In post-productionAn SMU Summer Film Production
A veteran comes home to his family’s complicated past.
LatestOctober 2026
Cameras wrapped in June after fourteen production 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
LoglineA World War II veteran returns home to deal with his family’s complicated past.
It began as a short story. Jake Willeford started writing it in high school, and it grew into the script for this feature, presented to SMU’s film faculty and selected for the Summer Film 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 Ellis County with no air conditioning and no running water, through the heat and thunderstorms of a Texas summer, with more days in Mesquite. 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
High school
Jake starts writing the short story it grew from.
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
The first of fourteen production days.
June 2026
Fourteen days in Mesquite and Ellis County. 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.
Start watching freeCode AZALEAS is applied for you. Then $5.99 a month. Cancel any time. Already a member? Sign in.
Submit
PREVO premieres new independent films every Thursday. Send us yours.
Submit your film
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.