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diversions:
Student has Academy
Award aspirations
By Jeanne Hoffa
On-line Forty-Niner
Audience response
to Cal State Long Beach film student Dawson Williams' 30-minute
film "Trade Day" has been so encouraging that for
the first-time writer/director is entering it in film festivals
across the country.
The film is a monumental
collaborative effort between faculty, students and industry
professionals who mostly donated their efforts. Writer's Guild
head Fay Kanin helped with the script, Oscar winner Richard
Anderson arranged the sound and Emmy-winning songwriter Mark
Jones composed the music. Faculty members, including department
head Sharon Blumenthal, scriptwriting teacher Phil Mishkin,
production instructor Steve Hubbert and 25 students, worked
as the crew. Universal Studios was impressed enough with the
project that they offered to donate the lot, provided Dawson
found a way to finance the $3 million dollar insurance policy.
The film is a story
of an early 1950s Alabama farmer named J.B. who brings his
grandson along to a monthly gathering of friends to trade
watches, pocketknives, music boxes and cans of syrup. The
playful bartering takes a sinister turn for J.B when someone
pulls out a gun to trade that was found in the local river.
The gun holds a painful secret that could hurt his family.
Dawson only began
fleshing out his filmmaking aspirations in the fall of 1999
by reading screenwriting handbooks. He then began sketching
out a few rough scripts. Already successful in business, with
an MBA from Emory University, he enrolled in Gary Prebula's
film analysis course, a move that was to prove prophetic.
He told Prebula about his story idea, then asked him to mentor
him in filmmaking. Prebula, a working writer, director and
producer in the industry who teaches at CSULB part time, agreed
and even produced "Trade Day."
"Hollywood
is not what I expected," Dawson said. "I thought
that since I had no experience and no power that I would just
be blown-off. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. I couldn't
have received more support, free information, assistance and
sound advice than I have received from ‘The Hollywood Set.'"
Dawson said that
he has not gotten where he is by thinking small or playing
it safe. He has Academy Award aspirations for "Trade
Day." To be considered for the "Live Action-Short"
category, the film has to win a major film festival's Best-of-Show,
or have a run in a real theater for admission for at least
three days, a minimum of twice each day.
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Photos
courtesy of Dawson Williams
CSULB
student Dawson Williams' 30 minute film, "Trade Day,"
is generating a buzz from audiences at film festivals.
Photos
courtesy of Dawson Williams
Actor
Joe Lambie stars as an Alabama farmer who deals with
finding a gun he thought he'd disposed of years ago.
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