Producer Sends Mobile Film School to new territory - Austin Business Journal, May 2006

Lisa McWilliams is hoping to get her show on the road.

For several years, the film producer -- whose credits include indie documentary "Before the Music Dies" -- has wanted to craft a nonprofit that could travel the country and teach rural residents about filmmaking. Now McWilliams says the project, dubbed the Mobile Film School, is poised to launch.

The school will operate two buses: one with a studio (including editing bays and camera equipment), and one with offices and a film resource library. McWilliams and other industry experts will act as the faculty and production crew. Students in each five-week session will produce a narrative film and a documentary, both of which will center on the students' hometown.

McWilliams hopes the school will accomplish several goals. Many people don't know about the plethora of available film production jobs, she says, and she wants to open their eyes to the career possibilities offered by film. She also hopes the school will re-energize its faculty, all professionals, through interaction with enthusiastic students. And she says the school will build connections to create a network of filmmakers who then might work together in the future.

"You never know when the best ideas are going to happen," McWilliams say, "and we get to be a conduit for those ideas."

McWilliams is currently raising money to get the program running. The school needs $1.75 million in start-up costs, on top of an annual budget of $1.25 million. In the next two or three years, she hopes to launch a film studio that would produce small movies for under $5 million, made through connections forged at the school. Profits from the studio would benefit the nonprofit.

The school's first session will take place this fall in Texas. Other stops will include rural areas i Florida, Georgia, upstate New York and Arkansas.

Bob Hudgins, director of the Texas Film Commission, says the Mobile Film School will generate more interest in the filmmaking process, which will in turn benefit Texas. The commission wholeheartedly supports the project, he says, but the school will face some challenges.

"Making a film is rarely a solo act. It's very collaborative process, as if done by committee," Hudgins says.

"It's going to be interesting to see how they're going to truncate that done to a real essential bit of information and go into these communities in a short period of time."

Jenny Robertson