The movie, Remember Me, will premier Nov. 21 at the News & Herald Tavern in Winnsboro, where ghost-storytellers will regale the dinner audience before the show begins.

Media arts professor Walt Hanclosky conceived the idea for Remember Me as he ate dinner and listened to a waiter recount a ghost story about the tavern. Transforming the idea into a professional-quality film would take months of preparation and involved an extraordinary commitment of time and effort by several USC students and faculty.

“We had students editing tape until 4 a.m.; one day we were shooting for 16 hours—it was a total immersion experience,” Hanclosky said.

The 22-minute feature focuses on David James (theatre MFA student Fabio Pires), a novelist hoping to cure his writer’s block by soaking up the charm of a small Southern town. He meets a lovely but mysterious young woman, Anna Riley (theatre MFA student Kay Allmand), in the hotel bar. An evening of romance follows as James comes to realize his lover’s otherworldly quality.

Hanclosky teamed up with theatre professor Richard Jennings to assemble a cast for the film, then recruited media arts students for technical support. Stephanie Harris, a media arts graduate student who completed her studies this past May, wrote the script. Theatre student Jennifer Fenely choreographed the story. Media arts graduate student Tom Andrews directed Remember Me; fellow student Chris Marshall used digital video to shoot the movie.

In the first week of May Session, students got a crash course in lighting and audio; they shot the movie in the second week, and edited the tape in the third, creating special effects for the “ghost” scenes.

The movie was shot in the tavern as well as Winnsboro’s Pinetree Community Theatre and Songbird Manor Bed and Breakfast.

The result? Well, it can’t compete with Hollywood’s special effects, but Remember Me has just been juried into the Marco Island Film Festival, where it will be shown Nov. 8.
Terry Vickers of the Winnsboro Chamber of Commerce wants to treat the premier as though it were the opening of a major film.

“We’re encouraging people to have dinner at the News & Herald Tavern, then enjoy the film and perhaps spend the night at the Songbird Manor,” she said. “Mainly, we’re hoping to have some fun. There won’t be champagne, but we will have a wine and cheese reception.”

For the cast and support team, the premier of Remember Me is the fruition of countless hours of work.

“An experience like this challenges the students far more than they’ve ever been challenged,” Hanclosky said.
The challenges required a lot of collaboration, too. Jeff Francis, an audio engineering the School of Music, helped out. One of the student’s sisters, Mary Yarborough, composed and performed a piano piece for one of the movie’s key scenes.

Hanclosky and Jennings have discussed offering another May Session course that would produce a collection of film shorts; they’ve also considered other possible collaborations between theatre and media arts. For now, though, they’re looking forward to sharing Remember Me—and the talents of their students—with a wider audience.

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