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Hi!
My name is George Roland Wills. My sites can be found by either googling my name, or else Confederate Pictures Reenactment Films. I followed the Civil War circuit for six years, and have made several official documentaries, such as Booker T. Washington National Monument UP FROM SLAVERY - BOOKER T.s BIRTHPLACE, (which Eastern National purchased for the NPS bookstore) and the Avenel House documentary Portrait of a Plantation. The term 'Confederate Pictures' actually means a group of many different imprints under which I publish, including Freedom Films, the NPS label.
It also refers to the Civil War Reenactments I filmed while on the circuit. I have filmed from both sides of the battlefield, dressing out as either Union or Confederate, and have a great number of friends from all over the country who enjoy my reenactment films. I have made nearly sixty such films to date.
We are based in Bedford Virginia, home of the D Day Memorial, and are in the Bedford Central Library and area bookstores.
We try to make our movies as authentic as possible, and I have African-American friends who perform in my films and will need one such voiceover in this film, AVENEL THE MOTION PICTURE, for the part of Lucinda Burwell. The main attitude towards the institution of slavery in the film is one of unfortunate inheritance, which was the real family's viewpoint on the subject. Avenel had one hundred slaves in all, handed down for generations. From Letitia Burwell's diary: "The atmosphere of our own home was one of kindness and consideration. I believe the maltreatment of one of our servants, we had never heard the word slave, would have distressed us beyond endurance."
The main thrust of our films is to show the actual views of the people of the period, and the little-discussed political aspect of the war, in the conversations our characters have. Few people realize how the political party system in this country came about, and who was 'a Jeffersonian', and who was 'an old styled Adams Federalist', and how these views contributed to the dissolution of the original federal Union. The dialogue goes deeply into this, at times, with the characters explaining their views of the period in a way that modern audiences can follow in their allegiances, and political views, one way or the other...
The characters in this film are politically Jeffersonian Conservatives, and the father of the builder of Avenel House, William Armistead Burwell, was the private secretary to Thomas Jefferson during his first term in office. In fact, Jefferson's Summer retreat known as Poplar Forest is between Bedford (then called Liberty) and Lynchburg. Confederate president Jefferson Davis was actually named for Thomas Jefferson, a man he much admired and emulated. General Robert E. Lee stayed with the family here in October of 1867, and his wife, Miss Mary, came to Avenel during the war from Arlington to recover from her arthritic complaints.
This sets the idea for the dialogue which follows.
Our original movie used the dialogue we picked up at the time, with a few voiceovers... but to have the dialogue done in professional recording would indeed be divine!
All of us are volunteers, originally, and no money has ever changed hands in these projects. Even the on-location filming was free to us. The films I made were made and sold at cost, mainly because
of our amateur status, and the fact that we were limited in our SOUND capabilities. The scenes in the films are all crystal clear and digitally wonderful. They were filmed on Digital8 and post-produced
on a pair of iMacs (06 with iMovie HD and 08 with the 09 upgrade and Final Cut Express 4) I have seven terrabytes of memory storage, most of which is now full.
You can go to Youtube and visit CaptBeauregards channel to see all the films I have uploaded to date. From ATMP, you will find the PORCH SCENE (with its troubled dialogue), The Death Scene
which accurately portrays how the real life Captain Jimmie Breckinridge died in 1865, (played by Jim Choate, General Bee of GODS AND GENERALS), and BOWYER SAVES AVENEL, a neat real-life event which saved Avenel House during Hunter's Raid in 1864... Captain Bowyer, who married Kate Burwell, was the leader of the Bedford militia, (and the builder of Avenel House, William M. Burwell, was in his son-in-law's company as a private!). Captain (also Doctor) Bowyer saved a wounded prisoner of war, Colonel Powell, from eight drunken Confederates who wanted to kill him. For this, Powell swore to defend Avenel House, and its occupants from the invading Union forces. This scene is in the film ATMP, as well as PORTRAIT OF A PLANTATION, shot from a different angle for each project.
Interested voice artists may contact me to see what we can work out. The film was released in 2005, and is now undergoing a massive overhaul, with scenes filmed all over the country...
I can send out scene clips from the film, post them on Youtube, send just the voices from the movie (and their incumbent inflections!) as audio files, and/or send scripts if we can work out the payment situation. I have no budget at all, and this is what we were able to accomplish on volunteer effort and my personal investment... I hope we can get this done right!
I do thank you for your time.
George Roland Wills
Confederate Pictures Reenactment Films
Freedom Films
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Avenel The Motion Picture (2005) - The 2009 Remake, A two hour Civil War Motion Picture needs new voices
Nov 13 2009, 10:03 PM
