Owasson JJ Willis is enjoying newfound success in his early moviemaking career.
Willis, a 19-year-old sophomore studying creative media production at the University of Oklahoma, wrote and directed a new short film that premiered on YouTube this month.
Cherokee Nation's Owasso film studio, which hosted a dedication ceremony on Friday, is bringing the glitz and glamor of Hollywood to Oklahoma.
The 2021 Owasso High School graduate released “Textbook” on Friday, Aug. 5, and held a private screening with close friends and family the day prior.
“It was a fun process,” said Willis, who devoted the last year to working on the project. “Now that it’s finally out, published and done, it’s very exciting; I’m ready for people to see it.”
The 12-minute, coming-of-age film depicts a day in the life of a college student struggling to fit in and find a sense of purpose. The movie gets its title from the protagonist’s efforts to ascribe a textbook definition to his ambiguous life journey.
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“It’s semi-autobiographical,” Willis said. “It’s just about the interactions that he has throughout the day, the opportunities for connection with other people and the ways he either fails or succeeds at grasping onto those possibilities.
Willis wrote the screenplay last October, and used his own journal entries he penned during his freshman year as fodder for the main character’s internal monologue throughout the film.
“Moving down to Norman, I found that I was a lot more introverted, and I was struggling to interact with people in the way that I had back home,” he said. “It relates to me in the sense that I was really just pouring those thoughts out onto the page … it really is all of what I was feeling.”
Willis teamed up with several of his fellow creative media classmates to shoot “Textbook,” and also spearheaded a new production company, Second Season Productions, to help propel the creative process.
He and his crew pooled their resources and equipment over the 10-month timeframe, and filmed mainly at Norman’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, along with other local sites like Mid Del Taco in Del City.
What’s more, Willis’s time spent producing and acting in various high school projects backed by the OHS Theatre Department and the Owasso Community Theatre Company served as further inspiration to a quality production.
“Every costume piece and every shot and every movement of the camera I wanted to be very deliberate,” Willis said. “Each word was pretty specifically placed, and each prop … each color was made the way that it was to convey a specific emotion or to symbolize a specific feeling.”
Since its release, “Textbook” has garnered over 90 likes and nearly 1,900 views — a pair of numbers that Willis hopes will continue to grow as the film’s underlying meaning spreads to others.
“The problems that I was going through when I wrote ‘Textbook’ were very much alleviated through the process of making ‘Textbook’ because I was struggling to make connections, and that’s what (the film) is about.
“So I guess the message … is that if you can open yourself up to be just a little bit vulnerable, even for a split second, there’s a chance that not every day has to be miserable, and you can build your community from there.”
Willis plans to continue writing screenplays and generating content for Second Season Productions throughout his college career. He hopes his current path will lead him to make movies on a national stage.
To view “Textbook,” visit youtube.com/watch?v=GiaJemwlyUE.