Alum
Deonna Weatherly
Founder of Weatherhouse Company
Deonna Weatherly, BA’18, MS, ‘20, founder of Weatherhouse Company
“We were the guinea pigs for grad school in The Media School, and we were required to do a game design class. I was so confused when I got my schedule. I have no interest in game design, I didn't even know where I would start with it.
We had to create a couple of virtual reality projects, which was actually kind of cool. It required me to film. We went to a cabin and filmed so you can travel around the cabin in the game virtually. Other than that though, I was very upset about having to do game design.
Then, later in life, I had to sit and think about what we were actually doing, and that was creating a world. And I really love that about filmmaking. You can just create whatever your world is. We were really just creating something out of nothing. And I think that's a lot of what filmmaking is, it is starting from an idea and seeing how you can create it into something that somebody can see or watch and enjoy and feel.
I created my own production company called Weatherhouse Company. I created a nonprofit called Weatherhouse Institute, where we bring in students and teach them how to make films and give them hands-on learning experiences. And then my most recent venture is the Indiana Youth Film Festival that I created in 2024.
I never had a desire to create a festival, and I didn't know how much work went into that. But it's very fulfilling because I'm able to give a platform to the young filmmakers in Indiana to showcase their work, something I wish I had when I was younger.
Creating these ideas and actually sustaining them has been a very big thing for me because in Indianapolis, specifically, a lot of things come and go. I'm hoping to be here and to stay and to keep it going.
After college, my career was a lot bigger than just me and my personal film career. And so I've been trying to figure out, ‘How can I not just better our film industry in Indianapolis, but also create something new?’ How can I service my community and promote the arts in general?
You don't necessarily have to move to LA or to New York or Atlanta to be a successful filmmaker, stay here. The thought process while I was a student was, we have to leave Indiana in order to make it at all. So, I tried that, and I left, and I just had to come back. This is my community. This is what created me, and so it's an honor to be able to not only give back to my community, but to also be able to shape it and to create it.
Written By Emerson Elledge
Photos By Olivia Smith