Wes Eldredge reads over a script during filming of Take From Me.
Superior High School Class of 2007 alum West Eldredge is a writer and director and will be releasing his first feature length film, “Take From Me”, on streaming services at the end of August. West grew up in the Phoenix area, but moved to Superior in seventh grade, attending Superior Junior High and High School, before graduating and heading to Los Angeles for film school.
“I was there [in Superior] until I was about 18, and my mom lived there until I was about 25, and so I’d come back, I know the area very well. I got into filmmaking in high school. Superior and the whole copper region is pretty cool. They’ve had a lot of movies filmed there, old westerns and stuff, so we had a lot of films come into town, and me and my friends would go bother them, and annoy the sets, things like that. It got me even more interested in it, and that’s kind of how I decided to go to film school,” commented Eldredge.
West attended Brooks Institute in California. One of his first jobs after finishing school was being a PA (Production Assistant) on American Idol, working there for three years. West bounced around from a couple of other programs before taking a job at a university on the east coast, hopping around to various jobs on the east coast before landing a job doing photography for the State Department in Washington DC, where he now resides. After that job ran it’s course, he got a job at an Ad agency. During that job he started to get back into film again.
“I always wanted to make my own stuff, that was the plan: me and my team make our own movies, and get it made. Out here I was able to finally do it, maybe because of age, you know, you get mature and you learn the ins and outs of the market and how to get things done. Me and a small crew out in Virginia made a thriller-horror movie, entirely in Virginia, independently made, we picked up distribution and hit a bunch of festivals. Now it’s finally landing on Fandango at home, and Amazon at the end of the month.”
Teamed up with some friends from film-school, and a crew from Virginia, they set out to make the movie, “Take From Me”.
“It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, because it was very much an independent film,” West began on making the film, “We found an old farmhouse in rural Virginia area out here, by Appalachia, and we went out there for three weeks and kind of immersed ourselves as a team. We were on this property for 80 percent of this film, which I think is kind of what you have to do when you’re making a low budget film – you can’t move to too many locations you got to stick it out. We got really good actors from New York and LA to fly in and stay with us on the farm out in Virginia. Through tooth and nail we were getting this thing made and out the door. We shot it in like two weeks.”
West praised his team for working hard and wearing multiple hats, and working various positions on set. Citing the uniquely combined hard work ethic of Arizona and Virginia filmmakers as a little less traditional compared to the Hollywood way of making movies. Comparing it to the hard work seen throughout the people of the copper region. One of West’s long-term goals is to return to Superior and make a drama movie. When asked to give a word to aspiring local artists he commented,
“I want see more kids from Superior, San Manuel, Kearny, and Globe. I feel like you get stuck in these small towns, and feel like there’s not much you can do. You go to community college, or go to ASU, and that’s your trajectory, but now a days art is so accessible, you can do so much with so little. If you just really want to do it, it just takes hard work. Hopefully, someday I’ll make a bigger movie, and people from town will see it and be like ‘oh shoot, we can really go out there and make big things’, so it’s really just hard work, and those are hard working people that live out there. Art is like 10 percent talent, and 90 percent just going and doing the thing.”
“Take from Me, alternatively titled Love Dogs, is a gripping thriller that follows the life of John, a grieving local man, as he finds solace and intrigue in a mysterious young woman who purchases his old farmhouse. Simultaneously, a sense of unease grips the town when a resident goes missing, leading the local police captain to suspect a sinister presence looming over their community.” Written and Directed by West Eldredge, starring Ethan McDowell and Kyla Diane Kennedy will release Aug. 26, 2025.
Wes Eldredge, second from left, directs cast and crew on scene of his movie Take From Me.