For the fourth year, Whitestone Motion Pictures is inviting individuals interested in the making of films to apply to its Protégé Program. This year’s areas include of Directing, Screenwriting, Film Scoring, Visual Effects, Costuming, Branding, Web Development, and Crew.

The Whitestone Protégé program is an intensive one-year apprenticeship that requires talent, discipline, consistency, and thick skin. Protégés learn by doing, and most are asked to produce content on a consistent (often weekly) basis. They will also be required to purchase and read books and attend monthly all-staff development meetings. We teach the things you can’t Google and learn on your own!

More details and applications are on the protege page.

The Candy Shop is a thirty minute film that Whitestone is now in preproduction for and will release in November. This film is being made for the Doorpost Film Project, and with support from 12Stone® Church and Street Grace.

The film is a Fairytale/Parable about the child sex trafficking epidemic that has overrun our city of Atlanta. We are using the film to not only raise awareness but provoke meaningful action towards this issue taking place in our own backyard.

Up to 500 underaged girls a month are trafficked for sex here in our city of Atlanta.
It’s the number one city in the country for child sex trafficking..
The 10th in the world.

This plague has gone on for too long, and now we at Whitestone, in cooperation with Doorpost, 12Stone® Church and StreetGrace want to put a stop to it.

This film represents the spearhead of a citywide and possibly a nationwide campaign.
It is not a documentary. It is not a PSA. It is the beginning of a movement.

Watch the below documentary for more information on Whitestone, the film and the cause behind it.
Then visit the Street Grace website to find out more information and get involved directly.

We need the support of our friends and fans now more than ever. Spread the word, follow the process, and when the film comes out share it with everyone you know.

Whitestone has signed over 100% of our right to profit from the film and has donated all merchandizing rights to Street Grace to help stop this issue in our city.

More information about the premiere, the campaign and what you can do to get involved will be coming out in the next few weeks. Check back often for updates, or follow us on Twitter for real time info.
www.twitter.com/whitestonemp

We’re excited to bring this project to life and to share it with all of you, but more importantly, we’re excited to be a part of something so important and special.

Join us as we give our time, our focus and our craft to stop The Candy Shop.

It’s critical that storytellers today look back into the long lineage of the storytellers that came before us to learn from them, get inspiration from them, and even at time emulate them. At Whitestone, we decided we wanted to create an homage to Hitchcock films, so we put together a little short film called ‘Fear Itself’.
One of the challenges was trying to shoot a film as it would have been shot in 1959. To achieve this look, the entire team sat down and watched one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces Psycho. Scene by scene, we discussed what made the film work, and the technical techniques employed at that time.

Principal photography for this film has been completed, and we’re now in post on this project.

What we’ve learned is that even will all the fancy new technology we’re able to employ it comes down to a great story and the way it’s told. Hitchcock was a master at creating cinematic tension. He eloquently communicates the difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise’ in this AFI interview.

We’re excited to release this short film next month to all of you, Saul Bass credits and all. Stay tuned for some ‘making of’ footage coming in the next few weeks.
And for those of you asking, no this isn’t the BIG film announcement that’s coming.

You’ll know when that hits.
Stay Tuned.

The spell of fantasy has been irrevocably cast upon me. While I love films of all kinds, and I desire to be a storyteller that can thrive in any genre, I find myself drawn to stories in the fantastic for a myriad of reasons.

First and foremost, it’s part of my worldview. Which, to put it plainly is this: I believe in magic.


I believe in the whimsy of the world around me. I believe there are things so incredibly fantastic and mysterious that to my mind, they exist as magical.
You can tell me all about the physical science of neurons and chemicals, synapsis and protons. But what you can’t tell me how love works. The love I have for my wife or precious little daughter. We’ve been told through physical science that we are nothing more than “predictable patterns of wires responding to stimuli” You can explain the chemical process, describe to me the effects love has upon me, but it’s something that once you experience, you know it’s simply nothing more than magic.

Secondly, myths and the worlds of the fantastic have served for thousands of years as escapism. They’re both vacation and catharsis. There is a reason why film is one of the highest grossing entertainment industries in the world, and why most people would consider them ‘recession proof’. People want to be taken away to another world that is not their own. They want to leave their struggles, their woes and experience a great battle between good and evil, between heros and villains. Look at the top ten current highest grossing films of all time. All fantasy films. All of them take you to a world you’ve never been to, a place of the imagination where the rules of our world no longer apply.

I want to be a part of this great dialogue.

Even though we’ll explore many genres, there will always be a special place in my heart for a ‘once upon a time.’