Filmmaking Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Native W.Va. Filmmaker Combines Hollywood And Home

Jillian Howell began making movies as a grade schooler. The Putnam County native now works in Hollywood, but her passion is telling stories on film about West Virginians who inspire her.

Randy Yohe talked with the Disney production coordinator and documentary filmmaker about her show business start, her latest project and her drive to support Mountain State arts.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Yohe: It seems your passion for filmmaking began in Scott Depot, West Virginia at a young age, with a toy that my sister had as well. Tell me about that.

Howell: When I was seven, Santa Claus brought me a Barbie video camera. I made videos constantly with my dolls, and with my family that recorded straight to VHS. I taught myself stop animation with my brother. I was just constantly making things, and it wasn’t really until YouTube started in 2006, that I really started making things that other people were able to watch. I taught myself how to video edit on my mom’s Windows XP Movie Maker, and was able to start creating things to put on YouTube, and classmates were able to see them. I started entering video contests. In high school, I created Music Video Monday, which was also on our morning announcements that took off on the internet as well. There weren’t a lot of film opportunities for kids my age, there wasn’t a curriculum kind of tailored to it. It started with making my own opportunities.

Yohe: You’re now with Walt Disney Animation Studios in Los Angeles. Tell us about that job.

Howell: I got my first internship through West Virginia connections at Disney Parks internal ad agency, where I interned for a year and a half and then just kept pounding the pavement. I knew I wanted to work in animation production management, and didn’t know when I was in college that was a career path. I’ve been at Disney Animation since 2019. I started as a production assistant on Frozen II, and went on to be a production assistant, or as we call it, a PA, on Raya and the Last Dragon and then a production coordinator on some park attractions, Strange World and I’m now working on Wish.

Yohe: Even though you’re in Los Angeles, it seems your heart remains in West Virginia. You’re ready to debut a three-year-in-the-making documentary on your childhood best friend Zane, and that’s also the title. Tell us about his story.

Howell: I met Zane in fourth grade when he was seated next to me at Scott Teays Elementary School. I had never really had the opportunity to become friends with someone who had special needs and hadn’t really seen anyone fit into the mainstream. I feel like Zane was this bridge that connected what is a self-contained classroom to the mainstream classroom.

Zane is very unabashedly joyful, friendly and hilarious. He can make me laugh. I’ve always enjoyed every moment with him and sharing those stories with my family. I had been thinking about making a character piece on Zane, and decided to kind of just go for it. By the time that we scheduled the first interview, Zane had lost his job that he had for four years at Lowe’s. A very important thing about Zane is that he is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met. He loves working. He just lost his job to regular layoffs, it wasn’t anything that he did personally, so I think that made it even harder for him.

A key component in Zane’s story, and in Zane’s success, is his mom Anne. Anne was actually studying special needs before she even knew that Zane was going to be diagnosed with an intellectual disability. She has a doctorate in special education. She is his biggest advocate, and also an advocate for so many folks with special needs. Zane has a huge heart, and a lot of faith. I wanted to capture that really charming character, but also show his mom’s tenacity to be able to continue to move forward in a situation that is really frustrating. Eighty percent of folks with special needs are often unemployed, but they offer so much to the workforce. We just have to really give them a chance, and be willing to make some accommodations for that.

I just want people to fall in love with him. The best way I know how to do that is through film and through sharing his story.

Yohe: West Virginia has recently restored its film office and restored its film tax credit to help make the state globally competitive as a production site. What kind of impact do you think that that will have?

Howell: I think the ripple effect of having a film office in West Virginia is big. When you see West Virginia represented in media, in film, and television, you really become the ambassadors for the state. You are able to show off the state in a way that makes people respect our state and see what we have to offer. I think the more that we open the door to those opportunities, we’ll see our state continue to be respected and grow.

Yohe: Tell us about your online social hub, Shine On WV.

Howell: Once I started realizing there were so many West Virginians working in important, artistic fields, and we just weren’t talking about it, it was just kind of like household chatter. I decided we had to create a database of creative West Virginians, and give them a chance to tell their story and share their work. It’s been really tremendous to just kind of start to see the connections that we can make. I just really want to break down the barrier to that. It is great to have a career in the arts. It takes a lot of passion, a lot of patience, and figuring things out. I’m tired of hearing that art is not a career option. It just takes a lot of creativity to figure out how to pay your bills, and to also sustain that lifestyle.

Yohe: You’ve got a lot of irons in the artistic fire. Going forward, your personal career goals, I imagine will springboard from Zane, to what filmmaking end?

Howell: I think that my dream changes a lot, but I know that it involves producing films. I have several ideas of my own films that I want to make. I’m helping produce an indie feature right now. I have so many different passions that it used to feel impossible for them to all kind of align and come together. I’m starting to realize that I can kind of continue to create those opportunities for myself, even though it’s exhausting. I have set boundaries for myself to really kind of stop and self-analyze, rest and take care of myself. My husband will say I’m not great at it, but I have gotten a lot better at it.

Mountain State Native Talks Working In Hollywood On This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, Jillian Howell began making movies as a grade schooler. The Putnam County native now works in Hollywood, but her passion is telling stories on film about worthwhile West Virginians.

On this West Virginia Morning, Jillian Howell began making movies as a grade schooler. The Putnam County native now works in Hollywood, but her passion is telling stories on film about worthwhile West Virginians.

Randy Yohe talked with the Disney animation producer and documentary filmmaker about her show business start, her latest project and her drive to support Mountain State arts.

Also, in this show, the debate over the Pleasants Power Station isn’t just about the future of one power plant. As Curtis Tate reports, it’s about two.

And a foster parent identified problems within the system during testimony in front of the Interim Joint Committee on Children and Families. Emily Rice has more.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Concord University and Shepherd University.

Caroline MacGregor is our assistant news director and produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

State Filmmaking Groups Begin Organizing Statewide Job Workshops

Filmmakers and producers are organizing workshops to support a potential filmmaking workforce statewide.

A grip and lighting workshop is scheduled for late February in Morgantown as part of a partnership between the state’s film office and the West Virginia Filmmakers Guild. It’s the first that the office is organizing, with plans to sponsor similar workforce development workshops in places around the north-central region and the Eastern Panhandle.

“They just passed the tax credit this past July, so there’s a need for more grips and electricians to start working on more independent films that are coming into the state,” said Justin Owcar, West Virginia Filmmakers Guild President. “So we want to be able to help more people that would be interested in the industry and train them and give them the opportunity when these productions do come into the state.”

The film industry in West Virginia generated $120 million in wages and around 5,800 jobs with eight television series like Underground Marvels and Mountain Monsters being produced in-state throughout 2020 and 2021, according to the Motion Picture Association.

West Virginia Development Office Apprenticeship Coordinator Dave Lavender said attracting film crews to West Virginia is great for economic development, supporting local towns’ economies and creating new jobs during the filmmaking process.

“We really believe in trying to create opportunities here, for everyone in West Virginia, so that if somebody wants to work in film, and work in the creative industry, they can do it here, they don’t have to always be traveling to Atlanta to work,” Lavender said. “We want people to be able to be able to work and live and play in West Virginia as much as possible.”

The workshop is scheduled for Feb. 25 and 26. The office is also planning to sponsor a make-up workshop, run by television and film make-up artist John Caglione, at the Berkeley Springs Film Festival in March.

Sign-ups for the Morgantown workshop are currently available on the West Virginia Filmmakers Guild’s website.

Beckley Filmmakers Present Ambrosia, A Feature-Length Comedy

An old mansion in Beckley, West Virginia is the set of a new feature-length comedy. It’s a grassroots passion project for two Beckley filmmakers and a cast that’s almost entirely composed of West Virginians.

The film “Ambrosia” is a day-in-the-life story of the owner of the Ambrosia Inn, an up-scale bed and breakfast. On this particular day, there’s a dreadful storm on the horizon and the guests are all trapped inside.

Beckley filmmakers Shane Pierce and Dave Gravely wrote and directed the comedy. They’re not full-time filmmakers – but it’s not just a casual hobby either. Their shared interest in film goes way back.

“Shane and I met in high school through guitar, we had a guitar class together,” Gravely said. “We were just really interested in film, and it ate up most of our conversations.”

Eventually, they decided to try making their own films.

“We got together and we Googled ‘how do you write a script?’” Gravely recalled.

They named themselves Butter Chicken Pictures, in honor of the meal they shared on their first day of shooting their first short film.

On their first feature film in 2017, they brought Beckley photographer Saja Montague on as their producer.

“I was just totally unaware of what I was walking into,” Montague said. “And when I got there, I was like, ‘Man, this is weird.’ I didn’t know there are people like this in Beckley that were doing these cool things.”

When they decided to make their second film, they knew they wanted to shoot it in Beckley. The Ambrosia Inn was the perfect setting. The old coal baron’s mansion turned bed and breakfast was a sort of character in and of itself.

“It’s a very bizarre looking location, its architecture sort of sticks out, it’s kind of isolated, it has a big plot of land, and it kind of jumps up in all these strange directions,” Pierce said.

But making a film in Beckley, and in West Virginia in general, can be challenging.

Saja Montague

Actors in the film “Ambrosia” review the script before the camera rolls.

“There’s a practical barrier of like, well, I’d like to make a film. But there’s nobody else really in West Virginia right now making films, I don’t know how to do that,” Pierce said.

And there was the psychological barrier.

“I have an ambition. But I’m from West Virginia, and people who are from West Virginia don’t do those things,” Pierce continued. “And if they do them, they do them somewhere else. They move to New York and they move to LA and they go to film school.”

But Pierce said community support for their project outweighed the challenges.

“People are hungry for this stuff to happen here,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re involved with it. They see those crazy people across town with their camera crew and they’re filming some slapstick gag in the backyard of this mansion. It’s just, it’s just exciting.”

Gravely recalled an instance during the Ambrosia shoot when a neighbor started mowing his lawn right next to where they were filming. Since they couldn’t shoot the scene with the sound of the mower in the background, they had to ask him to shut it off, all the while anticipating the worst.

“So we go over and we talked to him, and he was excited to shut his mower off so we could shoot the scene,” Gravely said. “And I was just like, ‘Man, it feels really good to be in Beckley right now.’“

The production of Ambrosia was a state-wide collaboration, involving multiple generations of West Virginia filmmakers – like Danny Boyd, who started making films and acting in the 1980s. When Pierce and Gravely called Boyd for advice on their film, he eagerly offered his support. Boyd ended up acting in the movie, alongside an actress who had acted in his own movies back in the 80s.

“That’s one of the things I’m more proud of than almost anything else,” Gravely said. “Because we carried on the flame of something that started a long time ago.”

The directors also invited film students from Marshall University to intern on the Ambrosia set. Pierce says they wanted to show the interns it’s possible to make a film in West Virginia.

“You don’t have to go somewhere else to make a film,” he said. “It may be a little bit harder to do it here. But at the end of the day, you can do it, you can pull it off.”

With help from Mountain Craft Productions out of Fairmont, Butter Chicken Pictures spent about 2 weeks filming Ambrosia last summer. They recruited and hired actors, many of whom were not actually actors by trade.

“The way Shane and I like to do it is if there’s a certain personality that we find interesting in town, we’ll just say, how about you just be in the movie?” Gravely said.

“They kind of create their own personalities and their own characters that we honestly probably couldn’t have written,” Montague added. “And it adds that level of Beckley weirdness that I think we want to come through.”

One such character was David Sibray. He played Stanley Kublitz, a filmmaker and explorer staying at the Ambrosia Inn.

“Amusingly they wrote me into this,” Sibray said. “The character is, to some extent, myself.”

In real life, Sibray is the publisher of West Virginia Explorer Magazine. He’d acted a few times in high school and college, but he’d never done anything at the scale of Ambrosia.

“The first day of shooting was the hardest day,” he said. “I was almost in tears by the end of the day. You know, I’m 55. It was 10 o’clock at night and I had been there, I’m sure since 7am. And they were still going, we were all still going.”

Sibray, like most of the cast and crew, was taking time off work to shoot the film. And even though filming the movie was no vacation, Sibray says Ambrosia gave him the chance to try something he’d always felt inclined to but never pursued professionally.

“Discovering this part of myself again was – it was a breakthrough,” he said. “Now I’m an actor. I’ve always been an actor.”

Pierce says Ambrosia is just one part of a creative renaissance happening in Beckley right now.

“It’s like every couple of weeks you’re seeing new projects,” he said. “Something new is happening in Beckley.”

And although Ambrosia is still in the editing phase, Gravely, Pierce and Montague are already looking forward to the next film.

“You really go into it,” Montague said. “You become this family unit. And then it’s over. And it’s like, ‘what’s the next thing we can do?’ Because I want that feeling back.”

The film is set to debut at the Raleigh Playhouse and Theatre in Beckley later this spring.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to Inside Appalachia to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

Unique Partnership Brings Shakespeare Into W.Va. Homes

With theaters still closed last spring, West Virginia Public Broadcasting collaborated with West Virginia University’s School of Theater & Dance to create an opportunity for their students by filming a production of King Lear.

The film will be broadcast on WVPB channels starting March 13. To find the WVPB channel near you, visit wvpublic.org

Chris Schulz spoke with director Jerry McGonigal about the unique production process.

Schulz: Professor Jerry McGonigal, thank you so much for joining me today. Why King Lear of all the different plays that you could have put on?

Mcgonigle: It was supposed to be originally a part of our season. You know, we do five or six shows every year. Those are chosen for a lot of different reasons, which students we have, and what are the educational needs.

It was pithy, challenging, and it also created an opportunity for us to bring in a guest artist. So quite often, we like to bring in a professional actor to work alongside. Well, then COVID came, and it was pretty clear, it wasn’t going to be good in terms of public performance.

Schulz: You chose to do a full film production and treat this like a movie. What went into that decision?

Mcgonigle: I think even my colleagues would agree with me that I complicate things a lot, because I always feel like it’s the best experience for the students. And everybody around the country was facing the same thing. How do we give them a production experience, when we can’t even have an audience come in the theater? So I don’t really know why, except that ambition and the rise to a challenge. I don’t know, I thought it would be a lot more fun.

And over the last probably eight to 10 years, I’ve incorporated a lot more acting for the camera in our training for young actors. We also really steeped them in Shakespeare. Mainly because if you can handle the language of Shakespeare, you can handle almost anything. So I thought, ”My God, this is an opportunity to do both.” To bring all of the training from the camera class, and the Shakespeare class into one room.

Before you know it, I’m standing in a room with all the WNPB crew and cameras everywhere and microphones and lights, and the students are right in the middle of that doing Shakespeare in front of a camera. I mean, I don’t think it could be cooler than that. I just thought it was an incredible experience for them.

And these guys I’m working with, Larry and Aaron and Chuck and the gang. They’re just amazing. I trusted them every single bit of the way. And actually, that was one of the other things in terms of what happened in the room that was pretty special, too. John and Jason, the camera people, were right there with students, showing them how things worked. And the students were like, enthralled by it. And they were so patient. It was the perfect relationship of professionals and students. And I hope we get to do it again.

Schulz: What can you tell us about the production? I mean, how was it you know, with COVID restrictions, and then also the added requirements of filming?

Mcgonigle: It was crazy. We followed all of the guidelines that were in place for the Screen Actors Guild.

I never saw the actors’ faces perform the piece until the camera was rolling. We rehearsed for about four weeks in the fall on Zoom. And then we did five weeks of rehearsal to prepare for shooting where I staged it and had to figure out, Larry and I, the director of photography, consulting on how to shoot it, and how do I block it? But we did all that in masks.

The actors get on stage, we’re in the middle of a TV studio kind of feel. And then the assistant director says, “Okay, masks off.” Literally, I’m watching the monitor while they’re acting and for the first time I’m saying, “Oh, that’s the facial expression on their face while they’re acting.” I haven’t been able to see that.

There were probably 70 people interacting in and out of the room over the course of a week of shooting, including actors, technicians. We did not have one infection. We did not have one person.

Schulz: It’s been a year since you went through all that and all the filming. How are you feeling to see it next week on the screen?

Mcgonigle: I’m really excited. The post production period has been a real challenge too, composing music and sound effects. But when you put those finishing touches on and then there’s music, and then there’s sound effects. And you suddenly go, “Oh my God, this just came to life.” It’s really exciting.

It’s amazing that we made it to the end. We frankly thought that at any point, we could be deep into act five, and something could happen and we’d have to shut down and never get to finish it. So when we made it to the finish line, I was like “Oh my, this is amazing.”

So now to see it all put together is…There’s a rush that you get as a director when the audience comes at opening night, it’s mixed with incredible nerves. I get that rush when I see what we’ve cut together. And to see these some young actors put together some pretty fine performances. I’m proud of them.

Schulz: What do you think the audience is going to get from seeing this production and the story of King Lear?

McGonigle: Yeah, it’s about leadership. It’s about leadership that falls apart. It seemed kind of appropriate for today. It’s very much about the responsibility of leadership, it’s about the responsibility of passing on power, and giving up power, which is another theme in our world today.

But in some ways, it’s like a family drama. And we’re doing it in the midst of a pandemic, you know, that we’d never seen before, and it was kind of surreal. This king is going mad and we’re all struggling to breathe with our masks on while we’re making it. It just seemed kind of timely and appropriate.

One of the parts of this experience that I think will become even more important once this airs on TV: this is now accessible to students throughout West Virginia.

This is now something that was made here. I think it’s really good for West Virginia to see ourselves not just as a coal mining state or beautiful mountain state, but that we are also a state full of artists and that we can make something like this.

If I do a play at the Creative Arts Center, a little over 1,000 people got to see that play. This is limitless. We’re creating all kinds of resources for teachers. So there’s an educational component.

I’m just really excited about the idea, it really makes me happy inside to think about students in a classroom watching this or sitting at home with their parents, or even parents in the southern part of the state getting to see this. And I think it’s really good for our state to know that we can do this kind of thing.

Legislation to Reinstate the W.Va. Film Tax Credit Could Return in 2020

West Virginia’s film tax credit was eliminated by the West Virginia Legislature in 2018 after a legislative audit report deemed the credit as providing only “minimal economic impact.” But people who work in the film industry don’t agree. An attempt to resurrect the credit failed this past session, but supporters are hopeful it will make it through the next legislative session.

Robert Tinnell is a West Virginia filmmaker who was born and raised in Marion County. He’s been making movies professionally since 1980, and since 2005, he and his brother Jeffrey have been running a production company called Allegheny Image Factory out of the Morgantown area.

They’ve produced award-winning films, documentaries, music videos and commercials. One of their recent feature films was, Feast of the Seven Fishes based on Robert Tinnell’s graphic novel of the same name. The film featured actors Skyler Gisondo and Madison Iseman and was filmed entirely in West Virginia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeIWozecO50

Feast of the Seven Fishes will be available later this year but possibly under a new name. Tinnell said the film will likely be released under the title, 7 Fishes & Christmas ’83.

Tinnell said production of the film benefited greatly from West Virginia’s now-defunct film tax credit. He said the movie was able to be filmed and produced in-state, attracting actors and crew from the larger-film industry outside West Virginia thanks to incentive from the tax credit.

Now, since the credit was eliminated, Tinnell said it’s been harder to attract big productions to film in West Virginia.

“Stripping us of the tax credit, effectively disabled our ability to bring feature films or TV projects to West Virginia,” Tinnell said. “I mean, it’s that simple. Whether you agree with the tax incentive business model or not, the reality is, the industry and states, and even national governments, embrace the policy. And it simply is the cost of doing business.”

After losing the credit, Tinnell said it cost his production company two films and the potential of bringing about $4 million into the state.

“We say we want to diversify the state’s economy. We don’t want to just lean on extractive industries, it’s just too, up and down, and it’s putting all your eggs in one basket,” he said. “Here’s a really smart way to do it – and in a way that boosts not only the entertainment industry, but it’s just a great way to promote tourism.”

Del. Dianna Graves, R-Kanawha, discusses HB 2941 (reinstating the film investment tax credit) on the House floor on Feb. 27, 2019.

During the 2019 state Legislative session, Del. Dianna Graves, R-Kanawha, introduced a bill that would have reinstated the film tax credit – but with tweaks and adjustments based on the legislative audit report that made 12 recommendations if the credit were to be kept.

Graves has worked in the state’s film industry as both an accountant and producer, and she argues the tax credit was working but admits it did have problems, but problems she sought to fix with her bill.

“Even the audit admitted that it brought economic benefit to the state, it just didn’t think there was enough benefit to justify keeping it, well, then fine, let’s not get rid of it completely. It’s working. Let’s make it better. That was my goal,” she said.

Graves’ bill increased the cap of the film tax credit from $5 million to $10 million, and it would have required a film production company to spend at least $50,000 in-state before they would be eligible for the credit. After that, for every $100 spent, that production company could take home $27, but the remaining $73 would stay in-state.

Her bill managed to pass out of the House of Delegates but not without pushback. House Finance Chairman Del. Eric Householder, R-Berkeley, was one of 26 who voted against the bill.

Householder admits he’s not a fan of tax credits. He said they allow the government to pick economic winners and losers. He also argues the original film tax credit just wasn’t justifiable.

“In 10 years, only $8.6 million in tax credits were used,” Householder explained. “And if it’s such an attractive, competitive force, we would see more companies coming here, wanting to come here and take advantage of the tax credits, and it just wasn’t happening.”

He also felt Del. Graves’ bill didn’t make enough of the changes that were recommended by the audit.

“If she tightens all those up or takes those recommendations, I think it will pass the scrutiny,” he said. “Right now, I don’t foresee it happening since, remember, it was repealed in 2018. So, maybe in a year or so, maybe next legislative session, [it] might stand a better chance.”

Graves’ bill may have made it out of the House chamber last year, but it was never taken up by the Senate Finance Committee. In an emailed statement to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Senate Finance Chairman Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, said he also felt Graves didn’t make enough changes recommended in the audit report.

Like Blair and Householder, Graves identifies as a fiscal conservative, and she said she doesn’t often vote for tax credits but says the film tax credit is different.

“The West Virginia film tax credit; it functions much more like advertising expense than a traditional tax credit,” she explained. “We are trying to entice film companies and movie studios to come here and film. But instead of giving this money up front, like you do with advertising expense, we only give it if you come here. So, that means that our advertising expense has a 100 percent success rate.”

Graves said the film tax credit helps to diversify the state’s economy. She plans to reintroduce her bill during the 2020 state Legislative session.

She said she hopes she can communicate to the Senate in particular of the credit’s benefits, increase the cap, and get it signed by the governor.

**Editor’s Note: This article was edited on Jun. 28, 2019 to add the correct spelling of Robert Tinnell’s last name.