First-time filmmaker wins prize at film festival

By Casey Gillis
The Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: May 20, 2008

Until January, Olivia Dodson knew nothing about making movies.

Today, she’s an award-winning filmmaker.

The Amherst resident set out to make a documentary earlier this year at the encouragement of her brother and later submitted it to the first-ever Virginia Independent Film Festival.
The festival, a joint effort from the Virginia Film Office and the Virginia Production Alliance, required that all the films be shot in-state by Virginia residents or students attending school here.

Dodson was among 13 finalists chosen from 50 entrants, and last month, she was awarded first place in the documentary category at a ceremony in Richmond.

She says she learned everything as she went along and did a lot of improvising behind the scenes.

“I had zero experience,” says Dodson, who shot the film on a digital video camera she got for Christmas.

She didn’t even own a tripod, so “we had to stack hampers on top of each other and shoot from there.”

The film, called “The Person Most Real,” is about grief and mourning.

Dodson literally shot it for nothing, training the camera lens on herself and her two children — Evan, 11, and Aerielle, 7 — as they talked about tragedies they’ve experienced in their own lives, as well as national tragedies, like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“We’re in a constant state of mourning,” says Dodson, who studies psychology at Liberty University. “There’s always something … mindless, senseless (that happens).

“Most of the movie talks about grief, and how I dealt with it and how to deal with it.”

Dodson has lost several people who were close to her, and before their deaths, she says she didn’t know much about grief.

“All I knew about grief, I knew from (what I saw) in the movies,” Dodson says. “Movies don’t show what happens three months later or six months later.

“Grief is like you’re wearing this lead suit at first. It’s so heavy, and day by day, it dissolves.”

Dodson says she had no qualms about opening up on camera about how she dealt with that grief.

“I’m not a private person,” she says. “To not tell people things is a lie. It’s misrepresenting who you are.”

She plans to re-shoot parts of the movie with her new high definition video camera and wants to submit it to the Virginia Film Festival, which is held in Charlottesville every fall.

“There were so many things I didn’t even consider (during the first shoot),” she says.

“People making movies do several takes and pick the best one. Here, it was a one-shot deal. If I forgot to mention something, (I said), ‘I’ll do it in the next scene.’”
After re-shoots are done, Dodson is planning to make two more documentaries, one about free things to do in Virginia and another about obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“It’s not my plan. It’s kind of got a mind of its own,” she says of her filmmaking.

“You pray that God expands your territory. You have to also pray that God gives you the strength and knowledge to handle the new territory.”