When Michael Williams was a high school student in the early 2000s, he made a hobby of shooting short comical skits and dramas with his friends.
That hobby inspired him to begin creating his own movies that have shown in theaters worldwide.
Today, Williams hopes to revamp his business, Shendopen Productions, in his hometown and hopefully begin fundraising for a $700,000 queer sci-fi comedy film.
“I was making films on Hi8 cameras just with my friends, using people in my youth group, using family and just making really crazy stuff,” Williams said.
In 2004, Williams submitted a music video of “Amazing Grace” to the Tupelo Film Festival competition, featuring a drug-addicted lead character. The video ended up being featured at the festival, and Williams felt inspired to pursue the career further.
“It was Pat Rasberry who ran the Tupelo Film Festival, and she took a chance on me,” Williams said. “I found out later that some people didn’t want to accept my film because it was rough, but she said they should accept it, and ‘This kid has talent.’”
Since beginning his career as a filmmaker, Williams has worked as a camera assistant and videographer on films and commercials nationwide. Over the years, Williams has gone from imitating others’ work to telling more self-reflective stories, showing his own life experiences.
“I think a lot of that comes with also that I was in the closet at the time, and I was religious,” Williams said. “I wasn’t fully into myself as I am now. Since my second feature, my storytelling has changed a lot.”
After being recognized at the Tupelo Film Festival in 2004, Williams attended Mississippi State University for one year in 2005 before transferring to the University of Southern Mississippi for a bachelor’s degree in cinema and video studies.
He received his first job as a camera assistant in 2007, working on a film titled Chasing The White Dragon for Kat Philips, a Florida-based director.
“It was like a really difficult job, and a really scary job,” Williams said. “But it led to me being a camera assistant for about 10 years while also being a filmmaker.”
From there, Williams graduated from USM in 2009 and founded Shendopen near downtown West Point, obtaining work to shoot commercials for clients and videography for weddings and other films.
In 2014, however, Williams began working on his first solo venture with a few of his colleagues titled “OzLand,” a $50,000 film envisioning a post-apocalyptic world where three main characters find a copy of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by Lyman Frank Baum.
That film went on to day view in Hollywood theaters in 2015 and played across the country, including in West Point and at the Malco Columbus Theater.
Just a year later, Williams went on to direct his next film, “The Atoning,” a supernatural drama about a family set in a small town, which released in 2018.
Williams said he has used his surroundings in Mississippi and the South to tell his stories, filming in old houses, churches and landscapes throughout Mississippi to set the tones and settings of his films.
“I’m extremely inspired by Mississippi, my hometown, the people here, both the good and the bad and everything in between,” he said. “It’s important to be somewhere where I feel creatively grounded and inspired.”
After taking a few years off to focus on his writing skills, Williams has finished writing two films, Rosemary” a thriller set in the South, and Out in The Open, a queer-themed comedy sci-fi film.
“I started writing a Little Miss Sunshine style queer comedy set in Mississippi with drag queens and aliens, and it’s based off my own personal experience in Mississippi as a queer person, without the aliens, but the aliens are very metaphorical to the story,” Williams said.
As Williams puts his scripts and pitches together, he is also reopening his production studio next year, when he hopes to add writing workshops and services for clients as he pushes his own work forward.
“I’m going to be adding an element of Shendopen that helps people develop stories from the page,” Williams said. “I’ll either help to write scripts for people or help them workshop their own ideas and create a collaborative aspect of the business.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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