Former HPMS student’s low-budget comedy ‘Blood in the Snow’ now streaming
After earning their high school diplomas, Joseph Jeavons and his teenage creative team graduated from short films to features.
That bold leap came with some harsh lessons about the movie business but eventually yielded a happy ending.
The low-budget comedy Blood in the Snow, the feature directorial debut for the former Highland Park Middle School student, recently debuted on streaming platforms.
Jeavons, 20, was born to missionaries in Costa Rica before relocating to the Park Cities for much of his childhood. He later moved to Lakewood and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 2023.
He started making short films with collaborators Sam Teague, who co-wrote and stars in Blood in the Snow, and Owen Swift, a co-writer and composer. By the way, there is blood in the film, but no snow.
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“The title sounds really edgy and really dark, but it’s like a teen comedy,” Jeavons said. “The phrase was just something we came up with as a line of dialogue.”
The trio held outdoor neighborhood screenings once a year, where attendance was solid and feedback was positive.
“We started filming short films on our iPhones, and it was pretty bad quality, but people would enjoy the stories or the acting,” Jeavons said. “We got a lot of praise for making stuff that’s a little bit offbeat and funny, but also heartfelt and sweet.”
Their shorts also gained some acclaim on the festival circuit, such as the Houston Comedy Film Festival and the Student World Impact Film Festival.
When they hatched the feature idea, Jeavons was all-in, using money he earned from a summer lifeguard job to buy a camera and other equipment. He shaved his head as part of a crowdfunding campaign, with investors further incentivized by a distribution deal to stream the film on Amazon sometime this year.
The three filmmakers went away to college but reunited to shoot the bulk of the project in Dallas in the summer of 2024.
They got positive vibes after screening a rough cut. However, the arrangement with the distributor partnered with Amazon fell through, and it looked like the film might never find an audience.
“We promised all these people that the final cut would be available on Prime Video, because that’s what we were told was going to happen,” Jeavons said. “That was devastating. All these people had given us money. What do we tell them? We couldn’t let this not happen.”
Jeavons pivoted and began researching other avenues, eventually, teaching himself about advertising rates and copyrights and re-pitching the project to Tubi, where it’s now available.
Now a sophomore at the University of Texas, Jeavons said his passion lies more in writing than directing, and he’s hoping to publish his debut novel soon.
