Tampa Film Fan

in the spotlight:local filmmaker melissa webb

Photographer. Model. Actress. Make-up artist. Writer. Producer. Skydiver. Director. Using all of these words to describe local filmmaker Melissa Webb doesn’t begin to give you a complete picture of this energetic, multi-talented multi-tasker.

A model since the age of 2, Webb grew up participating in city theater and school plays, then transitioned to movie roles while still in high school. Working on these early movies sparked her interest in filmmaking. “That is when I knew that I wanted not just to act, but direct and be involved in everything I could be.” She went to Aveda Institute to study cosmetology and recently served as the make-up artist for the locally-filmed movie Waste of Space.

Webb’s latest film is the seven-minute thriller The Unconscious Disease, a disturbing film about a schizophrenic girl (Alison Hart) living in a mental asylum who has trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. Webb came up with the idea for her film while at Southern Illinois University.

“I was actually in a photography class…and I wanted to take a picture of a little girl in a graveyard with a zipper over her face, because it can mean so many different things. This came to me after I saw Christina Aguilera with a ribbon holding her mouth shut about voting. So I just wanted to see what it would look like, but I never did. So I was sitting in London and thought of a short film idea for the zipper about a schizophrenic girl who thinks she is living at home but is actually still trapped inside a mental institution.”

Her five-person crew completed filming in three days and finished editing in two days, without any financing or much of a budget. The Unconscious Disease was recently named Best Short Thriller at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival and has screened at the Tampa Film Review, the Sunscreen Film & Video Festival and online at www.horrorchannel.com.

Webb’s goal is “to always work hard and to keep everyone happy on my sets and provide them with great entertainment.” She’s currently writing a screenplay, doing the special effects make-up for the local film Sorority Bloodbath and will soon be doing make-up for a Star Wars fan film.

Visit www.melissawebbfilms.com to learn more about this local filmmaker and to see the trailer for The Unconscious Disease.