Nelson & Sandy Cyr

CURRENT: Nelson is in the process of founding and organizing in 2023-2024 the Atlanta Movie Makers group in the Atlanta regional-area which will focus on supporting aspiring moviemaker creatives in making no-budget / low-budget shorts, reels, and mini-docs for fun, practice, credits and honing skill levels of its members. BACKGROUND: Nelson and Sandy Cyr are a creative team who have been working together for over thirty years collaborating both professionally in the aerospace industry and personally in Los Angeles and in Reno. While in Los Angeles, Nelson, Sandy and their daughter April worked as extras in the making of "Sea Biscuit" while Nelson also wrote a full-feature western novel adaptation script which jumpstarted their filmmaking interests that continued after the couple relocated to Reno.

​Sandy and Nelson co-founded Movie Makers Forum (moviemakersforum*com) during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Zoom platform-based, pandemic-born Movie Makers Forum is a new and different online moviemaking venture. Their vision and mission for the online forum is to bring together, support and foster creatives who want to learn, to share, to develop scriptwriting, acting, movie production and post-production skill sets, to collaborate, to network and to bring stories to life via all forms of movie shorts, features and documentaries for all audiences that otherwise might never be told. The Forum operates under the premise that "Story rules-- whether told with a Cellphone, a RED or an ARRI."

As backstory in 2014, they worked as volunteer production assistants in many aspects of movie production (basic cinematography, set lighting, set construction, prop design, and script/filming continuity) in a sci-fi TV pilot shot in the Reno area. Also that year, they and several moviemaking colleagues co-founded Reno Senior Discovery TV (SDTV). Nelson and Sandy continued as Co-chairpersons of the media group from 2014 through 2020. SDTV produced "TV about seniors, for seniors, by seniors" for local TV broadcast on the City Channel as well as on the City's Senior Discovery Youtube Channel.

​Nelson and Sandy's 2019 SDTV production won the National Mature Media Award for "Quilts of Valor," a mini-doc about how the Comstock Lode Quilters serve our War Veterans and Honor Flight Nevada with much-appreciated Quilts of Valor presented to them upon their return from visiting Washington, D.C. War Memorials. The project also resulted in a Commendation from U. S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.

They were studio camera operator/technical volunteers at PBS Channel 5 Reno, Nevada and for several years were active volunteer members of the Reno Rodeo Association, as well as volunteers at the Reno Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts.

Recent pre-pandemic and 2021 projects include co-producing / co-editing "Jessie James the Lady" (a western featurette) and a re-enactment short feature tribute to "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" in collaboration with their Movie Makers Forum filming colleagues and Virginia City Foothill Production Studios. Nelson, in a mountain man role, also Co-Exec produced and Co-directed a western action short with Foothill Studios/Doc Durden Productions in Summer-Fall 2021-2022,

The couple relocated to Atlanta, Georgia December 2021 (Sharpsburg) to be closer to family as their grandson K launches into an early movie career. They will be expanding the MovieMakersForum beyond Reno and San Antonio into the Atlanta area. Fall 2022 Update: We just completed the movie and trailer for "The Bounty Hunters," a Western Short filmed in Virginia City/Reno/Carson City, Nevada and finished in Atlanta. Spring 2023 Update: "The Bounty Hunters" is planned for a limited release in mid-to-late 2023. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Movie Makers group for aspiring moviemakers in Atlanta regional area is being organized in Spring / Summer 2023--Nelson Cyr