A 1996 Centreville High grad, Jason Corgan Brown is the producer, director and co-writer of the independent film, “Falcon Song.”

And it’s having a sneak preview, this Sunday, March 23, at 2 p.m., at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Ashburn. Tickets are available now at http://drafthouse.com/movies/falcon-song/northern_virginia.

Fresh from the Santa Barbara Film Festival, where it premiered in February, the PG-rated movie is a contemporary western in which a guitar-playing drifter helps a rancher's granddaughter find her true calling. It explores themes of land conservation and soul searching in a world filled with quirky, colorful characters and magical realism.

The ensemble features Gabriel Sunday (“Year One”) with Rainey Qualley (daughter of Andie MacDowell), plus Martin Kove (“Karate Kid”), James Storm (“Dark Shadows”), Michael Yebba (“R.I.P.D.”) and David Hayward (“Matlock”).

“It’s a drama, but borderline comedy with subtle touches of fantasy,” said Brown. “It’s not a cowboys-and-Indians western and is not violent. It takes a few steps back to a more innocent era and is something the whole family can enjoy.”

He describes it as “a lighthearted movie using lighting and editing techniques to achieve a dreamy, glossy look used a lot in the 1980s. You don’t see many films today that have this visual appearance, and this gives the movie its signature look.”

Brown was speaking by phone from the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where he was “doing some legwork” for an upcoming film. So he’s come a long way from the Braddock Ridge neighborhood in Centreville where he was raised — and, he said, it all began at Centreville High.

“I took film-production classes there from theater teacher Mike Hudson,” said Brown. “They gave me a focus and were inspirational to me, and I developed them into a career. We had cameras and equipment, and he let us go with our instincts to do what we wanted with our projects. And it was important to me to have that creative freedom to explore things without restraints.”

He said photography teacher Kim Basinger also played a part. “Her teaching style also impacted me with the freedom we had to create,” said Brown. “She encouraged us to find our inner voice, so I thrived in both hers and Hudson’s classes.”

After graduation, Brown attended the four-year North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, obtaining a degree in film making, concentrating on directing. Enjoying it, he said, “It was a close-knit community of filmmakers.”

Next came an internship at NBC in Los Angeles and, 18 months later, he moved into the feature-film arena and was production assistant on the Robert Zemeckis film, “What Lies Beneath.” Brown then worked with Zemeckis’s company, ImageMovers, for several years and did production and art-department work.

Afterward, he helped develop the new field of asset management for motion-capture productions. It’s the technology used to make films such as “Avatar,” “Polar Express,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and “Lord of the Rings.”

“There’s a real actor underneath, and computer software tracks his movements,” said Brown. “Then the data moves the computer-generated characters.”

He worked in that field a few years until 2010, when he branched out and started his own company, Corgan Pictures. For the first couple years, though, he worked simultaneously on larger studio projects.

Now, said Brown, “We’re working to establish our brand — art-house material that can also thrive in mainstream theaters. We’re a boutique film studio because we’re not just working on other people’s productions; we’re developing and securing financing for our own films.”

Corgan Pictures’s first movie was “Nightfur,” a micro-budget cult film. It’s a sci-fi movie available in 3,000 outlets worldwide. It’s not a theatrical release, but is in retail stores and on video-on-demand streaming platforms.

“Falcon Song,” intended for limited theatrical release and one-time screenings, is the company’s second film. It also marks Qualley’s first major role in a feature film. Running 109 minutes, it took 18 months to produce.

“It’s important at this stage to make sure our product stays true to my artistic vision,” said Brown. “That’s why I’m heavily involved in it. We shot across six different cities in Montana and did post-production and editing in California.”

Calling his movie “uplifting,” he said it’s rare to find an independent film that’s good for the whole family to see. “I’d like audiences to leave the movie feeling that it was a breath of fresh air in a field seemingly dominated by violence, shock, cynicism and negativity,” said Brown. “It’s a bit of an escapist film with a storybook-world feel, and I hope people will enjoy it.”

“Falcon Song” will be shown in 10 cities and, if it does well, it’ll go into additional theaters. Then in May, it’ll be released on most major cable-on-demand and Internet video-on-demand platforms.

“I feel really happy,” said Brown. “I feel like the past 12 years have led up to this point — to have the knowledge, ability and confidence to make the films I want to do and keep going. So it’s a really exciting time and I’m looking forward to the next project, another feature film currently in development.”

“Working in asset management and helping create that new field was integral in helping me acquire the networking and contacts needed to start my own company,” he continued. “It was an historical milestone in the development of film technology, and it was exciting to be a part of it.”

Through it all, though, he hasn’t forgotten his roots. What does he see himself doing down the road? Said Brown: “I’d eventually like to do a coming-of-age movie someday about growing up in Northern Virginia.”