Cockroach: CGI on a bug-sized budget

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, re-imagined as a romantic fantasy and produced for $20,000? An unlikely but very real scenario for director Luke Eve, who had to find a way to deliver it.

Raen Fraser’s script Cockroach, about a man who dies on his wedding day and is reincarnated as the above-mentioned insect, desperate to get the attention of his widow, is one of the three winners at the second John Jameson Productions competition.

As part of the whiskey company’s screen initiative, execution of the short film was commissioned to More Sauce’s producer Christopher Seeto and director Luke Eve, whose short Australian Summer won at Tropfest 2005.

Seeto and Eve were given $20,000 and the freedom to make creative decisions. But Cockroach is the kind of story that, while short and sweet on paper, it is nothing but in terms of the production challenges it implies.