Meet Casey
Since childhood, Casey Rogerson ’20 could often be seen peering through the lens of his camcorder. The cinephile son of oenophile parents, Casey always preferred horror, but his student work at Lawrenceville, where he co-created the sketch-based SNLville, also underscored his distinctive sense of humor.
Still, it was only after a wine-tasting at a family vacation in France, where a sommelier described a wine as having a “bloody” characteristic, that the three elements came together in Casey’s mind. And just as Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre produce a fine Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Terroir — written and directed by Casey — is an expressive blend that won for Best Student Short at the 25th annual Screamfest 2025 film festival.
Shot over three days in October 2023 at a South Jersey winery, Terroir (TerroirFilm.com) features a group of friends who return to a French vineyard to find the quality of its pinot noir to be implausibly improved. The reason lies in the way wine takes on the taste of its terroir, or natural environment — which, in this case, is bloody terrifying.
Casey, who studied film theory at Columbia, is now a directing fellow at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. “I think there’s just something beautiful about doing something while you’re still learning how to do it,” Casey told the Columbia Daily Spectator. “And learning by doing.”