Longview Public Schools help students launch successfully into college and career. We’d like to introduce a number of our (fairly recent) graduates and highlight their accomplishments and career trajectories. Here is a notable Rising Star:

• St. Rose School
• R.A. Long, class of 2017
• New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, expected graduation 2020

 

 

Born and raised in Longview, film student and award-winning filmmaker Drake Dalgleish describes his hometown as the ideal location to grow up.

“It’s an amazing place to form lasting connections,” Dalgleish nostalgically recalled.

Today, the 2017 grad of R.A. Long High School is focused on making connections with other filmmakers at the New York Film Academy he attends in Los Angeles.

Dalgleish, now 19, is an up-and-coming film writer, director and actor, set to graduate from film school in 2020.  He’s already achieving accolades in the film industry, winning Best Horror film at the L.A. Shorts Film Festival in July for writing and directing “The Presence Behind the Door,” a story of a man trapped in his apartment and struggling to determine what is real and what is merely a figment of his imagination.

It was in Longview, at R.A. Long, that Dalgleish caught the creative bug and was inspired to use his own imagination in theater class.

“I did every production that they offered through all four years,” Dalgleish said. “Theater started me on the path I’m on now. I loved my teacher and she inspired me at a formative time in my life.”

That teacher is Susan Donahue. In 2017, Dalgleish nominated her as an LPS Star Polisher. “She helped me figure out my life,” he wrote.

Fresh off his film festival win and deep in classroom study, Dalgleish is also in the midst of writing his first feature film – a story about clinical depression taught through the eyes of people who have lost a loved one.

“This is an important story to tell and a topic I’m passionate about demystifying,” he said. “And again, it was in Longview, in theatre class, that I learned how passionate I was about this issue when we performed the play ‘The Mental State.’”

He plans to return to Longview to shoot the film once he is finished writing and eventually, he plans to reside in his hometown, in the house he grew up in, but not before he leaves his mark on the film industry.

“Right now I feel like the sky is the limit for my career,” he said.  “In the future I want to be able shoot films and continue to act in them, too.”

Remember the name Drake Dalgleish and remember it all started in Longview.