The bloody streaks crusting her clothes tell a savage tale, but I soon discover that Kathryn has been splattered with a mixture of golden syrup, milk and food colouring, among other ingredients.

    Raspberry jam is used if you prefer your blood a little more congealed, and you can fake pulpy brain quite effectively with gelatin-based desserts such as blancmange.

    Horror fan Kathryn Toolan has already written her own guide for serial killers and was a natural choice to play an undead child in zombie horror Dead Meat. She was one of many primary school children recruited to stagger around bleak hills covered in gore.

    The movie is being made on a minute budget in the wilds of Co Leitrim and its use of digital technology could be an inspiration to other filmmakers seeking to make the most of the varied landscapes of Northern Ireland and the Republic.

    The horror begins when a mad cow escapes mass slaughter and attacks a farmer who becomes injected with a virus. The spreading disease transforms the inhabitants of the Irish countryside into flesh-eating zombies.

    The windswept hills around Ballinamore, Fenagh and Keshcarrigan in Co Leitrim were ideal as a location for the shoot, according to David Muyllaert, who plays shovel-wielding grave digger Desmond.

    “It’s very good for a horror film - lots of marshland, bare trees, very good ruins, very atmospheric,” he says.

    David has never acted before but soon settled into the role after some initial nervousness.

    Fellow actor Eoin Whelan is a relatively old hand at this sort of thing. He played the same character, Cathal, in Dead Meat’s precedessor, an award-winning video short by the director 22-year-old Conor McMahon.

    Conor wrote and directed The Braineater as his final year graduate film and it went on to win Best Short at Sitges International Fantasy Film Festival.

    In the more ambitious full-length Dead Meat, an Englishman and his Spanish girlfriend Helena (Marián Araujo) unwittingly arrive in rural Ireland in the midst of a zombie epidemic.

    The Englishman falls prey to the ravening undead and his girlfriend is left to wander the countryside, until she falls in with grave digger Desmond who guides her to what she thinks is the sanctuary of his cottage. As the danger grows, the only prospect of hope is offered by hurley stick-wielding Cathal.

    The film industry is watching the progress of Dead Meat with interest as it is one of the first beneficiaries of the Irish Film Board’s Micro Budget initiatives.

    The movie is funded with a €100,000 loan under a scheme that aims to encourage high-risk innovative projects developed on digital camera.

    The digital approach allows fresh young talent to break into the industry and makes it easier to film in remote locations such as Leitrim - or Fermanagh. Big budget productions have to send their film to London for processing and it can take until Thursday to see the results of Monday’s work. With digital, the process is much faster and repairing equipment far from the big city is less of a problem.

    Everyone involved in Dead Meat is hoping it will inject fresh ideas into the Irish film canon.

    “Irish films all talk about the same issues over and over again,” lead actress Marián says. “It’s great to see young Irish directors doing risky things.”

    Director Conor has made around 30 short films on equipment such as camcorders - “but only about five I’d show to anybody”. These cover a variety of genres, but his first love is horror.

    Conor prefers the challenge of writing and directing horror features along with dreaming up the special effects (“raspberry jam”) and the sounds (“squashed fruit”).