Apocalypse... Later

Back in May I was walking around Whitman campus contemplating what the f*ck to do after the impending apocalypse (aka graduation), when I received a fortuitous call from a friend and fellow filmmaker Frank Spiro. I met Frank during my semester abroad in Prague, where we participated in a life-changing filmmaking program at FAMU. Frank told me he was working on writing and directing a film to submit to the Louisiana Film Prize.

THE FILM: Apocalpyse... Later.
THE PLOT: Five friends on a camping trip discover the world will end... in 50 years.
THE STAKES: $50,000 (or... more realistically: making it into the Top 20)

Within minutes, I was 100% on-board to fly down to New Orleans the next month to help make this film happen. In a last-minute switcheroo, I wound up serving as the Director of Photography. While still in NOLA Frank and I mapped out the whole film, ran five separate errands to Best Buy, and spent hours doing test shots on his A7s.

We shot the film over a period of four days in Lake Claiborne State Park, primarily between the hours of 8pm to 4am, with the occasional day shoots from noon to 4pm. We boated all ten of us, plus equipment, back and forth to primitive campsites in the middle of the night. We made our very own Indiana Jones torch, based on a comic I found after searching "how to make a torch" on Google (thank you, Google). And we ended the shoot by filming the sunrise over the lake.

I could tell endless stories about the blast we had on set, but suffice it to say that those four days were the best possible scenario for 10 sleep-deprived, loopy and jazzed filmmakers.

The best surprise of all was receiving the call two months later that Apocalypse... Later was selected as one of the 21 films to compete for the LA Film Prize!

We are the youngest group of filmmakers ever to make it into the festival, and the only film this year with a budget under $5,000. The odds of winning are realistically low, but given that we never expected to make it this far, so we are proud as hell just to be attending this weekend.

UPDATES TO COME.

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Check out some of Jess Rocco's sweet photos from the set: