Nexus' Sam Southward on Life After The End

Nexus director Sam Southward has finally unveiled his post-apocalyptic film, After The End (above), to the public after a rigorous tour on the film festival circuit. It's captured the hearts of creatives and jurors at international award shows - and for good reason, it's a hoot.

shots caught up with Southward to find out just how he mastered the art of comedy, what he loves a good post-apocalypse world and what he's learnt from his two lead characters. 

Where did the inspiration for After The End come from?

After the End is my grad film from the National Film & Television School (NFTS). I wanted to do something post-apocalyptic for some time as I love the visuals you can create in a destroyed world, but I also feel that it can be used as an interesting lens to talk about our own time.

I love comedy and find it such a great way to write. When it's done well, it provokes such a positive reaction from the audience but can also deliver a strong message. At the time I began writing it, there hadn’t really been a humorous take on life after some kind of apocalyptic event, so I used this as the starting point. Without being too specific, I decided to have our apocalypse bought about by mankind itself. The film then becomes a microcosm of the destruction of mankind ironically repeating itself again, with no lessons learned.

And why did you decide to use animation for this film?

I love that animation allows complete control, even more so than live action as you are making everything from scratch. I can actually show the viewers the exact visuals I have in my head exactly without compromising and I think that's pretty amazing. In a lot of my work, I mix live action and CG animation as I really enjoy blurring the lines between real life and CG elements; it's like magic but without the need for a beard or a pointy hat.

Does animation filmmaking particularly interest you and which animated spots, if any, inspire you?

While I do have my own visual style, I am not particularly precious about it as a director. I think my voice is much more about a tone and humour and because of this, I am always going to mix techniques and approaches and try to create something new. This also makes it more interesting for me creatively.

There is so much amazing animation being produced at the moment I think it's a great time for me to be joining the industry. I take inspiration from everywhere but it was fantastic getting signed to Nexus alongside my long time heroes, Smith and Foulkes. I've always loved their work.


Although you use animation, the characters are very believable. How did you ensure that their mannerisms, body language and personalities were as 3D and realistic as possible? 

When I first began to imagine these characters, I could see them and hear them. This vision only became clearer as we went through script development and into casting. I steer ideas but I really think it's important to keep it quite fluid and let things develop naturally; that way the characters can become more fleshed out as it progresses.

Before we started animating, we did the voice recording session. We had two amazingly-talented actors that really took the characters into a whole new dimension. Even at that point in the production, you could already feel the drama and emotion. When we moved into the animation stage, all of our animators were incredible and added so much to the performance of the characters, after briefing everyone in as much detail as I could, I encouraged everyone to be experimental and have fun, that is when a lot of the real detail and mannerisms started to develop.

What was the most challenging aspect of the project?

The technique used to create the film is live action miniature sets, lit and shot in the real world with CG characters animated and composited on top. The team I had was absolutely amazing and worked incredible hard. Once we had shot the back plates we began the animation, two fully lip-synced characters and over 200 shots, a really mammoth amount of work! A lot of our animators worked remotely and were based all around the world. I would wake up in the UK, send out my feedback from the previous day, work a full day up until 9 or 10pm and then our animators in America and Brazil would wake up and start sending though their work to review, which basically meant we had a 24 hour production. I was sending emails right up to going to sleep. It was absolutely exhausting but everyone was so talented and worked so hard it allowed us to complete such a large amount of work. I am as equally as proud of how well the team worked together as I am of the finished film.


Comedy is known to be notoriously hard to convey on screen. Why did you decide to create a comedic piece and how did you approach this genre?

I love comedy and the reaction it provokes from the audience but I also think that other than just laughing it is great for getting the audience to empathise with the characters.

It can be hard and I think the biggest lesson I learnt while making the film is to trust my instincts on what I think is funny. If you put something in there and it works, you have to remain confident with it.

A longer interview with Southward on his YDA win will be out in the next issue of shots #165.