In post-productionAn SMU Summer Film Production
A pilot comes home from the war to sell the family land.
LatestOctober 2026
Cameras wrapped in June after sixteen days in North Texas. The team is cutting toward a first assembly of the whole film this fall, and a premiere in May 2027.
Follow it to the premiereThe story
LoglineWhen an emotionally detached World War II pilot returns home to see his dying father and sell the family land, he must confront the ghosts of his past and the woman he left behind.
It began as a short story. Jake Willeford wrote it in his freshman year at SMU for an English department contest, and won. It grew into a cycle he calls the Jack Lebeaux Stories, and then into this: the feature SMU’s film faculty chose for the program’s 2025 to 2027 production, with Jake pitching separately to direct it.
“This story is about legacy and generational trauma.”
Jake Willeford · Writer and director
FeatureRural Texas, the 1930s and 40sIn post-production
The look
To build the 1930s and 40s, Jake went through thousands of photographs in the Library of Congress, made across rural America by government photographers for the Farm Security Administration. Many became direct sources for the film. Some he recreated as scenes. The archive is on the left. The film is on the right.
Passed down
Jeanie’s music box and Jack’s pocket watch are both gifts from their mother, and the film turns on what one generation hands the next. Off screen it was literal. Much of the furniture and many of the props came from Jake’s mother’s and grandmother’s houses – things his great- and great-great-grandparents kept.
“Everything felt real because everything (for the most part) was real.”
Jake Willeford
The shoot
Most of it was filmed in a century-old farmhouse in Maypearl with no air conditioning and no running water, through the heat and thunderstorms of a Texas summer, with more days in Mesquite and Waxahachie. Every department was run by SMU students and recent graduates, a crew of twenty to thirty.
The hardest two days
About fifty shots over two shooting days, roughly eight hours of it: dance choreography, a full floor of cast and extras in period costume, a moving camera, and very little room or time to do any of it in.
Cast and crew
Cast, extras and crew at Shady Lawn
Cast
Crew
Updates
Freshman year
Jake writes it for an SMU English department contest, and wins.
Fall 2025
A test shoot to show the film’s look and help raise its budget, from grants and crowdfunding, matched by SMU’s film division.
May 23, 2026
Day one in Maypearl, in a farmhouse a century old.
June 2026
Sixteen shooting days across three towns. The footage goes to the edit.
Fall 2026
The first cut of the whole film, start to finish.
NowMay 2027
Planned. The date and the place land on this page first.
While you wait
PREVO streams 150+ indie short films, with a new premiere every Thursday. An earlier feature from the same SMU program, Crossroads, streams here and nowhere else.
When two strangers, Naomi and Chance, swap bodies, they must learn to accept their new circumstances. Directed by Piper Hadley.
Watch
Crossroads and every other film on PREVO, on the web, iPhone and Android.
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Premiere planned May 2027
While you wait
Code AZALEAS is applied for you. One free month, then $5.99 a month. Cancel any time.
When the Azaleas Bloomed is a Summer Film Production of SMU Meadows School of the Arts, made by students in the Division of Film and Media Arts. This page is hosted by PREVO.
Set photography by Callan Reimann and the production’s behind-the-scenes team. Archive photographs: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection.