To make millions and win critical acclaim, all you need is . . . Atlanta.

Exciting time to be in Atlanta’s home grown production community.

The city is home to Tyler Perry, a man who was made an empire of his own brand of storytelling. It is home to Will Packer, a man who has worked tirelessly over a decade to reach the front line of filmmaking respectability. It is home to Pamela Peacock and Richard Sampson of Shadowlight Pictures, a company that represents the evolution of the city from a strong commercial and corporate market that regularly hosts large film production from outside companies, to one that also includes a vibrant and diverse hub of locally based production.

These are not the only names in town. A rash of successful films — some commercially successful, some critically acclaimed, and some both — have been emanating from the city. Just this year, POP films screened "The Signal" at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews. The movie was picked up by Magnolia for $2.3 million. "The ATL," from Atlanta music icon Dallas Austin, was released in 2006.

In the stories of Perry, Packer and Shadowlight lie the underlying themes that truly articulate the Atlanta scene. Men and women have crashed the Hollywood party from unexpected places: Exploding from the stage to the big screen, crossing over from the commercial and corporate world, and fighting Hollywood indifference with grass roots marketing and sheer determination.

He’s Been Changed

When Tyler Perry first came to Atlanta, it wasn’t even to make movies. He came to produce, direct and star in his plays, narratives born from his traumatic upbringing in Louisiana and his subsequent belief in God and forgiveness.

His story is now well chronicled. Broke and occasionally homeless, Perry saved $12,000 and came to Atlanta to produce, direct and star in his first play, I Know I’ve Been Changed, a story born of his own experiences and recorded in a journal inspired by watching The Oprah Winfrey Show. Perry created different characters in his journal, partly to differentiate between opposing ideas in his head, partly to protect his own identity. Those characters formed the basis of I Know I’ve Been Changed, and he launched his first run in 1992. To call it a failure would be generous, but Tyler Perry was too determined to let something as trivial as failure prevent him from pursuing his dreams.

He stuck with the show, and in 1998, after six grueling years: Breakthrough! Perry staged a run of the show, first at the House of Blues and later at the prestigious Fox Theatre, and it did well . . . well enough for Perry to produce his next play, Woman Thou Art Loosed, which did considerably better in its first run than Changed had.
Several successful plays followed Woman, but it is Perry’s foray into filmmaking that resonates greatest with the Georgia production community. His first feature, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, was released in 2005 and was a surprise hit — surprising to mainstream Hollywood, anyway. A movie centered on African-American characters and featuring Perry’s recurring character Mabel Simmons, a.k.a. Madea, Diary grossed over $50 million at the box office and opened number one in its first week.

In an instant, a ripple was sent from Georgia, slowly building into a shock wave that erupted into Hollywood. Here was a man unknown by the moviemaking elite, filming movies for an ignored audience in a quiet southern state, and he had taken #1. Perry didn’t bat an eye. In the following three years, he released Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion (which also debuted at #1), Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls, and Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?

His films have grossed nearly $200 million and counting at the box office (Married is still in theaters), and close to $100 million more on VHS and DVD. He created a TV show, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, and a landed a contract to produce 100 episodes. All the while, he continued to produce for the stage and released a best selling book. If Tyler Perry has time to sleep, it must be in his dreams, because he can’t possibly have time in reality.

While his numbers alone are staggering, it is his continued commitment to building a foundation in Atlanta that excites an already well-established community. New projects mean new jobs, new money and new opportunities. In a gesture both symbolic and literal, Perry sealed his commitment to Atlanta when he built his 70,000 square foot studio in the heart of the city. Not LA. Not New York. Atlanta.

No, Tyler Perry didn’t invent filmmaking in Georgia, but he is helping to illuminate and cultivate a talented and growing production community.

Do The Hustle

Will Packer may not have the widespread name recognition of Tyler Perry, a drawback of not putting his name in front of all of his projects, but Hollywood finally has his number on speed dial. The front man for Atlanta-based Rainforest Films, he has been making movies for over a decade. Packer is a mover and shaker in the best of ways. Gregarious and energetic, he talks with a steady confidence and a warm smile. And he’s smart.

Now, calling Will Packer smart is a bit like calling money green. It is so incredibly obvious that one almost feels silly letting it slip out. Silly or not, though, there it is; Will Packer is smart. Smart enough to garner a full scholarship to Florida A&M University. Smart enough to graduate with honors in electrical engineering. Smart enough to realize that engineering was not his true path in life, honors be damned. And smart enough to recognize a great opportunity when it came along.

While in school, Packer met another student by the name of Rob Hardy. Hardy was an aspiring filmmaker, and he showed Packer a film he had shot while still in high school. Packer saw the creativity in that little movie, and he saw an opportunity.

The two of them teamed up and made a movie together called Chocolate City, a film they "kind of scraped up and begged and borrowed" $20,000 to make.

The pair released the film themselves in Tallahassee, finding a multiplex that would let them show their debut on a big screen. Ambitious from the start, Packer was not content just having his movie shown. He was a businessman.

"We sold merchandise and soundtracks. We really hustled this film. Tried to create our own little ancillary revenue streams, to the tune of about 100 grand."

Neither he nor his partner Hardy had studied filmmaking or business, but they knew they had the smarts and the hustle to make it work. Before, Packer knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur. Now, he had his product and his path.

"That initial success said to me ‘I think this is what I’m supposed to be doing.’"

Packer graduated shortly thereafter and, foregoing the engineering offers he received from prospective employers, "took a head-first leap of faith into filmmaking." In 1996 he and Hardy moved to Atlanta, and brought with them their production company, Rainforest Films.

They came to Atlanta because "it wasn’t LA or New York. We didn’t want to be another small fish in that huge pond." For Packer it was a strategic decision. He saw an opportunity to make a name as a filmmaker in a metropolitan city with an emerging music scene; in a city that had an established production community, yet not a community "where everybody on every corner is setting up a production shot."

Their first movie produced in Atlanta was the erotic thriller Trois, with Hardy directing. Produced for around $200,000, Trois was supposed to follow up on the modest success of Chocolate City, but Packer found an uninterested audience in Hollywood.

"Nobody cared. [We] got some really small offers for like 50 grand up front, then some sort of Pythagorean Theorem back-end equation when we would make more money."

Packer had put too much effort raising the money for Trois to accept the offers. Friends and family had given what they could, sometimes as little as $500 apiece, because they believed in the project. He did not want to let them down waiting for a return. Rainforest decided to distribute the movie independently.

Packer had already begun the legwork of contacting the heads of exhibitors like Carmike and Regal during the shoot, but it was at a film festival that he made some headway. Trois was shown there, and the theaters’ response was positive. Nevertheless, there was still some hesitancy. With the rise of 24-screen multiplexes, many companies were more content to show a big action movie on seven screens than take a chance on an indie film like Trois.

Packer said, "Just give me a weekend."

He lined up 19 screens in 10 different markets, from Miami to Chicago, Atlanta to Washington, DC. In true entrepreneurial spirit, he and Hardy then proceeded to drive to "each and every market, just like politicians. We were shaking hands and kissing babies and handing out flyers."

They combined this effort with a strong internet campaign, and Trois averaged about $10,000 per screen opening weekend. The following Monday Packer started receiving calls from exhibitors across the country, offering to show his movie. While it was impossible for Packer to drive to every new destination, he gladly sent the film. After all was said and done, Trois, the independently distributed movie that no distributor wanted to take a chance on, had pulled in $1.2 million at the box office. Packer no longer found an uninterested audience in Hollywood. Now, they were calling him.

The problem was that they were only willing to fund a sequel to Trois. The energetic young filmmakers were full of new ideas for features, but they ventured forth with their Hollywood funded sequel.

This began a slow steady climb for Rainforest Pictures. They continued to release original movies, with varying degrees of success. Puff, Puff, Pass, Mekhi Phifer’s directorial debut, did not fare so well. The Gospel, on the other hand, pulled in about $15 million at the box office.

2007 was a breakthrough. Rainforest released the film Stomp the Yard and took number one at the box office. Possibly even more significant, the film held the top spot the following week. And while it came as a surprise to many in mainstream America and Hollywood, outside of distributor Sony, it came as no surprise to Packer. He told everyone he knew that it was going to be a hit.

Now with two movies in post production, This Christmas and Three Can Play That Game, Packer and Rainforest are seeking to build upon their success by cultivating movies that grasp even wider audiences. Packer is not one to be content with becoming pigeonholed, and wants to delve into a wide array of stories. He loves bombastic popcorn flicks and movies with a deeper meaning, action movies and comedies, movies with heart and movies with a message. In the future, he hopes to make them all. Most importantly, he wants to make movies that resonate with audiences, and in the process create a "legacy of making films that matter to people."

With great success come great expectations, and Will Packer believes he is a man who can live up to them. Smart guy.

Hoping For The Same

Though Tyler Perry and Will Packer have set the bar high, there is a company in town that is hoping they are next in line to reach the upper echelons of feature filmmaking.

Producers Pamela Peacock and Richard Sampson of Shadowlight Pictures are currently in post production, working feverishly on their debut feature Good Intentions. Set in fictitious Myra, Georgia, Intentions is an offbeat comedy that features heists, carpools and antiquing. The pair hopes to offer a movie that is based squarely on a strong storyline, one that does not rely on slapstick for laughs.

The duo of Sampson and Peacock are floating. They are completing a movie with some big-time name recognition in country singer Leann Rhymes and former teen heart-throb Luke Perry, and they know this is a golden opportunity. While it may not break them if Intentions doesn’t reach the levels of financial success they hope for, they are well aware that they could firmly entrench themselves in feature filmmaking if it does.

Yet there is little fear in the two. Like every parent’s wish for their children with Hollywood dreams, the business partners have a backup plan. Their company, Shadowlight, is already well established in the commercial and corporate worlds. But you get the feeling that they did not come all this way to return exclusively to that market.

Pamela Peacock studied architecture in undergraduate school at the University of Florida. Like Will Packer, she knew that her degree would not shape the direction of her career. Unlike Packer, she did not immediately turn to filmmaking. Peacock returned to UF to get her MBA and promptly entered the business world, working for consulting firm Anderson Consulting (now Accenture). Remaining in the corporate environment for over 10 years, she eventually moved to Atlanta.

Meanwhile, her future partner Richard Sampson was already active in the production community. He had actually come from a production background, earning his bachelor of media arts degree at the University of South Carolina. Sampson had wanted to make movies ever since high school, though the path to his first full-length feature film was long and winding. Columbia, South Carolina, home of USC, is not exactly a bustling production metropolis.

"There was one company based in Columbia that was doing high end work and they were supposedly doing documentaries and developing movies and doing TV commercials." He got a job interning for the firm while still a student, and then working with them upon graduation. Unfortunately for Sampson’s filmmaking dreams, the company did not stick with the documentary or feature film route for long, deciding it was too costly to develop features and documentaries, instead opting to focus only on commercial work.

And so Sampson "sort of got into the commercial track, a little bit by default." He found that the tracks of commercial production and film production often run side by side, but rarely cross. "Once you get on that treadmill, it’s amazing how segregated the film industry is. There are people who work on commercials and never work on anything else. There’s people who work on feature films who never work on commercials and documentaries, and the same across the board."

For almost two decades, Sampson rose through the ranks and traveled the world making commercials. His trek led him to Pogo Pictures in Atlanta, where he was serving as the executive producer. It was at Pogo that he first met Peacock.

The consulting world had left her "sort of bored. I was on a life path. I wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, and I was doing this corporate thing, mostly in systems development. And I was craving something more creative and interesting. And I knew if there was any time to take a chance and get out there, it was ‘now’." Peacock found some of that creative outlet at Pogo, and found a creative bond with Sampson. Though she would leave Pogo to go back to the corporate world, the connection would stick.

Sampson went on to produce White Bitch Down for the 48-Hour Film Project. 2002 was the first year of the project, and there were six cities involved. White Bitch Down won Best of Atlanta, and then best of the whole project. Shortly thereafter, Sampson and Peacock reconnected and formed Shadowlight Pictures.

They began working on the script for Good Intentions and producing commercials and corporate videos. In 2004 they entered the 48-Hour Film Project again, which had expanded to 17 cities around the world. Their entry, Moved, swept through the Atlanta awards, winning best script, best sound design and best film. Out of 650 films in the Project, Moved was selected the best of the best. It was the second time that a Sampson film had taken the whole shebang.

Sensing the timing was right, Sampson and Peacock began to ramp up Good Intentions. Based on the success of the two 48-Hour films, Sampson jokingly thought to himself, "We made a 10-minute movie and in 2 days. We can probably make a feature in a week."

Flash ahead to 2007, and Good Intentions is still in post production. Peacock and Sampson, along with director Jim Issa and editor Joe Linton, spend their days locked in an editing booth at Crawford Communications. They are working on the rough cut, with plans to step back and take a breath before finishing the film.

There is a sense of excitement among the group, but like so many things in life that take long hours over long years, there is also a weariness. There is a desire to see the finished product, to sit in an audience with strangers and watch among them. There is the hope that they will laugh at the right parts, and a subtle confidence that they will.

The team has been developing and crafting Good Intentions for five years, and Peacock knows they’re on the "cusp of something…wonderful." While critical and financial success for their movie would be a blessing, they are willing to ride the wave where it takes them.

They’ve come too far not to.

Staying Home

While Tyler Perry, Will Packer and the Shadowlight team followed different paths to their present points, they do share some striking similarities. Like so many Atlantans, they are transplants to the city. They all seek to be great storytellers, to create characters and plots that resonate with audiences long after the first watch. And they all seek to do it in Atlanta. There is a certain fraternity and camaraderie among the filmmakers in this city, huddled together outside the bright glow of the production behemoths of New York and Los Angeles. They’ve found in this place a different kind of warmth that fuels their passions.

Peacock sums it up well.

"All of these people that we either work with or are friends with or look up to, they’re all just tremendous people that we highly respect, and we want to help each other. We want this community in the entertainment world to grow and to prosper. We want to provide great opportunities for ourselves and others, and we think we can do that here."