Kayla Williams
AFS Former Studios Senior Apprentice
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Nothing but cornfields surrounds my tiny hometown in Ohio. The nearest metropolitan area is Cincinnati, and the drive is more than two hours. It seems an unlikely origin for a filmmaker, but the puppies, ponies and endless years of scavenging the same forest for new adventures can foster quite an imagination, if not only a strong desire for more urban surroundings. At 16, I moved to Cincinnati with my mother to finish high school and then, by many twists of fate, landed in the first day of Dr. Charles Derry’s film appreciation class at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. We watched more Hitchcock than I had ever realized existed and discovered the French New Wave all in ten weeks. From that point on, my appetite for new cinematic experiences has never been satiated.
In March 2007 I graduated with my BFA in Motion Picture Production. It was while searching for graduate programs that the idea of moving to Austin first occurred to me. I had spent some time teaching video production in New York, and all of my classmates seemed to be moving there so I was sure that I would end up there. Ultimately, Austin’s culture, originality and weather proved more alluring, and in the middle of an Ohio cold front I packed up my stuff and headed south.
