In the VO Studio for "The Long Night"

The Film Thing

Or: On Going Forward Back Home

I’m really lucky to get to do film in my hometown.

Like, really lucky. 

But that was never the plan.

Here’s the thing: my wife and I left Columbus about seven years ago to move to Atlanta to “do the film thing” which, in this case, was acting. We had agents and stuff. We were booking things in Atlanta even though we were living in Columbus. So, we thought we needed to be a little closer to the metro area in order to book more things. At least I think that was the idea. I know we were looking for a change. I’m not sure what we thought would be different… maybe we just needed to see what would happen. So, we move. We roll the dice.

Things go pretty well, I guess. Sara Lynn books some TV, I book some TV and also get pretty heavily into the audiobook narrator thing. The plan was working for the most part. 

The part that wasn’t working (also known as “the least part”) was that while we had pretty good day jobs between bookings, these jobs weren’t what we moved to Atlanta to do. They were a way to pay the bills. We observed from the lives of our pals that’s sort of the actor’s life in Atlanta: day gigs in some other field while you and your agent pursue bookings. If you aren’t independently wealthy (we aren’t), you find a job that won’t fire you whenever you book a show. That’s just the way it was, so we didn’t think much about it. 

But major life events have a way of snapping your life into focus.

This time is was our wedding.

Actually, it was the reception. 

My new wife and I had been trying to dance to “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It was the one song Sara Lynn really wanted to dance to and there we were… not dancing. Instead we had been stopped outside the dance floor by Paul Pierce to have a little chat about. We were talking about the film industry in Columbus. I didn’t realize there was a film industry in Columbus. Paul told us that there isn’t one yet but the wind and the wizards all predict that it’s coming and he was hoping that we could be a part of it. I believe that is when we were first offered the job to create with Paul what would become Springer Film Institute. I say ‘believe” because Sara Lynn insisted we get out on the dance floor as soon as possible and politely but firmly ended the conversation so we could get back out there… but by then the song was over. There would be no dancing to “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” Lots of other dancing, just not that song.

Today, whenever we hear “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” we stop and dance. I think we’ll be trying to get that dance back for the rest of our lives.

Anyway, we promised Paul we would get back to him about the whole “film in Columbus thing.” Our wedding was in November and we did get back to him sometime in January. What we learned from Paul kind of changed our tune and later changed the current course of our new life together for the better.

We learned that Columbus, our little hometown, was all grown up and had become serious about film. We learned that there was a program in place to fund filmmakers and that major studios and indy pictures were going to try their hands at shooting some projects in Columbus. Paul offered us a chance to make film our new “day job” and we took it. It was a terrifying, exciting time then as we put together plans for leaving the life we built together in Atlanta to go back home and try something new. We honestly weren’t sure if it was going to be a step forward or back at the time but we new it was something different. We left our hometown to pursue a change and as counterintuitive as it seemed, we were now going back home for an even bigger change.

Turns out that we weren’t going back to our hometown. We were going forward to a new, if familiar, place. And pretty soon after we settled in, we realized how much better it was to get to go to work together. To share an office. To be a team at home (still newlyweds remember) and at work. We also got to produce a cool miniseries written by a Columbus screenwriter, directed by, crewed by and starring local Columbus filmmakers. It’s called Grounds and it’s really good.

And within those early days, Sara Lynn and I finally got to be in a movie together called The Long Night. Not just in the movie together, but we have a scene together. I can’t tell you how cool it is to go to set with your wife but yeah…it’s freaking cool. 

Which brings us back to today.

We’ve been in Atlanta together this past week, staying in the house we got married in (which belongs to our friends now, who are also newlyweds), to screen Grounds, a Columbus film, at an Atlanta film festival. We are staying an extra couple of days because we also have to do some ADR (voiceover) for The Long Night while we’re here. We were originally asked to come to Los Angeles for the session, but the producers were nice enough to let us do the voiceover at a studio here.

So today I will be at Crawford Media, one of my favorite studios ever, to do voiceover in Atlanta for a production team based in Los Angeles for a film that will be distributed worldwide but was filmed… in Columbus. 

In my little hometown.

Lucky.