Meet Jimmie Rogers of Ellenwood GA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jimmie Rogers.

Hi Jimmie , can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My grandfather served in Vietnam. He didn’t talk much about the war, but he loved movies. Every other Saturday, we’d have our own double feature. He was the first film pirate I ever knew — four VCRs running twelve-hour tapes, duplicating rentals from Blockbuster. We watched those movies on loop. Eventually, that repetition turned into curiosity. I wanted to know how movies were made. I started devouring every book I could find — on writing, directing, editing, all of it.

By thirteen, I was writing short films. In my twenties, I finally worked up the courage to try making one. In 2012 I started Eagle Road Productions and alongside a group of talented filmmakers, I directed a short called The Devil’s Hand:
A hotshot politician is thrust into the unknown after a fatal accident forces a confrontation with Lucifer. Faced with a decision as old as time, he must choose between his principles and his soul.

When it was finished… I froze. I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t ask. I didn’t push. I just stopped. I kept writing, kept studying — but I wasn’t making anything happen.

Then I married Autumn, and we moved to Los Angeles for four years. That changed everything. I worked in nearly every corner of the entertainment industry and absorbed as much as I possibly could.

In LA, I met Zach — my upstairs neighbor, a film obsessive with a deep love for Jim Jarmusch and Jean-Luc Godard. Between 2015 and 2023, the year he passed away, we wrote over 27 screenplays together. By 2019, Autumn and I left LA with a deeper understanding of film making, killer calf muscles, and a daughter.

Then COVID hit. We were living just outside Atlanta, locked down like everyone else. And like so many people during that time, we got creative. With Autumn, Zach, and a few close friends, we wrote and shot a short film called Coffee With Friends — about a man doomed to share his morning coffee with the ghosts of his victims. We shot it in two days, on no budget. To our surprise, it found an audience — winning 19 awards and earning several more nominations.

In 2022, we decided to go bigger and make a feature film.

Shadow Tag
When Emmanuel Jove declares himself a god, he’s committed to a halfway house for the mentally unstable. As his influence spreads among the residents, he finds himself in a battle of wills with a disillusioned priest determined to expose the truth.

We spent three months planning and shot Shadow Tag that July — ten days, $5,000, and a crew full of passion. Along the way, several of us caught COVID, we met a goat named Cotton, and somehow we ended up with a finished film that premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. I got to return to a city I once called home and watch our film light up the big screen.

Shadow Tag went on to win 13 awards and earn numerous nominations.

Zach is gone now, but he left behind a legacy — a stack of stories, a thousand conversations, and a shared belief that movies matter. And I plan to keep telling those stories.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s never been easy — but why should it be?
Making movies is the easy part. Finding a story that truly connects with people… that’s the hard part.

I grew up loving horror films. I always wanted to write and make the next big thing. And honestly, I think I’ve written it — but right now, Hollywood isn’t buying. So we keep pushing forward the only way we know how: building the project, presenting the vision, asking people to take a chance — and being honest that they may never see a return on their investment, but at least they’ll be part of something bold, something different.

There’s something special about making a film independently. It’s an adventure, a wild, exhausting journey shared with people who burn with the same passion. There’s stress. There’s chaos. But it hits different.

I’ve had the chance to work on studio sets and live events, and I loved every second of it. One day, I hope to be there again — but until then, I’ll keep climbing the hill with my friends at my side.

We all wear multiple hats — writing, directing, editing — and we support each other through every challenge. And yeah, there are many challenges. But if you can find the right group — the kind of people who are truly down for the ride — you’ll make something happen. Maybe not right away. Maybe not for years.

But you keep going. You don’t stop.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I think my real specialty is building a team.

To me, starting a film project feels like planning a heist. You make your list, start sending texts, making calls — reaching out to the people you trust to pull it off. I do my best to stay in touch, but sometimes it’s been two years since I’ve seen some of them. Still, when the time comes, you light the fires of Gondor… and they know what’s coming.

Screenplays, shot lists, location scouting, casting, story boarding — it all starts coming together. And then that first day, when everyone shows up and you finally get to say “Action!”
It’s BEA-utiful.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Take the extra job that doesn’t pay much. Take the PA job that barely covers gas. If you really want to do this — start young, and push past the fear.

Yes, you can start once you’ve got a full-time job, a mortgage, maybe even a family — but it’s harder. Not impossible, just heavier.

But the truth is simple: just do it.
Write it. Shoot it. Make the damn thing.

If no one likes it, make another one.
If people do like it… make another one.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akathhon/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EagleRoadProductions