Two Lynchburg-area filmmakers enter work in annual Joedance film festival

Austin Smith, a Forest native now living and working in Los Angeles, and Jerod Wood, a wedding and commercial videographer in Lynchburg, both sent short films to the annual festival.

Unlike many other film festivals, which offer multiple awards for multiple categories, Joedance has just one overall award for best film — and Smith’s 15-minute short film, “WORM RADIO,” took the prize.

Wood’s short film is entitled “Resilience.”

The Joedance film festival is a nonprofit raising money and awareness for pediatric cancer research at Atrium Health Levine Children’s through the annual event, according to the organization’s website. The festival took place Aug. 4 to 6 in Charlotte.

Both Smith and Wood’s entries were the result of collaborative, dedicated team efforts.

A 2020 graduate of Regent University in Virginia Beach, Smith has made a few other short films and worked on the crew of Hulu’s recent miniseries “Dopesick,” about the impacts and origins of the ongoing opioid crisis. WORM RADIO was the longest film Smith had made, clocking in wat 15 minutes and 14 seconds. He had submitted previous work to online-based film festivals, which won him some videography gear that was used for WORM RADIO, but Joedance was the largest film festival Smith had entered.

The attention-catching title was by design, Smith said, ultimately suggested by his assistant director/one of his best friends. The name is a reference to the worm hole featured in the sci-fi story.

“WORM RADIO” takes viewers to outer space alongside the film’s main character, a girl who finds a wormhole. Before the girl has a chance to explore the planet the wormhole takes her to, though, she is unexpectedly thrown back to earth — yet she is not completely disconnected from adventure. The wormhole communicates with her through her Walkman radio. To allow this wormhole to be more powerful, the heroine designs a machine incorporating her car radio, Walkman, and other tech to maintain the connection between herself, the foreign planet, and earth. The machine she creates comes to be called the “worm radio.”

“It’s kind of like a play on words of a hand radio, except this one is for a wormhole and a radio put together,” Smith said.

The short film also brings representation for young girls as sci-fi heroes, a deeply underrepresented population within this genre particularly. The mother of Smith’s starring actress commented on how meaningful the representation was, Smith said.

The crew of about 25, plus the one and only actor, completed filming in about five days between four or five Virginia locations. Editing and post-production took another four months. All in all, “WORM RADIO” represents about nine months of work from conception through completion, Smith said. His cast and crew were all people he knew, many of them based in Virginia.

Smith’s approach to filming is more visual than writing-based. In his process, writing tends to come after cinematography and visual conceptions.

“I’m not a good writer,” Smith said. “If I don’t make something that looks exciting, my writing’s not going to hold it up. My strategy turned into, ‘Let me just come up with concepts or scenes that look really cool, and then the story, try to make it as best as possible with the skills I have.’”

Although he said he enjoys watching more traditional dramas as an art consumer, the sci-fi genre is what comes naturally to Smith as a creator.

“Two years ago, I would have been like, ‘Nah, I don’t do sci-fi.’ But I think I actually only do sci-fi, now that I think about it,” Smith said. “My typical go-to style is something that looks totally different than the real world, but not too crazy. Typically, sci-fi’s the answer to those types of looks.”

Smith’s previous short films include “Coal Mine” and “Kung Pow.” Two-word titles, he noted, unconsciously became his trend.

Following success at Joedance, “WORM RADIO” was picked up by a sci-fi company called Dust, a company which Smith said he has followed for many years. It will stream Smith’s short film on its platforms beginning in February.

Most of all, Smith said he hopes this short film’s success propels his crew members’ careers upward. Getting editing jobs in this industry is almost a given, but more specialized positions on film crews are harder and more competitive to come by, sometimes possible only through networking and lucky connections.

“I want the film to be successful to help out the crew,” Smith said. “The reason that I’m pushed to do that is because I’ve been in editing since I was 12 years old. Getting a job as an editor is a lot easier than getting a job, say, as a production designer, or a screenwriter, or assistant director, stuff like that.”

Wood has made his career as a wedding videographer, as well as doing commercials for various businesses and organizations through his business, Golden Hour Visuals. He has entered a couple other short films in various film festivals, but Joedance was the first one Wood could attend in-person due to COVID-19.

Just more than nine minutes long, “Resilience” doubled as a short biopic and a commercial for Lancaster Children’s Home, an organization in Lancaster, South Carolina. It tells the story of a boy who went through the children’s home growing up, shows the hardships and triumphs he endured in his life, and how he overcame the circumstances. The film is based on the true life story of a boy who grew up through Lancaster Children’s Home and now is in college, going for a doctorate degree focused on foster care. Additional story elements were inspired by the lives of other children in a similar situation.

“It’s kind of a really cool study where he went through this program, it really helped him, and now he’s trying to give back to that same community,” Wood said.

With his business partner Luke Fletcher — who wrote, produced, and edited the short film in addition to serving as director of photography — Wood said it took about a year to complete the project from start to finish. Although it took a while, the end result was worth it.

The crew consisted of about 10 people and another 10 who formed the main cast. Extras were also part of the short film, and some days drew 30 to 40 people on set — especially when parents of child actors joined, according to Wood.

“Resilience” was filmed in South Carolina, and the cast and crew came from locations including Lynchburg, North Carolina, and one from New York.

Lancaster Children’s Home has since been using the short film to raise awareness and money for the organization to continue helping kids in need, Wood said. Screened at conferences, churches, and other such places, Wood said many viewers reported being moved to tears — which is just what the film was going for.

“As a cast and crew, we really tried to create the life, and kind of make it a biopic and make it feel like you connected with this kid,” Wood said. “A lot of the cast, what we would do is we’d be hanging out with these kids, and trying to let them have fun, let them do natural stuff to make the film feel really real, and capture real moments. That was a big focus for us on this film, was just to really try and highlight this boy’s life and make you understand what he went through.”

While not his first time entering a project in a film festival, Joedance had an extra personal meaning for Wood: his own father died of cancer a few years ago, he said, so the mission of Joedance Film Festival to raise awareness and money for cancer research was special to him.

“It feels more meaningful going to a festival where it’s not just celebrating film and the arts, but also trying to raise awareness and trying to raise money for such an important cause,” Wood said.

“Resilience” is available on Vimeo and currently is in about nine other film festivals, according to Wood.