Since she was 7 years old, Vanessa Nottingham considered herself a performer and actor.
“I remember just dreaming about opportunities,” said Nottingham, a UF School of Theater and Dance alum who graduated in 2021.
Nottingham and her fellow classmate, Jaimie Edmondson, stopped dreaming and began creating their own opportunities by using Gainesville as the set to their award-winning film, “The Lemonade Files.”
After three years of production, the film premiered June 18 at Regal LA Live and was awarded the Best Comedy award for the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival this year.
“It was just so special because the dream for me has always been to make movies and make films in Los Angeles and go to premieres in Los Angeles,” Nottingham said. “Here we are, our very first film in downtown LA in this beautiful Regal theater, and we’re watching our film on the big screen. It was just total awe.”
The movie is a quirky comedy-crime combo that follows Christopher McNeely, played by Ryan Siegel, and Sprout Paxton, played by Vanessa Nottingham, as they begin to investigate a local case for their own reasons, eventually getting involved with a much larger criminal conspiracy.
The film’s conception began in a pre-pandemic world when Edmondson was a college student with an idea for what was originally intended to be a miniseries.
“It was going to be a funky, quirky, weird comedy, and I wrote a pilot for it.” Edmondson said. “Then, the COVID pandemic happened, and since I had it and nothing was going to happen with it, I sent it to Vanessa.”
The duo created Public Policy, a political satire web series, as a test run before the feature film using the majority of the same cast and crew as what would be “The Lemonade Files.”
“It was a great training grounds for us,” Edmondson said. “It was smaller scale, mostly taking place in Vanessa’s apartment.”
The pair started filming “The Lemonade Files” in the spring of 2021. Edmondson listed “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Knives Out,” “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Juno” as some of their inspirations.
The student filmmakers, Edmondson and Nottingham, were challenged to make the unique landscape of Gainesville the perfect set for the film. The filming locations would have to fit in the suburbia-inspired style of the movie and be cost-effective for the low-budget project.
“Gainesville ended up having the perfect backdrop, especially Haile’s plantation,” Nottingham said. “That area was so colorful and unique, vibrant.”
Many local businesses, like Mi Apa, El Indio and Sweetberries offered food for days on set, and The Beach Break Salon allowed filming for hair shop scenes, which helped reduce typical costs associated with creating a feature film. This made Gainesville the best place to serve as the backdrop to The Lemonade Files, Edmondson said.
“It gave that almost unnatural sugary-sweet small-town vibe that we wanted while also just being an incredibly collaborative and helpful community to make a feature in,” Edmondson said. “Gainesville is the reason why ‘The Lemonade Files exists.”
Nottingham and Edmondson joked that creating these projects served as their “film school,” giving them practical experience to showcase along with their degrees post graduation.
“You are never going to be surrounded by so many people that have pretty free schedules and ambition and drive in whatever creative field you're in like you have when you’re in school,” Edmondson said.
Nottingham echoed this sentiment and urged college students wanting to pursue film to take action.
“Do not wait for someone else to give you an opportunity,” Nottingham said. “If this is your passion, if this is what you love, if this is what keeps you up at night and daydreaming during the day, do it.”
The film is truly a testament to creativity, determination and collaboration in the college space with the help of the Gainesville community, said Ryan Siegel, who played Christopher McNeely in the film.
“If you put the whole creative team in an empty room together, and gave them nothing but a camera, a single lightbulb, a piece of wood and a paintbrush, they could make it look like the most beautiful palace you’ve ever seen,” Siegel said. “That’s basically what they did for every scene of this movie.”
Contact Sabrina Castro at scastro@alligator.org. Follow her on X @sabs_wurld
Sabrina Castro is a rising senior studying journalism at the University of Florida and a Summer 2024 reporter for The Avenue. In her free time you can find her scrolling TikTok or searching for hidden gems at local thrift stores.
