Jess Fraizo, a UNO student and film maker originally from Davant, premiered her short film Aftermath at NOCCA Riverfront before a collection of movie-goers and family friends from the parish.

At the premier held on October 21, Fraizo—along with writing collaborator, editor and everything else on the film Trent Gillham—greeted the guests as they walked the red carpet stretched out to the NOCCA screening room.

“NOCCA let us come here and this is awesome because no one gets to do this,” Fraizo said just before the screen flickered on.

The majority of the short film was shot in locations readily available to the cast and crew, which in this case meant Fraizo’s home, her grandfather’s house boat, and a public playground, featured in the disaster sequence, most of which were in Plaquemines Parish. The cast worked for nothing but food, with the goal of putting the story onto the screen.

The film centers around the fallout of a large scale explosion, the source of which is never fully explained and the apocalyptic society that forms in the wake. The cameras follow one family, lead by a widowed father, as he attempts to keep his son and young daughter safe and fed in the now dangerous world, where no help is coming.

“We were on the house boat and we thought this would be the best place to survive,” Gillham said.

The conflict in the film focuses on a gang of outcasts, who begin kidnapping people and stealing supplies from other survivors in order to survive themselves. One scene, which was removed before final cut, even depicted the gang using the caged kidnapped victims as a source of food.

When the film finished and the included blooper reel had run, Fraizo and Gillham again met the public that had seen their completed work.

“I’m just so happy I finally got to see it,” Fraizo said. “It’s like closing that book.”

“It just makes us want to go on to the next project,” Gillham said.

The pair are already at work, putting together a trailer for their next work, which they hope to be more substantial, called Resistance.