We recently connected with Collins White and have shared our conversation below.
Collins, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
As a film director, the biggest milestone you can achieve in your early career is directing your first feature. For the past few years that’s basically been my only new years resolution, and this past year I had the privilege of directing “Christmas in Mistletoe,” a feature film shot in Tryon, NC and Greer, SC and set to be released holiday season this year.
One of the things that has made this film special to me is the opportunity it represented for the upstate film community. In the past two years I’ve personally been involved in a handful of features that were filmed in SC, but in each of those cases the majority of the crew was from LA or Atlanta, and the SC based crew basically served to cover the gaps. For Christmas in Mistletoe, almost the entire crew were base in and around the upstate of South Carolina and the majority of the cast was based regionally. As a film community we’re often starved of opportunities to do something on this scale and the opportunities we get are often self funded and speculative. In this case we were able to bring a fully funded feature to the upstate with a distribution company attached.
In addition to being a first feature for me, it’s also my first opportunity to direct a Christmas film. My name in this industry has been made on the back of horror short films (Perfidia, 1301, 37 Ghosts) and while I’ve also directed comedies (The Birthday Butterfly, The Weekly Telegram, I Married an Alien), I’ve never had the opportunity to do a Christmas film, so it was an exciting opportunity to take a style I’ve refined over years of work in horror, and adapt it to a family Christmas film. It’s something fresh in the genre and I think the audience is going to love the result!
Collins, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I got my love for film during my senior year of high school where I directed a Star Wars spoof video for one of my class projects. I had always been one of the artistic kids and the ability to combine music, images, writing, acting, music and all other sub genres of art into a single medium enthralled me.
From there I went on to earn a MA in Film and Video Production, and through my studies I refined my voice as an artist, and immediately after graduating in 2011 I founded Other Vision Studios, a Greenville based film and video production company though which I anticipated launching full time into narrative film work.
Well, like most people I had to take a slight detour. What I didn’t realize was how difficult it is to land narrative film work. It’s one thing to do it on the weekends with your friends, but to do it as a business is another matter entirely, and so I pivoted into commercial video. I was fortunate enough to be able to do that full time and as my only job, it gave me ample opportunity to work with local business owner, many of whom became long time clients and friends and remain so to this day. This also provided me plenty of opportunities to get behind the camera and in the editing suite and further refine my voice as a filmmaker. The principles I learned in college were re-enforced by real world application.
Shortly thereafter I stepped up as a Director of Photography, the person on the film crew most responsible for the overall look of the film. I found myself directing the crew side on a number of shorts and features and I got to refine a visual style that I still take with me to this day. I rooted the visuals in core principles and a relational story telling philosophy that views the camera and the shot choices as a primary story-telling element. It’s the philosophy that underscores my work as a director to this day.
Eventually I started to feel that there was a lot of creativity energy in me that I wasn’t able to express as a Director of Photography. I knew this industry could stretch my abilities in more than just camera work and shot selection but as a story teller and a leader so I transitioned into directing and haven’t really looked back.
As a director I really found my comfort zone. There’s a certain level of chaos intrinsic to a film set, and I found myself adept at handling it. It also allowed me to express more control over the stories and really craft compelling moments into my films. From here I feel like an artist, fully expressing my ideas through the stories we enshrine with film.
I still work in almost every level of production. I still have my list of corporate clients that I partner with, and when I do I sort of let my artistic ego take a back seat and focus on their needs more than anything else. What message are they trying to convey, what results do they want to achieve, what’s their end goal? At the end of the day one of the most important things for me on a commercial production is that my client is happy with the videos we’re making for them, and answering those questions is key to delivering a pleasing result. My experience over many years doing odd corporate jobs means that I’m really flexible in that space and able to adapt to the specific needs of my client.
This journey has also taken me into the music video scene, and that’s been a trip! We’ve partnered with rappers, youth choirs, a cellist, dance groups, and a comedy troupe to create a wide variety of music videos. They’re so much fun. It’s almost like you have an abstract work of art and you’re giving some extra solidity to it, and so the sky is the limit with what you can do with them and collaborating with other creatives makes for a really engaging and stimulating environment.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My goal is to fill the world with stories. They don’t have to be mine, in fact I love directing films written by other people and partnering with producers to bring their vision to life.
Another phrase that sort of resonated with me is “adding to the public consciousness.” We maybe take it for granted, because we experience it every day, but there’s a bit of a shared consciousness between people. To make it less abstract if I say “may the force be with you,” you would immediately know what I’m referencing, even if you haven’t seen the film, and in that reference is a collection of feelings and deeper meanings the flood forth with just the utterance of that phrase. I’d like to add something to the public consciousness like that, and film seems like the best way to do it.
On a professional level I want to see the upstate of South Carolina grow as a film community. Whenever I hear of a film wanting to film here, I want to be a part of making that experience good for those filmmakers in whatever capacity they can use me so that they will know we have a good crew and great people here and that they can come back at any time and expect to be greeted with warmth and professionalism. I also want to help other filmmakers develop their skills and their voice. You ask to grab coffee with me and pick my brain about this industry, the answer is always yes… assuming we can find a date that works for both of us.
Personally, my biggest goal has been to direct a feature, and I achieved that this past year. For the first time in a long time I didn’t have “direct a feature” as my new years resolution ’cause I had already done it. In the immediate future, it’s all about doing it again, and again, and getting that sort of machine turning so that we have a platform to tell the sort of stories we want to tell. Long term, I’d love to direct a Star Wars film. It’s fairly obvious that I’m a huge Star Wars fan, it was massively important in shaping me as a filmmaker and now that Disney is committed to making more of them I’d like to be a part of that. I know I have a long way to go, before I’d even be a candidate, but that’s the dream. An Oscar on my mantel wouldn’t be a bad way to sign off my career either ;)
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
That’s a really big question and one that can have a lot of answers.
Starting big picture, we need a pathway for investment. I think that in the upstate we pride ourselves on being patrons of the arts, but I also think that film is a left behind when it comes to that equation. Consider that a million dollars is widely considered to be a low budget feature film and that most local filmmakers have never even had 1% of that budget and it becomes pretty clear that we’re currently operating under a pretty low ceiling. That’s a shame really because film’s can be a huge boon for the local economy. Study after study shows that a thriving film industry can revitalize a community not just from the production itself which has the potential to engage with every local industry, but from the tourism afterward. One thing South Carolina has struggled with is its film tax incentive structure, but that might be changing soon, so the opportunity for film investment is growing, but we still need to find ways to open up those investment paths.
And in a similar vein, once we get into production, we rely on the local community for hospitality, locations, props, costumes, food, name it. So businesses in the local area have opportunities to partner up with films and provide some ancillary services while we’re in production. It really can be a win-win in those situations, but film productions can be chaotic, so anyone interested in doing that would need to be prepared for some tight, rapidly changing schedules.
On a personal level, supporting local filmmakers can be as simple as watching their films. We make these for you, so seeing a packed out audience at a premiere, or seeing that view count on YouTube go up is tantamount to professional validation to us. If you want to go the extra mile, give us a like, or a review or follow us on social media. Almost everyone in this industry is in a constant existential crisis, so having a random person drop by and tell us that our work matters is more valuable than you could possibly imagine.
Finally encourage your kids to watch films and maybe even consider this as a future career. We are always looking for new talent in this area, and the future is trending positive so if you’ve got a child that’s considering a career in film, give them a friendly push and support them in it. It’s a cutthroat field, with more than its fair share of struggles, but it’s also one of the most rewarding careers I can imagine.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.collinsabbottwhite.me
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collinsabbottwhite
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OtherVisionStudios/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OtherVisionStudio
- Other: www.othervisionstudios.com
https://www.instagram.com/othervisionstudios/
https://imdb.me/collinsabbottwhite
https://www.linkedin.com/in/greenvillefilmmaker/
Image Credits
Collins Abbott White
Johnathan Baty
Cat Borovicka
Jessica Berggrun