Born out of Southern Methodist University’s Film and Media Arts Summer Film Production, Smile, a student-led and -produced film, will discuss themes such as mental health, family, relationships and trauma. It’s a coming-of-age story, centered on the character Jules (played by Timylle Adams) as she navigates life after a suicide attempt.
The idea for the film came to writer and director Kelsey Hodge, a recent SMU graduate, from her own personal experiences with mental health.
“One of the biggest things that inspired the creation of this film was the very idea that I didn’t think that my problems were big enough to ask for help,” she says.
Hodge’s grandmother died a few years ago, while she was still studying at SMU. Experiencing the aftermath of her grandmother’s passing also provided inspiration for the film.
“Seeing what that did to the family, and what that did to the relationships in it, really made me realize that a lot of us don’t have concrete ways of dealing with trauma,” she says. “I really want Smile to be an opportunity to open that door and have a conversation that we don’t have to bottle so much within ourselves.”
A blessing in disguise
Students have the opportunity to submit a script to the biannual Summer Film Production, which Hodge decided to do for Smile. For the 2019-22 cycle, Smile was chosen out of about six scripts that were submitted.
Production for the film was set for 2020; however, because of the coronavirus pandemic, it was pushed back a year. And although it was disappointing for the crew to experience this setback, they agree that it was a blessing in disguise.
“We had the capability to do so many things in production that usually the student features don’t do, which raised production value and I think made the film a lot better,” says Gabriella Mykal, the film’s director of photography.
In the extra year of preproduction, the crew created a prequel to the film titled Break. This short film was written last fall by Brittney Hutchison, one of the producers, in collaboration with Hodge.
The crew finalized their dates last winter for this summer’s production schedule, which wrapped up in the middle of June. Once vaccines to protect against COVID-19 started to roll out earlier this year, they encouraged their cast and crew to get vaccinated. Production took place throughout Dallas-Fort Worth, with shooting at historic spots like the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff.
Safety protocols during production included requiring people to wear masks, taking and logging everyone’s temperatures daily, sanitizing consistently and taking extra precautions with the distribution of food on set.
Hodge says that if it weren’t for the extra year of preproduction, Smile would have been a very different film, with a different crew. Crew members, including Mykal; Darnell Robinson, a producer; and Everton Melo, an associate producer; joined the crew following the summer of 2020. Some roles were also recast because of scheduling conflicts.
“There were some fallouts due to it being pushed a year, but we also gained so much from it as well,” Hodge says. “I almost can’t imagine how the movie would have turned out if the pandemic would have never happened and we would have made it last year.”
An act of activism
The diversity in this film is clear upon looking at the cast and crew. Jules, the lead character, is Black, along with most of the supporting main characters. A report by Hutchinson shows that more than half of the crew identify as female, and more than half identify as people of color.
As a Black woman, Hodge says some of the scenes in the film were easy to write because of her own experiences and the experiences of those close to her. There’s a scene about Jules’ brother, Charlie (played by Malik Simmons), and his experience as a young Black man. It talks about the fear Black mothers have of losing their children to police brutality.
“Some of the things that we’re talking about in this scene or that we’re bringing up about Charlie and just being his true authentic self was relevant when I wrote it, and it’s still relevant now, and it’s going to be relevant in the future,” Hodge says of the scene, which was written in the spring of 2019.
Hodge also hopes to shift the narrative of the roles of women, and in particular women of color, in film.
“Whenever the Black woman is a lead in a film, or even a supporting character, there’s always this idea of her being a strong Black woman,” she says. “But we’re not always so strong. That’s kind of damaging, too, to only see ourselves as, even if the world is crumbling down around us, we stand strong, and we never shed a tear, we are never vulnerable. Let’s challenge that representation of us now. Sometimes we break. But there are ways we can heal from that.”
Robinson was drawn to be a part of this project because he sees it as an act of activism.
“It’s pushing the boundaries of racial injustice and hard topics like suicide and depression,” he says. “This film is truly bringing light to being human, as an African American. We have issues, but just like everyone else we can get through them.”
Smile is currently in post-production. A debut private screening of the film is planned for the spring of 2022. Following the completion of the film, Hodge says, the plan is to submit it to local and international film festivals, then work out a distribution plan for public viewing. And while this film deals with heavy topics, Hodge says audiences can expect some joyful moments, too.
“I think that’s the nuance of life and that’s the nuance of this film,” she says. “While there is still pain in some areas, there is still joy.”
