Kentucky, Take One

By Lauren Taylor Carr • Photos by Matt Johnson

New Kentucky Film Office Executive Director Meg Fister brings a career spent in theater, television, and film back home—and a vision for making the Commonwealth a destination for filmmakers and Kentucky stories.

Meg Fister never expected a career in film to begin at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Her first job out of college placed the Kentucky native inside one of the country’s most respected regional theaters. Within four months, she was running casting sessions in New York for the Humana Festival of New American Plays, working alongside writers and directors as characters and entire worlds took shape for the first time.

“As someone who has always appreciated artists but has never been an artist myself, it was exciting to be that close to the creative process and to do everything I could to support it,” Fister says.

She spent more than five years at Actors Theatre before deciding to move to New York. Then Los Angeles intervened.

Center Theatre Group called and asked her to run casting. Fister had never been to Los Angeles, but flew out for an interview. The organization offered her the position on her way home. Six weeks later, she moved west.

After two years, Fister followed many of the artists she knew into television and film. “Creating new television programs and films seemed like the most exciting kind of world-building possible,” she says.

Over the next decade, she worked for Warner Bros., Universal, and NBC, developing television series and feature films. That experience—understanding budgets, locations and what producers need—ultimately made her uniquely suited for an opportunity back home.

In January, Fister became Executive Director of the Kentucky Film Office, charged with helping turn the Commonwealth’s growing production activity into a sustainable industry.

“I know what producers need, and I know how to make budgets work because that was my job,” she says.

Fister sees particular promise in independent film. Kentucky offers filmmakers diverse urban and rural locations within relatively short distances, along with an experienced crew base accustomed to tight budgets and quick turnarounds. Her goal is for Kentucky to become known as the place filmmakers can successfully produce a $5 million or $15 million independent feature.

But attracting productions is only part of her ambition.

“I have always felt that Kentucky is a wonderful secret,” Fister says. “We have so much to offer through our people, culture, and heritage.”

That means not simply allowing Kentucky to double for somewhere else, but encouraging films that are unmistakably Kentucky—stories capable of sharing the Commonwealth’s people, history, and landscape with audiences around the world.

Building that industry will also require creating pathways for Kentuckians to work in it. To that end, Fister’s office is partnering with universities and technical schools [including Kentucky College of Art + Design, where this writer is currently pursuing a BFA in Film] to connect students—and workers with transferable skills in fields such as construction, electrical work and manufacturing—to production jobs. The goal is to build careers rather than simply host occasional movie shoots.

Five years from now, Fister hopes Kentucky will be recognized nationally for a thriving film-production ecosystem, with crews working sustainably throughout the year and the benefits extending across the creative community.

“I would love to see Kentucky musicians scoring films and television series produced here,” she says. “I would love to see the Louisville Orchestra hired for recording sessions or appearing onscreen as musicians.”

For Fister, that would bring the journey full circle: a career that began by helping artists build worlds on a Louisville stage, traveled through Hollywood, and returned home with an opportunity to help Kentucky build one of its own.

For more information visit: kyfilmoffice.com.