Eric Hinwood, a Salinas native who began making movies at 7 years old with a home video camera, co-founded an independent film production company, ATAEC Studios, that garnered immediate success for the young actor/filmmaker. Eric Hinwood graduated from the HARA Motion Picture Conservatory after two years of learning script-to-screen filmmaking and film acting, graduated from York high school, and shot his first feature film, Carpe Diem: European Escapade, with his friends and girlfriend over the summer before college. The travel comedy secured international distribution through Amazon Prime after Hinwood began attending Whittier College. However, he fell off a cliff near the ocean in Big Sur half-way through his sophomore year at the liberal arts college; he suffered two blunt-force-trauma induced hemorrhagic strokes, multiple brain contusions, spinal compression, hearing loss, digestive tract issues, and hypothermia, among other injuries. He was slowed down by trying to recover for quite a while, and was given a low chance of surviving the next six months, but Hinwood managed to go back to school in the spring. He was even shoot his second European feature later that year, understandably titled After the Fall. The timing had to be perfect, but with 3 months in London and 4 in Paris, and many trips to other areas, Hinwood was able to study abroad and complete principal photography on the film. Upon returning to the US, Hinwood finished his studies and graduated with a B.A. in Film Production and Business, a B.A. in French Language and Literature, and a minor in Spanish while working on short films and taking day-player roles on the side. The day after commencement he was hired to direct his first US feature film, a narrative fiction drama/thriller, titled War of the Limelight, about the Syrian Refugee Crisis and other human displacement crises and immigration issues. Hinwood was passionate about these topics because his godfather was born and raised in the Middle-East and his grandmother was an immigrant from Mexico, so he returned to his hometown of to make the film with HARA, the film school he'd graduated from. After this production was completed, much like before graduation, he returned to LA to do freelance work in different crew positions while signed with talent agencies. Eric Hinwood was hired by Paramour Pictures as an acting film consultant and producer, but as the symptoms of his previous injuries worsened with age, he moved towards editing and work that could be done from home. That meant that he was able to continue editing after the CoVid-19 pandemic hit, giving him time to work on a Director's Cut of War of the Limelight and complete additional photography on After the Fall, adapting it with a more timely subject rather than releasing it as a featurette.