NewEnglandFilm.com

Not yet out of college, Pembroke, MA native Alex Thompson is already a “triple threat.” He is a film director, film writer, and film producer.

Among the films this young filmmaker has already made is Death of a Wizard, a compelling black and white short dealing with bigotry, equality and justice, co-written with Sasha Whitaker, son of Forest Whitaker. Apart from screening at the Ivy Film Festival at Brown University, it recently won the top dramatic prize at the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival. Thompson and Wizards director Edward Varnie are presently expanding it into a feature-length film. Another short he recently directed, Link, a tale of two WWII concentration camp escapees chained together at the wrist and who mistakenly trigger a land mine, will soon be on the festival circuit. It has already received sufficient attention to provoke offers for music video gigs for both Alex and his cinematographer, Maine native Harper Alexander. Death and the Robot is a stop-motion animated film that Thompson wrote and produced, while leaving the directing to animation director, Austin Taylor. Following its recent premier at Sony Studios in an industry screening geared toward agents, managers and executives, it too will soon be on the festival circuit.

Clearly, New Englander Thompson is not wasting any time in his young life. Thompson’s path came first through his love of storytelling. It was the sci-fi, horror and fantasy genres that captured his young imagination, which was quenched by the writings of Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, H.P. Lovecraft, Harlan Ellison, J.G. Ballard, H.G Welles and others. One can recognize the sense of suspense and menace gleaned from these writers and manifested in Thompson’s spare use of language, close camera views, irregular angles, and the role darkness plays in each frame. He admits that despite the many scripts he’s penned for fellow students as well as for his own work, exploring various genres and styles, his heart remains in the “fantastic, larger-than-life stories that take the audiences to worlds they’ve never seen before.” Despite such fantasy, he feels it’s important to ground his work in a human element that his viewers can relate to. Along with his avid reading, his early interest in film led him to decide by his early teens that he would write and direct films “at a studio level.”

Soon finishing up his course of study at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking, Thompson has had the privilege of studying under such luminaries as Charlie Haid (director of Breaking Bad and star of Hill Street Blues); Oscar-winner Peter Bogdanovich; and has had special mentorship from the FX wizard Bob Keen (Star Wars, The Neverending Story); as well as from cinematographer Thomas Ackerman, (Beetlejuice and Jumanji), among others. The mentorship of these filmmakers has inspired Thompson to hope that one day he’ll be in a position to discover new, rising talents.

This director-writer-producer’s three “film-hats” will no doubt be challenged in the new company, Kaleidoscape Filmworks, LLC, that he and fellow producing partners, Brett Kanea and Michael Fry have formed. There are several productions written and directed by Thompson in the works. Thompson describes the first of these, Promise of a Son, as “a dark Southern-Gothic/Apocalyptic thriller, based on a story by the New England author, David Hebden. Described as “ambitious,” a sci-fi short is in pre-production and will serve as his thesis film at the UNC School of the Arts.

Thompson is aware that his journey is still in its early stages, though his output may belie that. He has already figured out that passion and perseverance along with thorough knowledge of your material are necessary. A thought Thompson expressed and that has been stressed by other New England Film interviewees, is the importance of leading with humility, while truly valuing your collaborators and crew. Thompson also feels that the director’s enthusiasm, along with a touch of charisma, goes far towards accomplishing goals in the film industry. Already accomplishing what it often takes years to do, Thompson’s versatility and skill in handling his three major roles in filmmaking, has set him on a path for a long and varied career in the film industry.