Maggie West is Figure 8 Films’ Production Coordinator, a job that requires her to manage schedules, book crews, plan travel, answer phones, and of course, walk dogs. Luckily, Maggie has always been a fan of multitasking, a skill that she learned from her actor/director/teacher parents. It was this love of variety that compelled her in 2006 to answer an email looking for interns at a small, Carrboro-based production company- and then take on the internship in addition to school, a restaurant job, and a love of Chapel Hill nightlife. She had little idea at the time, but responding to that email would change her life!

Maggie’s parents doomed her to a future of movie and TV nerd-dom by teaching her to quote Monty Python at age 2 and exposing her to countless movies she was probably too young to watch.  Though never bitten by the acting bug, she was taken with an insatiable curiosity to know how these films got made. Early forays into the business included collaborations with neighborhood friends on G.I. Joe action-adventures and “Blair Witch” rip-offs, and an appearance at age 10 in one of Ben Folds Five’s first music videos, “Uncle Walter.”

After a brief stint at William and Mary, she returned to North Carolina and found her true home in Chapel Hill. Her years as a student at UNC provided her with plenty of adventure- a semester in Spain, a summer in London, and a springboard for an internship at USA Network in Los Angeles in 2007. As a Communication Studies major with minors in Spanish and Anthropology, she grew to love the documentary form and realize its potential to educate and inspire change.

Her senior-year internship at Figure 8 gave Maggie a crash-course on the ins-and-outs of television documentary production, and showed her that it’s possible to be both a television producer and a nice person. The internship then led to a full-time position, which she could not be happier about: sometimes she has to pinch herself to remember that this is her first “real life” job out of college. It is, as some would say, a pretty sweet gig.

While she’s not working, Maggie enjoys eating international (and vegetarian) food, getting lost in bookstores, and trying to be crafty.