The Apology Service 

Luke Pilgrim (Director/ Cinematographer) & Brad Kennedy (Producer/ Assistant Director)

“When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.” – Steven Spielberg

We created the short film, The Apology Service. The film follows a young man in the near future, whose closest friend is a quiet robot.  Throughout the movie, he struggles to maintain his high position in a personalized apology firm after experiencing romantic visions of a friendly coworker.

While set against a futuristic backdrop, this film is a social commentary on the detachment and lack of meaningful interaction that already exists in society today. We have more technology than ever to be able to communicate across the globe, yet we struggle with a one-on-one conversation without checking our phones at least once. It also touches on our interpretations or misinterpretations of “identity” as well as our uncanny ability to deceive ourselves. The protagonist is a loner named Jackson. Through him, we’re able to observe the effects of living an isolated lifestyle.  

Because filmmaking is a collaborative art, we decided to pool our efforts to make one film that showcased both of our individual strengths as well as the strength of our creative partnership.  We started co-writing the script in October of 2014. From there we successfully raised our budget of $5,000 through the crowd-funding site, Kickstarter.com.  During pre-production, we continued with re-writes, securing locations, casting actors, filming test shots, and storyboarding. Principle photography lasted seven days and we immediately entered post-production, editing the film over the next six months.

We were inspired by the science-fiction motifs of films such as Her, In Time, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Gattaca.  We also drew formal and conceptual influences from Jason Reitman’s 2009 film, Up in the Air, which follows main character, Ryan Bingham, as he travels across the US to fire employees for various corporations.   Likewise, we gathered influence from academic sources such as Mondrian and the De Stijl movement. The primary colors and angular geometric shapes helped form our minimalist set designs. 

This satirical film tells a redemptive story about a man learning to bridge the technological and social gap.  Our hope is that audiences will connect with Jackson in his journey and that the narrative we set out to create translates from the page to the screen.

Running Time: 20 minutes                    www.TheApologyService.com