Moving Pictures: Mobile Film School Brings Big Dreams to Small Towns - Austin Monthly, May 2006

A restless kid with big dreams escapes his dead-end hometown to become a Hollywood star - it's the classic L.A. fairy tale. But Lisa McWilliams believes some of the nation's best stories are just waiting to be told in America's small towns. A few years ago, McWilliams, who has produced documentaries and features for PBS, A&E, the History Channel, Bravo, Sundance Channel and HGTV, helped director Jay Craven with his program for fledgling filmmakers in the boonies of northwestern Vermont. There she met a group of youth who inspired her.

"I met these kids who were so bright. They were smart, they were well-read, they were eager, and probably most appealing of all, they were untainted by this 'L.A. thing.' But they didn't really see themselves being able to be part of this [filmmaking] community," says McWilliams. "I thought, I bet there are people all over this country that are like that. And the kinds of stories we can get from the darkest reaches of this county will be so much more interesting than what we have now."

Enter the Mobile Film School, McWilliams' nonprofit script-to-screen program designed to reach under-served students in rural areas. Starting this fall, the school's two buses -- one with editing suites and production equipment, the other with a resource library and staff offices -- will travel to rural communities to offer immersion workshops in documentary filmmaking, narrative filmmaking and acting. Led by a board of seasoned film professionals and aided by a host of celebrity volunteers, the school aims to give the brightest new voices from the least likely places an opportunity to tell their stories on film.

Austin's growth as the "Third Coast" for filmmaking proves there are lots of great stories to tell in smaller communities, says McWilliams. "Not that it's a small town, but Austin wasn't always in the top 10 places to make movies. But the people who were working here valued themselves... Some of the stalwart filmmakers who put Austin on the map wanted to work from home.

"I don't expect to create a town this size in the little places I go around the country, but I do want to inspire people to create this in their communities."

Visit www.mobilefilmschool.org for information.

Jess Carter Forkner