My name is Frederick April. I am a cinematographer by profession and was the closest friend of the

master film director Thomas Naroth. We worked together throughout college on short films

and eventually collaborated on his internationally famous zombie movies, beginning with their

billion hands released in 2007. Their billion hands took Thomas three years to write and shoot.

It looked at a zombie plague from the perspectives of 11 different characters in a montage of

grizzly violence and carefully crafted human drama. The movie was a seamless dazzle, beginning

with the plague's freakish beginnings in a condemned Serbian church and progressing through

agonizing war room arguments which forced the American government to scorch the earth in

desperation. From a paranoid senator with early signs of Alzheimer's to a woman whose hopes

for freedom from an abusive husband were pinned on the growing chaos, the characters felt

real and their points of view felt unique. Thomas's ultimate thesis was that mortal fear,

global upheaval and anarchy were the universe's naturally cleansing agents both historically necessary

and revocable. It was his pure expertise with cinema though that offered the moment to moment

gruesome thrills. His zombies were awful to look at and their violence was unpredictable.

The results of it positively horrifying. The camera had never had such dark fascination with

zombie violence and the threatened humanity of those who were forced to engage in it. The

ending left viewers queasy with its gore even as it compelled them with its opulence of imagination

as hundreds of the living dead sinking into the ocean grabbed eventually at the flailing

survivors of a gunboat wreck. With this film Thomas Narath launched himself to success and

start him having produced a masterpiece in a genre he had no real interest in other than for

its metaphorical value. It became clear to me during the filming that this was a man who could

make any story into something memorable through the force of his intellect and his great observation

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