By Stephen Smoot, The Shinnston News & Harrison County Journal
SHINNSTON, W.Va. — “We build stories.” That serves as the tagline and also a sort of mission statement for Allegheny Image Factory, a company that has played a key role in crafting a number of major motion picture productions and has come to Shinnston to shoot their latest project.
Jeff Tinnell, along with his brother and partner Robert, have lived and worked around the world, from Los Angeles to Europe. Their roots, goals, and dreams, however, remain solidly fixed in West Virginia.
Over 30 plus years of creating video work from advertisements to movies featured on Lifetime and Netflix, Tinnell says “you learn a lot.”
He went on to say that “you learn what moves people. We work to build stories that move people, that connect with people.”
People are the foundation of storytelling, in the eyes of Tinnell and his brother. “That’s the important point, to cut through the white noise,” he explained, adding that “there’s a lot of fascinating facets of life in people’s stories.” Those come from the entire spectrum of joy, pain, struggles, sacrifices, and successes.
“Everyone has a story,” Tinnell shared, saying also “there’s a skill to pulling that story out and presenting it in a unique way.”
The story shot in Shinnston is tentatively called “The Bad Guardian”. Thought that could certainly change. The film stars Melissa Joan Hart, star of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, God’s Not Dead, and a number of uplifting family and Christmas films. It also stars Lala Anthony, who played in films such as The Perfect Find, You People, and 9 Bullets.
According to a recent write-up in The Hollywood Reporter, the plot is “following the headlines and debate surrounding the guardianships of Wendy Williams and Britney Spears.” It went on to say “the network has ordered a movie about a court-appointed guardianship gone wrong.”
Read more: https://shinnstonnews.com/major-movie-production-brings-lights-camera-and-action-to-shinnston/
