Gaston County filmmaker exploring aliens in new film


Kara Fohner, The Gaston Gazette
Thu, February 23, 2023

Writer David Richardson and director Shelly Teare are producing a film called "Alien Abduction," which will be filmed in Gaston County.

After a host of calls about UFOs, a woman disappears. Her husband, a police officer, thinks she was abducted by aliens.

That's the premise of a new film that will be made by Gaston County indie filmmaker David Richardson, who owns Chapel Grove Films.

The film, titled "Alien Abduction," will be around 10 minutes long.

"When our story opens, the local police have been swamped over several days with a sudden rash of calls about UFO sightings and the supposed 'abductions' of local residents," Richardson said. "Generally the police consider them all crank calls, but Sgt. John Rockland takes them seriously – he's an avid UFO hunter. So when his wife suddenly disappears, he's convinced she's been abducted by aliens. And he means to find her."

Rockland goes looking, Richardson said, "and what he finds is worse than anything he could have imagined."

Chapel Grove Films was founded around 20 years ago, and since then, Richardson has made feature length films, short films, and music videos.

Richardson, who lives in the Crowders Mountain area, wrote the original script for "Alien Abduction" around a decade ago for an online screenwriting contest. There are only two onscreen characters, the police officer and an alien, but the police officer's wife can be heard speaking in the film.

Putting a film like that together is a "time intensive process," Richardson said. It involves finding the right people, the right location, props, a wardrobe, and more.

Richardson's friend Shelly Teare is directing "Alien Abduction," which will be filmed at the home of one of her friends.

Richardson and Teare met in 2021 when Richardson went to a sleep clinic, where Teare works, and the two began talking about his films. He later reached out to her because he had an idea for a film that takes place at a sleep center, and their relationship blossomed from there.

"Writing is really my passion," Teare said, adding that producing and directing are new to her.

The lead actors in "Alien Abduction" are Jeff Smith, who plays the police officer, and Gregory Rodes Jr., who plays the alien. Both are from South Carolina, and Richardson found them online: "the same way he finds anyone these days."

The film will be shot on March 3, and post production work will take at least a month – "only because I still have a full-time job that sucks up a lot of my time," Teare said.

While "Alien Abduction" is a short film, "we're going to try to expand it into a larger story," Richardson said. But first, "we're just going to get it out there and get it on the film festival circuit."

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Gaston County filmmaker exploring aliens in new film