An actress with a wide and growing list of film, TV, commercial and voice-over credits returned to her Killeen ISD roots Friday to share stories and lessons from 15 years in the acting industry.
Giovannie Cruz graduated from Ellison High School in 2005. Growing up in a military family and attending Haynes Elementary School, Eastern Hills Middle School and Ellison, she made clear her intention to make it to Broadway as a big-time performer.
She did make it to the University of North Texas musical theater program, earned a degree in opera performance and promptly shifted focus to television and film.
Speaking to audio-visual practicum students at the KISD Career Center, Cruz asked each student to share their specific interests in audio-visual production. The small group of advanced students described aspirations to go to college, work in travel, cooking, sports, fitness, news, theater and other aspects of film and TV.
Next, she launched into a conversational explanation of how show business works, sharing her own hard-learned lessons of a brutally challenging industry.
It took about an hour for the career-focused students to get comfortable to ask Cruz questions about life on a movie set, opportunities available to them and eventually to give her a tour of the Career Center studio and collect autographed photos.
Audio-visual teacher Mike Bartoszek displayed Cruz’s resume and a variety of online resources featuring her acting work, including roles in The Suicide Squad, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
Her professional life includes a series of “side hustles,” including coaching young actors, recording and editing for actors, voice-overs for video games and anime shows, commercial shoots and auditioning for her next movie role.
All the while, she explained the need for young up-and-comers to get a wide-angle view of their profession – accepting the “no frills” production assistant gigs to see firsthand how film shoots work, what the different jobs entail and critically, to build a community of supporters.
Working in the same multiverse as Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and Hugh Jackman is cool, but Cruz said she only “fan girls” over the directors. She has a list of directors she aspires to work alongside because her aspiration is to be the visionary to produce her own movies.
Today she’s working with a group of friends on an independent movie called Lady Kings of Texas with shooting set to begin in October on a ranch near the small town of Mason.
She would like to be part of a growing cast of Texas filmmakers developing talent and making movies based in the Lone Star State.
The dream started for Cruz when she was a student at Ellison High School, active in choir in theater and she answered a call to form the first KISD-TV crew, a move that led her to learn the basics of using a camera and producing a television broadcast.
When she went to college, she continued to use her skills, shooting video at a church and beginning the side hustles that help support her as she auditioned for movie and television parts.
Learning to use a camera, edit film, work with digital graphics and navigate a set, are putting Career Center audio-visual students in a favorable position, she said.
Cruz urged students to seek out scholarships and to be aggressive and creative in promoting their skills to churches, chambers of commerce and businesses such as real estate firms that utilize video and photography.
“Do the survival job, the grunt work, so you can focus on what you want to create,” she said.
“She was really motivating,” said Kathryn Baldovino, a senior audio-visual student planning to study communications and work in video.
“Seeing how she’s from Killeen, and climbing the ranks, it inspired me,” she said. “She was once part of KISD-TV. Her stories were interesting and hopeful.”
“She gave me motivation to be an actor and filmmaker,” said Eliel Santiago, a junior audio-visual student planning to study cinematography and work in film and on stage. “Seeing all she has done showed us we’re really ahead of the game. We have a great opportunity.
“A lot of what she talked about were tips and tricks that I need to know. I was kind of scared to ask people, but she answered them right there.”
Photo gallery from actress visit at Career Center: https://www.flickr.com/photos/killeenisd/albums/72177720323109038/
https://www.instagram.com/giovanniecruz/reel/DDqM_-0N1J3/
