I have been involved in the film business from a very young age. I was an actress in the Miami area during my pre-teens but then decided I preferred to be behind the camera. Luckily a producer by the name of Rob Cohen took me under his wing and during summers and holidays I was a PA of sorts and absorbed the business from behind the scenes.
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I was born and raised in the Chicago area and went to Purdue University in Indiana. My early goal was to write for Sports Illustrated but I found myself more interested in electronic media than print media so I followed more of a production route.
I started as a runner on the American TV show Xena: Warrior Princess, which was being filmed in New Zealand in the mid 1990s, so I have worked my way up the ladder from the bottom. I have worked as a 1st or 2nd AD on over 25 dramas such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Yogi Bear, The Shannara Chronicles and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny.
I worked in various jobs in the natural resources field after I graduated from college. That eventually led to a job as a realty specialist for the Kootenai National Forest based in the small logging town of Libby, Montana. Steven Spielberg came to the area to make the firefighting movie Always in 1989 and one of my assignments was to work on the permit for the shoot.
Would we be right in saying that when it comes to film production communications we can break the subject down into two parts – people on the move using mobile communications and office-based secure wireless communications?
In 1977, when I was 12 years old, I saw the first Star Wars film. I remember leaving the cinema in a state of (pleasant) shock. I just wanted to see the film again and ended up watching it four times in the following weeks. I have always loved to see films at the cinema but I obviously had no idea in 1977 what my future had in store for me. I just knew that I wanted a job that I loved and wanted to be somewhere where they made these kinds of films.
