Planning of the plot and zombie depiction in my film

Setting and locations

I have decided to choose the zombie apocalypse scenario, and like in 'I am Legend' my film will begin during the apocalypse rather than depict the beginning and spread of the outbreak. However I will include hints to explain how the world got into the current situation, such as newspaper articles as well as short scenes depicting mass evacuation and skirmishes between the law enforcement and the infected during the opening credits.
This, therefore means that I will have to find several derelict urban areas for my locations, again like in the abandoned New York in the film adaptation of 'I am Legend' to show how the outbreak has led to the breakdown of society.
However, I also want to make my locations to show signs of conflict and destruction, as if the military have bombed some areas in order to kill off the zombies, so I will have to find buildings that are derelict, or heaps of rubble for some scenes.
For example, an abandoned park with various litter and overgrown vegetation would be ideal, as I will also be applying splashes of fake blood and fake body parts to give an impression of wide-scale death.

I will therefore title my short film as 'Deadscape' as it is a relatively unused name by any other productions and I came up with the name by combining the words 'Dead' and 'Landscape' as the majority of my film will focus on the wide scale death and the deserted landscape of a 'dead' urban landscape.

Zombie Depiction

The zombies in my film will be the result of an infection like in modern films as opposed to the traditional voodoo zombie, allowing my film to be a zombie apocalypse scenario as the virus has been passed on to thousands of people.
For their speed and agility they will be somewhere between Romero's shambling monsters and running zombies like in the 'Dawn of the Dead' remake, so they are fast enough to pose a threat yet incapable to flat-out sprinting. The zombies will be acted out by some of my friends so they will have to perform a sort of shambling jog or speed-walk, as I personally do not think that dead people capable of sprinting is believable for my target audience.
As for appearance, I will make my zombies have some degree of mutation like in recent computer games, however this will have to be limited as I do not have access to professional prosthetics. Instead I will have to do what I can to my actors with make up, liquid latex and useful equipment from costume shops.
Finally my actors will have to wear old, torn and dirty clothes, as zombies in films are barely conscious of their appearance and only seem to care about eating and infecting humans. I will have to dress my actors in a range of different clothes to show what occupations the infected people may have had when bit, such as soldiers, doctor or office workers.