Above Left: Morgan kitted up, on set during an early indie shoot for Fox.
Above Right: Morgan and Mr Stephen Taggart during Stephen’s visit to LA

Morgan Smith (2006) became a Churchie boy at the age of just 12 months when his father, Gary Smith, took up the position of Assistant Housemaster in Goodwin in 1990. Over the next nine years he enjoyed his Churchie ‘back yard’, along with the children of other boarding families, and the company of the Goodwin boys while attending the local State school. He donned the ‘Blue and Grey’ for Year 5 in the Prep and at the end of that year, Morgan, his parents and two younger brothers moved off campus and into the suburbs. He enjoyed tinkering in the workshop, especially with the home-made billy carts he and his brothers entered in the big races down Oaklands Parade.

In the Senior School he gravitated towards practical subjects and he eventually found a home in Film And TV. There he was challenged and encouraged by Steve Taggart, who became a mentor, along with Lyn Braiden in Biggs House. However, from a career point of view, his biggest influences were John Hipwell and Greg Wacker, fellow tinkerers, both. They created a problem-solving environment and guided him in his search for practical solutions. He graduated from Churchie in 2006 and with some film credits under his belt was accepted into the Griffith University Film School at Southbank. He embraced all the complexities of film production, at one time turning the Smith back yard and pool into a film set for a modern interpretation of an ancient myth.

Graduating from Griffith, he decided to go where the movies are made and for the next three years he lived as an au pair in Los Angeles, while establishing himself as a lighting technician in the local film scene. Creating a ‘brand’, he became Crikey Smith – Crikes to his crew - and was known for wearing long shorts and Australian footy socks on set. Over that time, he worked on whatever show was going – an early Prius commercial, a mariachi band video, including a posse with a long low convertible and a gold-plated AK47 and a memorable shoot involving a Los Angeles mansion, a narrow bridge, a moat and a partially-sedated lion. Once he had established his bona fides, after working for ’mates rates’ on lots of independent shows he was accepted into the local union and Morgan’s career began to move. As a union member he could work for better rates on larger studio shows which boosted his bank and his CV.  He worked on the ‘American Horror Story’ television series as well as ‘Angie Tribeca’, a comedy police series. He and the family spent time in Greece to shoot ‘Rise’, the story of three Nigerian brothers who win college basketball scholarships in the US, and he was in the Dominican Republic for the filming of ‘Nyad’ about a woman who swam from Cuba to Miami. More recently he was credited as Fixtures Foreman on Paramount’s ‘Top Gun – Maverick’ and Shop Foreman on the Star Wars spin-offs ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘The Book of Bobba Fett’ for Disney. Morgan also spent a few weeks in Texas on ‘1883’, the prequel of Paramount’s ‘Yellowstone’ television series, and last September he and the family moved to Montana for a few months while he worked as a Foreman on ‘1923’, the sequel to the prequel. Morgan’s work often finds him a long way from his home base in Burbank, an hour north of central Los Angeles. He now has a mobile home so he can load up family, including Bundy his Siberian husky, and travel the highways to wherever the work takes him.

Above Left:  Morgan at the entrance to the pilot’s bar in San Diego for ‘Top Gun – Maverick’
Above Right: Morgan working on the train during the ‘1883’ shoot in Texas.