Low and Behold

In some sense, everyone already knows the story: a hurricane hits the coastal U.S. People die. Houses are lost. Lives are completely rearranged. Some leave town to make a new start and some stay to pick up the pieces. Low and Behold not only explores this complex terrain; it was born out of it.

In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina wiped out the Gulf Coast. Barlow Jacobs lived in New Orleans and evacuated to his childhood home of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Like the rest of the city, he began to put the pieces back together. During that time, a family friend approached him about working as an insurance claims adjuster. Broke and unsure of when he could return to New Orleans, he took the position and worked for several months in the Gulf Coast, immersing himself in the culture of the post-hurricane Coastal South. Immediately aware of the potential, Barlow began working on a script that tells the story of a young man who goes to New Orleans to do insurance claims a few months after hurricane Katrina.

In February 2006, Barlow returned to New Orleans, with the plan of investing all the money he had made claim adjusting into a feature length film. He teamed up with Director and co-writer, Zack Godshall. Godshall is a Louisiana native growing up only two hours west of New Orleans in Lafayette. It was imperative to both Zack and Barlow that the cast and crew were from New Orleans. They believed having a team that had felt the full impact of Katrina would aid in bringing the story to life in the most authentic way possible.

By May 2006, just eight months after Katrina had devastated New Orleans, Low and Behold went into production.