Heath Crawford

Director Heath Crawford began his journey to Hollywood in the South. He was born in the small town of Oakdale, Louisiana and raised in the even smaller town of Calcasieu, with a population of just 200 people. He is the youngest in a family of seven brothers and sisters. He first began to dream of working in the film industry as a 10-year-old boy. Crawford recalls the impact that a certain George Lucas film had on him as a child. "I remember seeing Star Wars as a kid and thinking it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. The idea of being able to present such a fantastic tale to so many people is what first inspired me to become a film director." He says he never had any doubts about his ability to achieve this lifelong ambition: "I knew if I put my mind to it and believed in myself that it would happen one day." After graduating from high school in 1989, Crawford joined the U.S. Marine Corps. Upon finishing his military service, he returned to Louisiana. There he spent two years working alongside his father in the family tree logging company before heading off to college. Crawford graduated from Northwestern State University in 2000 with a degree in journalism and moved to Washington, D.C. to work for Washington Speakers Bureau as an assistant agent. A year later he returned to Louisiana to gain experience working in local radio. There he was hired to be the promotions director and on-air DJ for a classic rock radio station. The following year Crawford moved to Los Angeles, where he began working as an extra on the sets of films such as Spiderman 2 and various TV shows. At the same time, he started pursuing work behind-the-scenes to learn the production side of the business. Crawford began as a production assistant, but soon graduated to grip, lighting and, eventually, camera work. He has since worked as a cameraman for NBC, Spike TV, Speed Channel and on a few independent films. In 2004, Crawford began directing his own films. In the last six months, he has completed a feature length documentary ("Iwo Jima: Sixty Years of Silence"), a short horror film ("Something Waits") and a music video for the Los Angeles based band Road Movie. He has also worked with screenwriters to create and edit concept videos used in pitching film projects to major film studios. Crawford says his mission is simple: "I want to make movies that matter. Whether it is a documentary or an original screenplay or a book adaptation, I think it is important to tell compelling stories that touch people on a very basic level. My goal is to create films that are honest depictions of the human experience. And, my wish is to have audiences walk out of theaters changed, or at least somehow impacted, in a positive way."