Additionally, a few of the scenes could have been shortened just a tad to cut down on the overall length, but hey, not every zombie movie can be 63 minutes long!

All jesting aside, however, there is one sequence that I really hope the director will consider deleting altogether. As I mentioned before, Vida comes back to life to terrorize her daughter-in-law about mid-movie. When Jean sees her zombified mother-in-law for the first time, she passes out and has to be taken to her room. Roger than leaves for work and tells his mother to be nice to Jeanie and make her something to eat. Vida, determined to be evil, makes tapioca pudding for Jean and, midway through cooking it, throws a piece of her desiccated flesh into the pudding. After that, it's an arduous waiting game as Jean accepts the pudding from her mother-in-law and begins to eat it. Eventually she bites into the flesh and begins throwing up everywhere, after which time Vida decides to throw up with her. (Think Problem Child 2 at the tilt-a-whirl and you get the general idea, though there isn't as much projectile vomiting!)

The reason this entire scene really needs to be cut is for five reasons:

There, now that the air has been cleared, let me re-iterate that the genius of this movie lies in its simplicity. The overall plot is good, and it is edited in a way that easily flows between the three story-lines. The acting ranges from decent to amazing, with only one side character who's acting was detrimental. Luckily their part was small enough not to detract very much from the film. Meanwhile, the acting of the lead actors was spot on, with especially enjoyable performances from Stephen B. Thomas as Billy Jump, Mike Bennett as Beat Ovin, and Scott Graham as Alexander Keaton. (Wonder if Scott is related to Ryan?) However, the role that utterly amazed me came from actress Kara Webb, as she did an amazingly polished and sincere job of portraying the misunderstood goth, Zoey. (I understand that Ms. Webb was originally supposed to simply be the make-up artist in this production. Good call to Mr. Graham on choosing to give her a major on-screen role!)

Special effects don't really come into play for most of the movie, (though the decapitation scene had just the right mix of semi gross-out and humor) so botched CGI or green screen is a non-issue. As with the other categories, Mr. Graham was able to take what he had and make it work beautifully; in this case, a homebuilt PC using Adobe Premiere and After Effects

As to the ending, well I don't want to give too much of it away because the twists and turns at the end really add to the overall appeal. The whole "Boy I never saw that coming!" is a vital factor in fully enjoying Livelihood. I will say that all three plot-lines tie up nicely in the end; Billy Jump is back on top again, and lets just say that all those who had-it-coming get it in the end… for the most part. The conclusion really beefed up the appeal to this film and turned a good film into a great one.

Visual Look
For the most part, the camera work was quite decent and it was shot solely with a Sony VX1000. The style of the movie was fast paced, and, appropriately, there were a good deal of handheld shots. I should add that their home-built steadicam worked great and I would personally love to see this rig in action. There were one or two scenes that looked a little washed out (i.e. pale undead faces against a light colored background), but all in all the color was pretty consistent. Ryan Graham labored over the footage for a year in After Effects color correcting this film, and it shows. The lighting was pretty good, though its always hard to get studio quality lighting when the shot goes from room-to-room-to-room in a scene, so it's not so much of an issue as it would be if the film relied on an abundance of still shots. When you look at the amount of dynamic camerawork in Livelihood, it really brings out the beauty of the editing job.

Use of Audio
I loved the music in Livelihood. You will find all of your requisite creep-tracks in this flick, but there is just the right amount of humor and light-hearted ambience; it goes with the film like coffee and donuts! Once again I must give props to Mr. Graham for composing the music. It looks like we have quite the renaissance film-maker here. (Editor's Note: In fact, the songs Mr. Graham composed for this bloody film are so catchy that I've been listening to the signature song, 'Raise the Dead', on repeat since I received Mr. Graham's press kit recently!)

Livelihood's audio was recorded using an Oktava MC012 mic and Samson mixpad. The mic mountings were another case where necessity was the mother of invention (you can get a glimpse of this rigging at their homepage)