Eric R. Williams

Eric R. Williams received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University, and his MFA from Columbia University's School of Film. He is married and has a daughter named Alex. In addition to writing and directing the feature length films "Snakes & Arrows" and "Breaking News" Eric R. Williams has written an un-produced Columbo made-for-TV movie for Universal Studios and developed the pilot "Don't Try This at Home" for American Movie Classics. His script "Crystal Messiah" won the Writers Guild of America award for Best New Work in 2000, and was later developed in the Film Independent Producers Lab. Three of his scripts for "Voices from the Heartland" were recognized with an Ohio Arts Council Award for Individual Excellence in Screenwriting in 2009. In 2008, Mr. Williams co-wrote and co-directed an Ohio-based educational web series called "What's the Problem?" which received a regional Emmy Award in Interactive Media. He co-produced two international documentary series in 2010: the television series "Pepperpot" in Guyana, and a web series "Tropical Disease: Chagas" in Ecuador. Mr. Williams is a professor at Ohio University's McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies, where he has received the University Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching (2007), the Honors Tutorial College Distinguished Mentor Award (2009), and was a finalist for the Presidential Teaching Award (2014). His non-fiction work has been funded by the U.S. State Department, the National Institute for Health, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Education. In 2015, Mr. Williams began working with the Game Research and Immersive Design (GRID) Lab at Ohio University where he began working as a producer/director/writer of Virtual Reality Cinema (cine-VR) and other emerging technologies. In 2020, his cine-VR work was a semi-finalist for the Real World XR Awards' Best use of Sound & Music in XR for his piece "Lost Broken Alone" (Directed by Williams; Sound Recording and Design: Jordan Herron; Music by Moby). The following year, his VR experience "For the Love of God" won the Best Virtual Reality Award in the New York Nil Gallery International Media Festival. Mr. Williams is the co-founder and owner of a digital production company called The Blue Arm. You can learn more about him at www.WilliamsOnStory.com