A start on moving on in the world
Posted by The Skyliner on November 18th, 2009Kyra Alexander
Staff Writer
Lights, Camera, Action!
Nathan Willis, graduate of North Greenville University with a BA in Broadcast Media, co-directed and was the director of photography of a short film called All the Missing Pieces.
Willis, co-owner of A Beautiful Friendship Productions, is an award-winning director and cinematographer for the short film After Noon. Willis has worked on the crew of numerous films including Appalachian Dreams and Elizabeth Guinness. Healso produced and directed a series of AIDS awareness films with William Aughtry in Lilongwe, Malawi.
“The film was 15 minutes long. At the premiere we had over 250 people,” Willis said.
The movie was about Adam, a young man leaving home to start a new adventure. Adam recounts his life as a child, growing up without a grandfather as he is searching through his belongings with his best friend.
Every time Adam would get caught taking something that used to belong to his grandfather, he’d get a lecture from his grandmother, which would usually devolve into a story about his grandfather. As a grown man, he walks the streets of his hometown for the last time, and the stories about his grandfather begin to come to life. Adam recalls the stories he has heard from his grandmother and the old men in the barbershop, stories about how his grandfather was a great man who lived life in a grand way. In an attempt to live life the way his grandfather did,
Adam decides before he leaves he must endure his greatest fear: telling Megan he loves her.
“We [Willis and I] decided the film needed to be about change, which in one way or another every good story is about,” Aughtry, director, said. “Only then did the idea of paralleling my life with that of my grandfather arise.”
“The first day of shooting I got a call that my grandmother had died. I realized she would want me to be doing what I loved: making movies,” Willis said. “I directed with a different mindset for the remainder of the shoot.”
All the Missing Pieces was filmed over an eight-day period in Greer, Greenville and Landrum.
“The film was well put together and the story line was touching,” Lindsay Ross, senior theatre, said.
“We are now in the process of entering the film into film festivals around the world, but we’re mostly concentrating on film festivals in the south. After we run the festival circuit we will begin selling the DVD,” Willis said.
“As far as next projects go, we are finalists for the South Carolina Film Commission Production Grant,” Willis said. “The grant gives $100,000 to the winner to make a film about whatever they want to.”
If you weren’t able to make it to the premiere they will be holding random screenings here and there in the upstate within the next couple of months.
“This film is dedicated to the grandfathers of the World War II generation,” Aughtry said.
Tags: Fall 2009, Vol. 109 - Issue 10