By Sunayana Prabhu
The Monmouth County Board of County Commissioners awarded a contract to Adam Worth, an Emmy award-winning filmmaker, for a documentary about Super Storm Sandy, a hurricane that pummeled the Jersey Shore in October 2012.
At their regular public meeting Sept. 20, the commissioners approved a resolution to award $40,840 to Worth for historic preservation, archival and educational purposes, an idea initiated by Monmouth County Clerk Christine Giordano Hanlon.
“We are approaching the 10-year anniversary of Super Storm Sandy and it’s really important to me to be collecting and preserving the information about what happened so that future generations can learn from the experience and understand,” Hanlon said, emphasizing the fact that a lot of history was getting lost because people did not have any paper records of the event and so “the storytelling aspect has become even more important in this digital world.”
As per the contract, Worth’s production company, Cine Selector LLC, based in Tinton Falls, will provide the director, cinematographer, production assistants, camera operator and drone and aeriel footage, specific to Monmouth County, for the documentary project.
“In the interest of kind of keeping a record of all the historical things that have happened in the last 20 years, mainly Sandy, Christine Hanlon decided to document the stories of the residents and the first responders, the county workers and the citizens who were affected by” the storm, said Worth.
He has been filming, researching, interviewing people and visiting places that were in the eye of the storm, including residents and businesses directly impacted. He is documenting the “grassroot organizations that sprung up during the aftermath, as well as shady contractors” who did not follow through with the rebuilds, said Worth.
The documentary will also delve into ways the storm altered the makeup of towns in Monmouth County. Worth used an example from Union Beach where “small, modest homes that were destroyed” were rebuilt as “much larger, much more expensive homes…, changing the landscape of the county and the people who can afford to live in these small communities.”
On-camera interviews offering a perspective on how the storm affected Monmouth County will include Hanlon; Monmouth county Sheriff Shaun Golden; Monmouth County Commissioner Director Thomas A. Arnone; Teri O’Connor, Monmouth County administrator; Michael Bascom, Emergency Management coordinator for Neptune; Ed Johnson, former mayor of Asbury Park; and Union Beach Mayor Charles Cocuzza. Tom Harrington from the Urban Coast Institute has also been interviewed for his climate and scientific perspective on the storm and its aftermath.
Worth will also be including personal footage of Sandy hitting the coast a decade ago, and from first responders, some of which will be seen for the first time in the film. Sandy hit at a time when drone use wasn’t as prevalent as it is today, so Worth said the “footage that the sheriff’s office, the emergency management services took from a helicopter to survey the damage of Sandy in the days after the storm” is invaluable in showing the extent of the impact.
The documentary is taking shape with the guidance of Melissa Ziobro, specialist professor in public history at Monmouth University and the Monmouth County Historical Association, which Worth called a “valuable resource.” Hanlon “is helping craft a story that is engaging in a film format,” Worth said.
“I think the film is all the better because the team that made the film is some of the best researchers and historians from the county.”
Born and raised in Monmouth County himself, Worth experienced Sandy firsthand. “I just went out with my camera and started shooting,” he said, while most of Monmouth and Ocean counties were struggling with power outages, flooded roadways and downed trees. He filmed the aftermath of the hurricane, from the resilience of residents amidst loss to the miraculous rescues by first responders. His 7-minute edited movie of that foot- age won an Emmy award in 2014 for video journalism.
Worth won two additional Emmy awards, in 2018 for short form editing and cinematography, but modestly attributes his success to the efforts of the county and support of the community in shaping his career. Growing up in Asbury Park he attended Red Bank Regional High School where he studied creative writing for three years. A chance encounter while working at Luigi’s Pizzeria in Little Silver as a delivery person landed him his first film job, as a cameraman with Monmouth Park in West Long Branch.
“I would deliver pizza to the television control room at the Monmouth Park racetrack and there was a director there named Joe Montana,” Worth said. “I would bother him for a job as a camera guy for two summers in a row. I would deliver pizza every week and he finally gave me a job as a camera guy. That was how I got started filming professionally.”
He noted that his work is personal and special because places he grew up in Monmouth County “like Asbury park or Red Bank are very special places, they celebrate our culture of creativity, more like a big city normally would, and I think a lot of people like me are able to make a living in a creative field via film or music or visual arts here,” he said. “I’ve been super lucky.”
While the main purpose of the documentary is for archival and educational purposes for citizens or teachers, it is also for future generations to learn “in an engaging way that will stand the test of time,” Worth said, noting that the people and places of Monmouth County are “not just audio files or paper transcripts.”
The documentary will premiere Oct. 28 at Monmouth University.
The article originally appeared in the October 6 – 12, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
