Conceptualised as a pure personal experiment that no one would ever see, Rapture bloated and grew into a beast far beyond my original intentions. It's an ode to low quality late 70s/early 80s action flicks, with more than a dash of Carpenter too, that imagines a dark future for Nimbus, a character originally appearing in a short film I made with friends as a teenager.
The idea with Rapture was to recapture a more youthful spirit of filmmaking like how we made the original Nimbus outing, restricting ourselves to a first draft screenplay, a mostly non-actor cast and no proper planning (no storyboards, no shotlists etc) and we would often be location scouting on the day or at most the evening before shooting. As a very enthusiastic planner, it was my idea of Hell, but led to a result that I think accurately captures the spirit we intended.
It's dumb as a box of frogs but hopefully good fun!
I also ended up experimenting with 2D animation, something I've always wanted to explore deeper than my work has currently allowed, by making a short one minute prequel to the film that establishes the story so far. It premiered alongside the film at a short film celebration I curated at the ArtHouse Crouch End in London.
5 years since Judgement Day caused the collapse of polite society, RONALD FIREHEART finds himself a washed up drifter. Abandoned by God and living on the fringes of a city he once fought to protect, the ex-superhero has become lost...and bloodthirsty! Can his former Sensei, SEBASTIAN BLADE pull him back into the fight against the evil AUDITOR's tyrannical reign or is this hero just one more victim of the RAPTURE?
PRE-RELEASE
SHORT FILM
CREDITS
CREW
Directed/Edited by JJ Eringa.
Written/Produced by Sean Wade, George Hobart & JJ Eringa.
Original Score by Sean Wade (with additional music and production by Dave Eringa).
CAST
George Hobart as Ronald Fireheart/Nimbus
Kevin Stemp as Vincent Goar/The Auditor
Najib Mutebi as Sebastian Blade
Will Jansen as The Fallen Saviour
(Full cast in on-screen credits)
