A Southeast High grad has Hollywood dreams. See his first full-length film at AMC Bradenton.

Back in high school, Troy Williams never imagined he would one day pursue an acting career.

During his time at Southeast High School, Williams played varsity basketball for three years. He even shared the court with Adrian McPherson.

Williams also begrudgingly took a drama class to fill an elective requirement.

“I had a fear of public speaking, so that class terrified me,” Williams said.

In retrospect, Williams says it woke something inside of him.

“I think that’s where the foundation was laid,” Williams said. “Although I was an athlete, that artsy side of me really came out. I kind of kept it to myself though.”

Williams has come to realize that sports might get too much precedence over other hobbies and professions in high school.

“The mentality in Bradenton is that athletics and sports are everything,” Williams said. “And only a select few are going to make it to that next level. Typically when people don’t make it to the pros in athletics, they don’t know what to do with their lives.”

After high school, Williams moved to Orlando to attend the University of Central Florida and got a business degree.

During his sophomore year, he tried runway modeling. It reacquainted him with the idea of being on stage and entertaining people. He also met his future wife.

A few years later, Williams had married, started a family and began a career as an academic adviser.

But the acting itch came back. In 2015, he decided to go for it.

“I got kind of burnt out chasing the dollar bill,” Williams said. “I just said, ‘You know what, for once in my life I want to follow my passion.’ This is something I’ve wanted to do for years and I’m just going to go after it.”

Williams kept his day job as an academic adviser for military students, but also started auditioning for roles on the side.

Luckily, he was in a good city for an aspiring actor. Full Sail University’s film and television program makes Orlando a hotspot for independent film making.

Williams got a head shot done by a photographer friend, and then he started to audition like crazy.

At first, it did not go so well.

“I didn’t book any roles in my first 15 or 20 auditions,” Williams said. “There was a lot of doubt. You start thinking maybe I should stick to my day job.”

Then his sister-in-law got him a book called “Confessions of a Casting Director.” The book highlights what one should and should not do in an audition.

“I was too tense and tight, worried about being perfect at an audition instead of just performing the character and living in the moment,” Williams said. “When I started doing that my whole mentality changed.”

Suddenly, Williams started getting a lot of roles in short films.

The Watchman’s Edict

“The Watchman’s Edict” is Williams’ first starring role in a full-length film.

Bryan Boykins wrote and directed the political thriller. It was his first full-length narrative film.

“It’s a fast-paced real film. It’s about something that’s currently going on in front of our face and a lot of us don’t see it,” Boykins said.

In it, Williams plays an investigative reporter specializing in conspiracy theories.

The movie opens with the U.S. Congress attempting to pass a bill described as strengthening national security following a terrorist attack. The bill has some hidden surprises though.

“The second phase of the bill is implanting every American with a micro-chip,” Williams said. “It knows your thoughts, it has your location, and the moment someone thinks about a terrorist attack it has a kill switch that they can hit at any time. I find out about it and I’m trying to expose the truth to the American people. Because of that they want me dead. There are some pretty dangerous, well-connected people that are coming after me.”

“I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist, I’m not going to lie,” Boykins said. “The inspiration for the script was a story that we found. We had been reading articles about implanting micro-chips in animals to keep track of where they go. When I started finding articles about chips being put inside of people for the same purpose it got a little interesting. We started talking about what the reasons would be for that, what it would take for something like that to happen and what the world would look like if that were the case.”

Feature films typically take months to film. Not so with “The Watchman’s Edict.”

The camera crew had a rendezvous in another country so Boykins was forced to film the entire movie in two and a half days.

“It ultimately turned out to be 56 total hours of shooting,” Boykins said. “We did it virtually non-stop. It was definitely crazy. We missed out on some car chases, but replaced them with foot chases.”

“It was crazy,” Williams said. “Because of the type of movie it is it actually worked well for my character though.”

Williams was also one of the least experienced members of the cast. It was a quick initiation.

“I think Troy did a great job,” Boykins said. “A lot of the actors had been in more films than I’ve probably seen in my life. When he first got there he was definitely intimidated, you could see it in his face. But I talked to him and said, truth be told, they’re all looking to you, you’re the lead guy. He got the confidence and started to realize there was no way around it. He really embraced the role.”

The film runs about an hour and 10 minutes.

It premieres in Williams’ hometown on Monday at AMC 20 Bradenton. A question-and-answer session with Williams and Boykins will follow.

“This is the dream come true,” Williams said. “Honestly I cried tears of joy when my director told me we were able to get into the Bradenton theater. All my family is there, friends, the people I grew up with. To be able to bring a premiere to my city, there’s nothing better than that.”

“I know what it meant for me the first time I had a film show at home,” Boykins said. “When he said he had never had one of his films shown at home, there was absolutely no way I was going to let that happen.”

“He has worked hard to get where he is now,” said David Johnson, a childhood friend of Williams’ who lives in Bradenton.

Boykins will shop “The Watchman’s Edict” to theaters and film festivals across the country. A distribution deal is also in the works.

Next, Williams, 33, hopes to break into the film industry in Atlanta and Los Angeles. He is currently taking acting classes to hone his craft.

“I’m learning about myself, about how deep you can go in a character and get different layers of depth. I think acting has really made me a more well-rounded person. I get to play all these different characters and see how other people think — people that are not like myself. They have different backgrounds, upbringings, relationships, values, morals than me. When you don’t judge the character and you fully commit to it, you see. We’re all very different, but we’re all similar in what we want in life.”

Williams said that he hopes others high schoolers in Bradenton won’t be afraid to explore the arts.

“The arts are really cool,” Williams said. “It wasn’t the cool thing when I was high school. But we as a community need to stand behind some of these other outlets. That’s what it’s all about — creating different doors where people can excel in life.”

Details: 7 p.m. Monday. AMC Bradenton 20, 2507 53rd Ave. E., Bradenton. $12. tugg.com/events/the-watchman-s-edict-1avj.

This story was originally published July 17, 2018 at 11:35 AM.