I guess my website is mixture of blog and what I do, still trying to figure stuff out. I do like that I can write what I want as posts and then put up other things in a portfolio thing that I need to figure out and make, I was gonna start this as a ‘the life and times of Hedgie’ when I started this, now this is kinda going to evolve into what I do as a day job and the state of the film industry in my community… which isn’t very good… it’s… pretty rough.

I got into the film industry in… 2015 or the tail end of it after I got out of the military on my own power for leg injuries that the military didn’t want to find out what it was. Took seven years to figure it out, and now I’m there… I guess you can say. I did my first movie ever after dreaming about being the industry in November after going through … ‘Training’ with a man that I ended up becoming very good friends with and has been a stable rock and anchor in my life. His idea of training (it was learning to march for performers that had no idea how to do it), I didn’t realize it then but it was certainly learned later on that Casting doesn’t really put people together that know how to do things, but I digress. He put it as “yelling and screaming at us” gotta say… he did, but it was for the massive marching scene in War for the Planet of the Apes that you see, and then I managed to luck out to be one of the few remaining people out of the batch of 400 to stay and do whatever was left till my leg injuries flared but it was like a couple of extra days I didn’t do.

I did get his number of a school called Blood and Iron and started training there to maintain some semblance of physical activity, I didn’t want to be that ex-military that let themselves go because of injury… however, COVID did that. From there I did more and more in film as a PA (Locations on top of being a Background Performer), I liked being busy, being busy was how I kept my mind going. And when I managed to eventually get into Props before the strikes really started going and then film seemed like it started to wind down.

COVID and the Strikes then wrecked film and those that did strictly film lost work, and then it got worse. I on the other hand, because I knew that film didn’t always last and working day to day, or show to show, or day calls that then had nothing, that man that I became friends with and who is my stability. He took a chance with me in his Sandblasting company. I started small with just cleaning up Job Sites, helping load stuff in and out of the truck, washing stuff, shoveling and eventually there was a job that none of his workers could fit into. He asked me if I wanted to learn to Sandblast and I did. My first day, he was sure I was gonna quit, he had had women on site before and they couldn’t do the physical labour.

I did.

I proved that A: Women could do the work and B: That I could the work, eventually moved into Sandblasting and so in between whatever film work I could get from my Agent which fizzled out, and the crew work which more or less completely fizzled out. I turned to what else could I do? Sandblasting couldn’t be forever and I loved to make things and I’ve always to wanted to make something that could be used on a set, could be said that I made it and it was used.

In theatre I had a rocky start, but then I got better but it through community theatre and being a stage manager that I learned in the last year or so that I would do anything to make sure something succeeded, so… while Sandblasting and wondering where my future would go, I decided to make a jump and just make things and see if people would go for it and thankfully it did with ‘Stolen Child’ and two Stunt Coordinators that went to bat for me and were impressed. I can only hope that more comes my way while I now adjust out of possibly no longer being a Sandblaster and I change my ‘career’ again.

Stability is needed now these days but I won’t give up on my little company, and I won’t give up on helping people make movies. Just need to do a little more.