ABOUT US
S.A. "Sam" Muir, M.A. Sam Muir is a professional Casting Director and award-winning actor, director and educator, owner of The Muir Studio Film & Television Pre-Production Resource for Southern New Mexico & The Borderlands, home-based in the beautiful historic city of Las Cruces. She is a member of three professional performing unions: SAG (Screen Actors Guild), AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), and AEA (Actors Equity Association), New Mexico Women in Film and the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce. Sam holds a Masters Degree in Dramatic Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and brings more than 25 years of experience to her work. In San Diego and Los Angeles, as owner/operator of Casting & Coordinating, Sam was casting director, location manager and production coordinator to professional film and television companies from the U.S., Canada and Mexico, working with such Academy Award winning directors as Otto Lang and Conrad Hall, collaborating extensively with and helping to successfully grow the San Diego Film Commission and the city as a filmmaking destination. As a professional actor, her credits too many to list, Sam studied with the renowned Broadway casting director Michael Shurtleff (author of the famed Audition), and with Golden Globe, Emmy and Tony Award winning film, television and Broadway stage star, Bradford Dillman. In music, Sam studied with Viennese concert pianist and musical director, Madame Greta Frankl, and the prestigious Los Angeles Civic Light Opera's American Centre for Musical Theatre under the direction of Paul Gleason and Harper McKay at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
JOHN C. MUIR III, M.Ed.
John C. Muir III is a professional Film and Television Casting Director, Location Manager and Production Coordinator, as well as an educator and author. Having chosen Las Cruces for their new home base, John and his wife, Casting Director and professional actor, director and educator, Sam Muir, bring with them their film industry business, The Muir Studio Film and Television Pre-Production Resource for Southern New Mexico and The Borderlands.
Relocating from San Diego and Santa Barbara, California, with a client list as long as your proverbial "arm," John and Sam bring years of professional experience in film and television talent casting, production coordination, location management, education, publishing and the performing arts, along with a commitment to help grow the film industry and community performing arts in their new hometown of Las Cruces.
John is a respected author, poet, essayist, college lecturer, and decorated Marine Corps combat veteran. He has taken readings and lectures on his book, Tigers and Songbirds (see TigersandSongbirds.com and Amazon.com) from California to Washington D.C. and back. Tigers treats the cataclysm of lost youth suffered by young warriors in combat.
"For some of us, Education and the Arts provided the only constructive way to express ourselves, to save ourselves from the insanity of war and its aftermath, and to put the war, not away, for it never goes away, but behind us, in order to work toward a positive and productive future. Working with the thousands of students I've had the privilege of teaching and the filmmakers with whom I've been able to collaborate, has been a continuing renewal for me.
"Having watched up close the now defunct Soviet Union's invasion of Prague in 1968, having passed through "Check Point Charlie" into the unlamented East Berlin, I have been witness to both "cold" and "hot" wars. I have traveled along with our nation on its nearly 40-year journey suffering from and attempting to deal with the open wounds left by the War in Vietnam. Today, barely beginning the healing from that painful shooting war, we are back in the fight, now in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"So all my work emerges through the perspective of the wounded warrior, the teacher and the storyteller, because Education and the Arts are still among the best medicines and the best hope we have."
Are you a Producer, Director, Screenwriter, Actor or Film or TV Production Resource? Find John and Sam at MuirStudio.com and at MuirStudio@comcast.net. They are on the New Mexico Film Office registry of professional casting directors, new members of the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce, and Las Cruces community volunteers wherever the need arises on behalf of Filmmaking, the Arts, Education and Combat Veterans everywhere.
