The Mycenaean

Jake Joyner, senior, is most widely known for his tackles on the Leesville Road football team’s D-line. What many people do not know about him, however, is his passion for filmmaking.

Joyner intends to major in Film Studies at UNC-Wilmington, a university in the middle of the  country’s third-largest film production center. He has already accumulated experience creating several amateur short movies starring friends as well as participating on Leesville’s news team.

Joyner’s reasons for pursuing film studies are simple. “I’m a really creative person. I hate writing and I can’t really draw and I’m not really a good actor, so I make movies,” he explained.

“I love Quentin Tarantino films because they’re really weird,” he said. Joyner cites Tarantino’s films as his inspiration for his short films. His most recent movie, “The Fight,” is Joyner’s proudest production. “It’s probably the sickest movie I’ve ever made. I’ve gotten calls in the middle of the night from friends telling me how good it was,” he said.

His favorite part of the moviemaking process is editing. Editing, he says, is what makes a movie great. “You can have good acting but bad editing, and it would be a bad movie,” he explained, “but if you have bad acting and good editing, it would be an OK movie,” he said with a laugh.

Next year at UNC-W, Joyner looks forward to learning about films and critiquing them. “The cool thing about Wilmington is that they have tons of internships in New York and LA,” he explained.

After college, he hopes to move to Los Angeles and work his way up in the movie business. He knows he will start off at the lowest level, likely a director’s assistant. “I’m going to be serving coffee for a couple of years,” he said resignedly. He likes to dream big, though.

“I want to direct a forty-million-dollar movie,” he said of his dream job.