ALMetro360 June 19
He is just finishing a sequel to “Songs About Your Girlfriend” called “The Song You’ll Never Hear.” It’s a short film that picks up several years after the band parted at the end of the other to tell the story of how the lead singer’s life takes a devastating turn. The sequel came about because so many friends and acquain- tances remembered the other film. “People would stop me on the street when I was down in Mississippi and ask me when the next film would be coming out,” he said. “Cast members would call and ask, ‘when is the next one coming.’ Apparently, the DVD got passed around a bit whether I was aware of it or not.” One evening one of his friends, Jason Hendren, sent a post on Facebook with the DVD photo asking, “when are we going to get a ‘Songs 2.’” Poff said, “That really got me to thinking about it. I was between projects. So, I sat down at my computer and started working on a draft.” A couple of pages in, he sent it out to the cast in a group chat, asking “what do you guys think?” All the cast agreed they were in. “That got me excited!” Poff said. “That was the beginning of the writing of the script.” The project was not all smooth sailing, though. “This was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do,” he said. “Going back to the script, one of the challenges was whether one of the actors was going to be able to participate. Because of that, the script took its own journey. We had to think about how we could work around whether we had this person available or not.” Poff said. He built the script sort of modularly, to work around this issue. Once he finished the script, he got all the props secured and was ready to start filming, but more issues occurred. Filming started in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, back in November. He had to travel back and forth to Mississippi with equipment and a pro- duction assistant. The first weekend of filming, they were seven hours late when the production assistant’s grandmother became ill. Another challenge arose on another night of filming when the bar owners didn’t understand the requirements of the production. They booked four metal bands to play that evening, causing them to have to work around the breaks of the bands. And, another disaster that happened was one that almost gave him a heart attack. His computer hard drive failed, and it looked as if the film he had shot was lost. “Several facilities told me we'd likely never recover it,” by some miracle however, they were able to recover it. Throughout the filming, cast members were experiencing diffi- cult life situations as well. The filming was eventually wrapped a few weeks ago. Poff is submitting “The Song You’ll Never Hear” to the Montgomery Film Festival in July at the Capri Theatre. Because it is a short film, his desire is that it will be selected for more film festivals so others can experience it. His hope is that the film will be enjoyed by others and they will be inspired to pursue their own dreams. “There is nothing in life that I have worked as hard on that the Lord has not blessed,” he said. Stephen Poff is a talented and creative individual who is not afraid to pursue his dreams. He is a father to two girls, Clarissa and Zoe, married to a wonderful lady, Tammi, whom he fell in love with when they were in high school. He says, “My wife and kids are my muse—a lot of the themes in my music and films are tied up in my feelings for them.” “One of the lines in ‘The Song You’ll Never Hear’ in this film was written for them,” he said. “If I should pass away you’ll read every word I pray and my ghostly words will sing you right to sleep.” “I hope when my girls look back on my work, they will see something good,” Poff said. n 20 AL/ Metro 360 www.almetro360.com
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