Submitted photo Boardman native Aaron Massey is the writer, director and one of the actors for "Mid West," which will be screened Friday at Movies 8 in Boardman.

Aaron Massey was a jock growing up in Boardman, where life was a continuous cycle of football, basketball and baseball.

After a shoulder injury at Marietta College ended his baseball career, the 1999 Boardman High School graduate turned to another passion.

“I used to love going to movie theaters as a kid,” Massey said. “I grew up in Presidential Estates and we would park our bicycles on the backside of Cinema South and do a couple of matinees in the heat of summer.”

Massey, who now lives in Columbus, returns to Boardman as a filmmaker and will screen his first feature-length film, “Mid West,” at 7 p.m. Friday at Movies 8, 469 Boardman-Poland Road, another theater he frequented growing up.

“The shoulder injury allowed time to hone my other interests,” he said. “I took some acting classes and really enjoyed it.”

After college he moved to Los Angeles. Like many actors, he struggled to get the parts he wanted. At the same time, advances with the iPhone and other consumer-level digital recording devices made it easier to make polished shorts and films without professional-grade equipment.

“My friends and I started to make our own stuff,” Massey said. “That’s where I transitioned and also fell in love with the other side of the camera. That’s when I started my journey of wanting to make films as well as act in them.”

Still, the cost of living in Southern California was expensive, so a decade ago he decided to relocate to Columbus. He was closer to home, he had college friends in the area, the arts community was thriving and he was able to pursue acting opportunities in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Columbus, which all have been production sites for major feature films.

There he did several short films, comedy sketches and the long-form web series “Love Squared,” which can be viewed on his YouTube channel.

“I’d written several full-length screenplays to get those chops down, make the mistakes and get them out the way,” Massey said. “It was time for me to take the next step.”

Knowing that no one was going to knock on his door and offer him millions of dollars to make a movie, Massey had to write a screenplay he could shoot economically over a long period of time instead of a rigid shooting schedule.

“The story concept is a man wakes up in a field caked in blood with no memory or recollection how he arrived there,” Massey said. “His journey is to figure out who he is. In his search, he comes across several different types of characters and relationships.

“In moments of extreme trauma, people can lose their memory. I thought that would be an interesting concept to put into a film and parallel that with an undertone of finding ourselves, discovering who we are. I wanted to create a story that would be entertaining and interesting and also include some sub-layers if they want to dive a little deeper.”

Massey shot the movie over a year in the Columbus area, scheduling production days whenever he and the necessary actors were available.

The upside of the long production schedule is that he was able to shoot during different seasons, which worked for the film. The downside is one of his actors had to drop out of the project, which forced him to rewrite the script to salvage what already had been done and create new scenes that wouldn’t require that actor. In the process, Massey ended up writing a part for himself.

“Mid West” essentially was completed before the COVID-19 pandemic, (the trailer for the film was posted to YouTube three years ago), but it kept Massey from submitting it to film festivals, which often have deadlines at least six months in advance.

The movie premiered in April at the 2023 Cinema Columbus Film Festival.

Friday’s screening starts the second stage of distribution, Massey said. He is booking some screenings in hopes of attracting the attention of a streaming service to pick up the project for distribution.

For a man who named his company Steel Valley Productions, setting up a screening in his hometown was a no-brainer.

“I grew up playing sports in what was the Steel Valley Conference,” Massey said. “It represents where I come from.”

Tickets for the screening are $13 and are available online through Fandango. Tickets can be purchased the night of the screening if any remain. Massey will do a Q&A with the audience following the screening.