the commercial, the police restrictions and even last minute changes of places where scenes are happening. Not to mention personnel changes: You assign characters to specific actors who then can’t work that day – and it’s time to change again.

What aspects are essential to have considered when you sit down to write a Survival Z script?
The town, its forbidden areas (large bottlenecks, troubled neighborhoods, remote areas, excess of traffic, etc.). Also the forecast of players, the date and weather, and the things that the city council will allow us to do or not.

Is the number of players considered in relation to the resources used in the script? How do you compensate in humble populations?
Currently, after 7 years, the players are mostly local, in addition to the super fans who follow us every weekend, so big cities have more players as a rule. The exception is the areas we do not visit that often. When we go is a full house, because they have been waiting for months to make an event in the area.

A good script includes tests that make people to use their brain. Or eat it.

How are the relationships between a screenwriter and production, who has to manufacture or locate the materials that the screenwriter imagines? Do they veto?
Complicated Screenwriters often fail to meet deadlines because they are also assigned scripts with little time or have many projects at once. This shortens production time to prepare everything and discards things or does not prepare well. We have found a balance by having the screenwriter prepare the material together, and in person, with production. And it seems to work quite well.

How important is the location to make a good script?
Very much. There are towns that are scary without putting zombies. Other than with 100 zombies you get to set it. The little ones let us do everything, like turning off the municipal lighting, something that the players love, and in the big cities, everything is restrictions, of all kinds. But since each event is unique and exclusive with a script created for the occasion, the truth is that we don’t care (laughs).

To what extent, is the experience gained in previous Survivals important?
It’s everything. It helps us to manage problems, dispersions, queues, and it also helps to adapt of the script to the game, position and distance between actors, etcetera. All this is learnt with “trial and error”, event after event. There are scriptwriters who do not learn and have a short life cycle. If they repeat a mistake three times, they have not learned and are dismissed as game designers, even if they write good stories. Survival zombie has a very demanding public and is our responsibility to meet those expectations. Although sometimes they make it very difficult!

Are adjustments or micro adjustments made when the event is already running, based on player feedback?
No, they are made based on the movement of players, not their opinions. Within the game they are irrelevant, or there is no room to change anything if they are not liking it, which is rare.

What kind of places does a screenwriter of Survival Zombie prefers?. A cruise ship, a shopping center, a town, a big city? Small controlled places, or large open areas?

A small town with narrow and labyrinthine streets. This is the perfect scenario for a Survival Zombie. But we do our best with what we have.

The actors, most zombies, are carefully orchestrated in the script

Do you have a star script that you can identify as a clear Number One, a winner, of all the editions celebrated, one that you look up as a reference for a good script?
I, as general manager, would tell you that this one is mine 🙂 The first ones settled the bases from where we learned everything. But it is not true. With two hundred and sixty scripts it is impossible to know which one worked best or which one people liked best. People talk about the 2014 editions as the best, because it is true that they were the first major zombie events in Spain and tge things we did then were the first time they were done or seen. Like putting a real helicopter at dawn, crush scrapping cars with tanks, tie players to the lampposts to be eaten by zombies, shoot with a tank to a horde, burn specialists … and nobody expected it or knew what we were going to do in those first efforts. Everything that has come after it has been observed under that len, and they are complicated to overcome it although we still keeps doing it, such as when we had Arnold Schwarzenegert in an initial scene, or when we infected Madrid’s Warner Park , or its metro network, Poble Espanyol in Barcelona, ​​Santander and Donostia. The truth is that we have broken too many milestones. It is hard to stay on top but somehow… we still break the limit from time to time.