Personal Production Note by FRANCIS KUZLER

Working on After the Apocalypse as Production Manager and Still Photographer was a blast. It gave me the opportunity to incorporate both organizational and creative skills while being intimately involved in bringing a friend’s, Yasuaki Nakajima’s, vision to life. Of course, as an independent, low-budget, guerilla-style feature, we encountered producing obstacles (line producing, administrative, authoritarian) of the kind that you’d never see on a larger production. Things like showing up to a location only to find that Third Watch was there shooting that day...legally...presented some scheduling problems, and by the end of the shoot, we had quite a good relationship with several local law enforcement agencies who fortunately for us never actually communicated with each other. In the end, no harm no foul. More importantly, the most striking thing to me now is that this movie could never be made today. And by that, I’m not simply pointing to the government lock-down mentality that is encroaching on our freedoms law-by-law, or to the fact that all of our locations are gone, but to the change in sensibilities in New York and abroad. I truly think that this movie is one of those that came in under the wire of an old age. It’s allegories, story and style (with so much credit going to Yas and DP Carolyn Macartney) mark a previous process for indie filmmaking.