Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Irvine.
Hi Heather, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In 2010, at 41 years old, I decided it was time to get my education and hit the reset button on my professional life. I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go. A really wonderful counselor ask me what I was interested in. I told her I loved media—film, television, radio, all of it—and she pointed me toward the Electronic Media and Film Studies program at Eastern Michigan University.
It turned out to be the perfect fit. I stayed in that program all the way through graduation in 2017. I was also president of the ETV Club for more than three years, and we created all kinds of productions in Ford Studio B, where our classroom was. We made films, shows, and countless projects there, and that’s where I met my filmmaking gang. In fact, Ford Studio B became the inspiration for the name of my production company.
Just before graduation my professors gathered around me and said, “Heather, we think you should teach.” I went back to school and earned my master’s in communication with the goal of teaching. Now, I do just that.
Today, I teach sound design for film at Eastern Michigan University, horror film at Washtenaw Community College, and film appreciation at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Most rewarding though is teaching public speaking.
Looking back, I think the biggest turning point was finding my people at Eastern and creating opportunities for us to come together and make things. I was a team leader on many of our projects, and those experiences gave us the chance to make films, build friendships, and find our voices. I’m so glad I took that leap in 2010. It completely changed the direction of my life.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No road is completely smooth. There are always bumps and curves, stretches that go uphill and others that take you down into a valley. My own road has certainly had all of those.
When I graduated with my master’s degree in 2020, the pandemic hit almost, and suddenly I was trying to find work in the middle of an incredibly uncertain time. At the same time, my friends and I had been making films together since around 2016, usually completing at least one project every year for film competitions. We weren’t ready to give that up simply because we couldn’t be together.
One of the ways we fought back against that isolation was by making an animated film entirely remotely. I wrote and produced it, helped direct it, gathered the assets, coordinated everyone from a distance, and somehow we created this wonderful little film without ever being in the same room. When we were finally able to get outside, be together again, and make a film in person, it made the experience feel even more joyful. We understood a little better just how lucky we were to be able to create together.
The struggle that has remained most consistent, though, is funding. Films cost money. You need equipment, locations, food, props, transportation, and all of the little things that add up very quickly. I’ve been fortunate to have people in Ypsilanti who genuinely support artists, particularly Steve Pierce and the Ypsilanti Performance Space. Having people like that in a community makes an enormous difference for creatives trying to make their voices heard.
Right now, funding is one of the reasons I’m not producing my own projects. Instead, I’m working with other filmmakers who have been able to fund theirs, and I’m grateful to continue creating that way. But I absolutely hope to get my gang back together soon. There are still stories I want to tell, and I’m not finished making them.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Right now, I’m an adjunct professor teaching seven classes across four different campuses, which sounds a little wild when I say it out loud, but it also speaks to something that has been true throughout my career: I know how to make things happen.
Early in my filmmaking career, someone told me that a producer’s job is to solve problems. That idea has stayed with me. Whether I’m producing a film or standing in front of a classroom, I’m a problem solver. I like to say that I “turn thoughts into things.” Give me an idea, a challenge, or even a collection of disconnected pieces, and I’m very good at finding the through line and figuring out how to make it work.
Teaching gives me another place to exercise that creativity. I’ve designed courses from the ground up, including a horror film course where I had to decide not only which films we would study, but what the larger conversation would be, how one idea would lead into another, and what I ultimately wanted students to understand about horror, culture, filmmaking, and themselves. Now I get to do that again with courses such as film appreciation and sound design for film.
What I bring to those classes is practical filmmaking experience. I’ve been on the ground trying to answer questions like: *How do we accomplish this without expensive professional equipment? How do we solve this production problem? How do we use sound, an image, an edit, or a performance to make an audience feel something?* I’m proud that I can teach from experience rather than theory alone.
That philosophy carries into my public speaking classes, too. We can study communication theory all day, but eventually you have to stand up and communicate. You have to write the speech, look at another human being, decide what you want them to understand or feel, and figure out how to get them there. I even incorporate video projects because communicating through a camera has become such an important part of professional and everyday life.
What sets me apart, I think, is my ability to see continuity and purpose. I’m always looking for the thread that connects one thing to the next. Sometimes I’ll design an assignment or structure a course because instinctively it feels right, and then after teaching it for a semester or two, I can see just how beautifully all of those pieces were working together. There was a reason for each one.
That may be what I’m most proud of. Whether I’m making a film, designing a class, producing a project, or teaching someone how to give a speech, I don’t like doing things simply because “that’s how they’re done.” Everything should have a purpose. I want to know what we’re trying to accomplish, why it matters, and then find the most creative and practical way to make it happen.
How do you define success?
Success is mercurial. I don’t think it is something you arrive at, plant a flag in, and say, “Okay, I’ve made it. I’m successful now.”
For years, I heard that old saying: “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” And I thought that was absolute BS. It sounded like one of those butterflies-and-rainbows things people say because it sounds nice, not because it is actually true.
I spent years moving from job to job, often every couple of years. I could become good at anything if I gave it enough time, focus, and attention, but eventually I would get bored. I became full of dread each day on my commute to my workplace. There wasn’t enough purpose attached to what I was doing. Finding what you love, turning it into a job, and therefore “not working” was out-of-touch for me. I simply didn’t believe that saying.
Until I did.
Teaching changed that for me because I discovered that it is a reciprocating career. The more I give to my students, the more I work with them individually, help them solve problems, encourage their passions, and figure out what they are trying to accomplish, the more it gives back to me.
I teach public speaking and sometimes a student begins the semester already watching the withdrawal date, thinking, “If this gets too uncomfortable, I’m getting out of here.” Then, at the end of the semester, that same student not only stayed, but they found their voice. That doesn’t feel like work to me. That feels like stewardship in action that I happen to get paid for.
I somehow found a way to get paid to watch horror movies and make other people talk to me about them. It once was seemingly impossible. Now it’s my reality.
I define success by how I feel when I look back at the end of a day. Instead of recapping my day with the day’s world news, I find myself marveling at my students. I think about something one of them said, something they accomplished, or a moment when I know I made a difference. That is success. There is tremendous joy in that.
I also understand success through sobriety. As a recovering alcoholic, I know sobriety isn’t something you achieve once and then declare finished. It is something you practice. You live and practice it one day at a time.
I think success works the same way.
Success is a practice.
I’ve been fortunate enough to find it in many parts of my life. My goal isn’t to someday become successful. My goal is to keep practicing success, in whatever form it takes, as many days as I possibly can.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.fordstudiob.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fordstudiob
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-irvine-b589614/
