On her way: MBHS grad Caroline Moore to attend film school in NY, dreams of producing films

Mountain Brook High School graduate Caroline Moore really wants to be a feature film producer.

“So much I could scream it from the nearest rooftop,” she said. “Being the woman behind the curtain, making sure that a story has the proper footing to stand tall, is my dream,” she said.

Moore is well on her way to reaching that goal.

Graduating summa cum laude from the University of Alabama this spring, Moore earned a degree from the College of Communication and Information Sciences in communication studies with a concentration in creative producing and a minor in business administration.

While attending Alabama, Moore gained production experience by working for Crimson Tide Productions (CTP) in the school’s athletic department during her four years at UA.

In addition, she gained admission to one of the most prestigious graduate film programs in the world in the School of the Arts at Columbia University in New York, which she’ll attend this fall.

Moving to the Big Apple fulfills another of Moore’s dreams. “This is really a culmination of what I have wanted since I could remember,” she said.

When Moore was 4 or 5 years old, she told her grandmother she was going to be a dancer in New York but that her grandmother shouldn’t worry because she could come visit her.

“I made good on my word in some ways, I suppose,” Moore said.

She also has a strong conviction regarding the social importance of film and aspires to do more than merely entertain her audiences.

“I see a film as much more than a way to spend two hours,” she said. “It acts as a mirror in that it should reflect our culture, the bad and the good, in a way that cannot be ignored and is revered for the honesty it portrays.”

While working at CTP, Moore amassed valuable training and experience — more than she “can fully express” — that will help her in the film business, she said.

“It really started from the ground up: the etiquette of a production, the chain of command, when to stick to it and when to break it, the excitement a group of people with one common goal can feel,” she said.

Working about 20 hours a week, Moore did audio and video production for all sports and often worked for ESPN and the SEC Network.

The job was both fun and challenging, and Moore made a lot of good friends and found some valuable mentors.

“I always felt like my skills were being furthered by those people we refer to as full-time staffers,” Moore said.

Justin Brant and Wyatt Caruthers encouraged her to pursue audio engineering, and she was inspired by Kaye Proctor, who was “shining the light ahead for all females in CTP,” Moore said.

The work at CTP taught Moore “how important the energy of the crew is to the sustainability of the production,” she said.

CTP also provided her with some lessons about the tough side of production work. “I learned how to take a hit when it came to errors because we were students,” Moore said. “We needed to be tossed into the madness in order to persevere, to give our utmost effort and, for lack of a better phrase, leave it all out on the field — or court, depending on the sport.”

It makes sense that she was involved in sports. Moore, who graduated from Mountain Brook High School in 2016, was a four-year starter on the Spartans softball team.

“Sports run deep” on her father’s side of the family, she said. Moore’s grandfather, Bud Moore, was a college football head coach and is a member of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

While at CTP, Moore came to honor and value the people with whom she worked and realized “how important it is to be invested in people and their purpose within the production and outside of it,” she said.

“A production, whether it’s sports or narrative film, requires humans of all different backgrounds and different positions to meld together and make it great,” Moore said. “I learned what a team looks like at CTP, and I aspire to build one as strong and diverse as I have had the pleasure of serving on.”

This belief in teamwork feeds directly into Moore’s vision of what film producers do.

“Producing is making sure that the ideas are heard and people know what they are getting into and they are excited about it,” Moore said.

A producer must put herself “in everyone else's shoes, understanding the integrity of their position and giving them the credit they deserve,” she said

Moore is confident she has the personal attributes, including good people skills, that she needs to succeed in the film industry.

“My effort is contagious, and I think that is an integral part of why I want to manage story and people together,” she said. “I am a very active listener, and I invest myself in conversations and things that are important to other people in order for them to know how invested I am in them as a person.”

She has a “forceful personality” and can “feed off of other people’s energies,” Moore said.

She looks forward to working with the “many eclectic creative professionals” in the business. “I can’t help but think that I would fit and communicate well with them,” she said.

A strong sense of values undergirds Moore’s approach to her creativity, as well. “I’ve never been good with putting up with intolerance or injustice, and it definitely shows,” she said.

Storytelling is also a critically important way to bring people together, Moore said.

“If I don’t create and build connections between people, then I might as well cease to exist,” she said. “My empowerment hinges on that of human storytelling. I have no desire to stand idly by and be the only character in my own story because that isn’t what life is. Life is in the crossovers and connections and the parts that we can’t handle alone.”

This applies to social movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement, which “needs those connections between all peoples to make their platform stronger than it already is,'' Moore said.

Film is part of that platform, she said, citing the documentary “I am Not Your Negro” and the TV series “When They See Us” as examples.

Film is “a reflection of the culture we fight to make our own,” she said. “I am in service to these stories and the people they shine light on. My purpose in life is to empower people, and film is how I choose to do that.”