Behind every movie is a massive team of people working together to perfect a film before you see it on your television screen.
One such person intimately involved in this process is Tameron Hedge, an award-winning executive producer, and one of the women behind the scenes in the American entertainment industry.
Hedge has worked in film, music, and production for 35 years and is a seasoned professional in her field. She, in a way, broke a glass ceiling in the entertainment industry by learning how to step into a previously very male-dominated field.
“A door opened, and I walked through it, not really imagining that I had a future there [in entertainment], but I wanted to try something different, and when I finished my first two productions, I was hooked,” Hedge told IW Features. “I fell in love with the energy of it, with the creative process. I loved the job of a producer, which I wasn’t producing yet, but I set my sights on that because it was building an architecture for the unfolding of a story.”
In the same way Hedge can imagine the architecture of a story in a movie, she has imagined an architecture for how other women can break into the entertainment space.
“The most important things for any filmmaker is going in and learning the job, learning everyone on production’s job, learning how to translate that into the architecture of a budget, and then build relationships and be confident in the work that we do,” Hedge said.
“Be relentlessly curious to learn about the different crew positions,” she continued. “Every line item tells a story. Just immerse yourself in what it takes to pull a production like this together.”
And Hedge has noticed a definitive shift, with more women filling the space in production and film than she’s seen before.
“I’ve [seen more women] everywhere, from above-the-line producers, more women in the camera department, and women and production design. I’ve seen more women in the technical crew positions that were particularly male-dominating,” Hedge said. “I’ve never been the loudest voice in the room, but I’ve always been conscious of building out the best teams, and I’ve seen more women in that space over the past 10 years, and in leadership positions like executive producers and above the line producers.”
Hedge said there is more space on editorial teams for women to step up, and noted that representation is still missing in the director’s chair.
“What I haven’t seen here is a preponderance of female directors, but we had some, so that space I would have to say still feels more dominated by men,” Hedge said.
Hedge has traveled all over for different jobs, but in Nashville, Tennessee, she is impressed with the female representation in her field.
Hedge recently worked as the unit production manager and line producer on a family-friendly all-American comedy film, “Bad Counselors,” which came out earlier this summer.She worked alongside Rodney Eldrige and Chris Fenton, two producers on the film.
Eldrige and Fenton both spoke to IW Features not only about their new film but the reality of women in entertainment. Their team made a conscious effort to dissent from the traditional Hollywood norms and create not only an alternative to mainstream movie culture, but also to the culture on set, they said.
“This is a male-dominant industry, and I hate it, you know. I hate that it is,” Eldridge said. “I’m a big advocate for Tameron [Hedge] and the team. One of the biggest things I try to do on set is create equality.”
But as time has gone on and more opportunities have been created, the disparities have noticeably lessened.
“Women in the entertainment business have become, I would say, almost on par with men now. If you look at some of the most important people when it comes to the movie-making business, people like Donna Langley, who’s chairman of NBCUniversal, you have women running the new Paramount Sky Dance, you have Pam Abdi running all of Warner Brothers production and development.”
But this shift is more recent, according to both Hedge and Fenton. Fenton explained he has seen women more prominently stepping into these roles in the past 10 to 15 years in particular.
For Eldridge, part of this reality is because of how he runs his set and the types of projects he chooses to work on.“Bad Counselors,” for example, was created to be a family-friendly, feel-good comedy, which can feel like a rarity in today’s media climate.
“This [“Bad Counselors”] is one I really am proud of, because it’s a small movie, but it has no political leaning in it whatsoever, which I think is what the entertainment business should be focused on,” Fenton said. “It calls for something higher when people watch it, and it’s just good fun.”
Fenton also said the movie is 100% American-made, which is also hard to come by in the industry.
Early in his career, and even throughout the early 2000s, Fenton said films carried less of an ideological lean. But in today’s society, almost the entire industry is captured by far-left progressivism, meaning breaking through and creating content that represents certain values is more difficult.
Fenton hopes we can get back to more of an ideological balance in movies, and hopes “Bad Counselors” works toward that.
“I think it’s kind of split, and I think part of our mission as filmmakers should be, how do we neutralize this and just start making good movies,” Eldridge said.
But before “Bad Counselors” paved its way and created a new space in the industry, Hedge had to pave her own. She attributes her start to someone taking a chance on her.
“The support [Hedge received early on] honestly, looked like hiring me,” Hedge said. “It also looked like mentorship, but not in a formal way. It looked like someone who would reach out to hire me for a job.”
“That support really looks like mentoring and oversight. It’s one thing to say, ‘Yes, come on board,’ but also, ‘Come on board, let me help you learn how to navigate, and let’s give you an opportunity to see,’” she added.
Hedge’s best advice? Build relationships, be competent, and be trustworthy.
“Learn, and look like you’re someone who wants to be there,” Hedge said. “Be happy to be there, and people will, over time, gravitate toward you, and you’ll gravitate towards your people.”
