As a kid growing up in Hermiston, Amanda Jones loved movies. Now, she produces them.

Jones, a 1997 Hermiston High School graduate, was the executive producer for “Alone We Fight,” a 2018 film about a small band of World War II soldiers on a desperate mission. She was also a producer for “Burn It All,” a movie about a woman who stumbles upon an organ smuggling ring that is set for release on Feb. 19, and executive producer for “The Stairs,” a horror movie currently making the rounds at film festivals.

Producers oversee the entire process of filmmaking, Jones said. They pick the script, procure financing and hire a team. They work with directors on aspects like casting and editing, while also handling day-to-day logistics, such as setting up a schedule for shooting.

“If they needed a trailer delivered, or Porta Potties, or food, or someone to pick up propane, I made sure they had that,” she said while describing her work on “Alone We Fight.”

The cast list for “The Stairs,” her biggest project to date, includes “Family Law” star Kathleen Quinlan, John Schneider of “Dukes of Hazzard” and Stacey Oristano, who played Mindy Collette on “Friday Night Lights.” A trailer for the film shows hikers stumbling upon a mysterious set of stairs to nowhere in the middle of the woods, sparking apparent supernatural consequences.

Jones said filming for the movie took place over the course of a month, with the first two weeks filming during the daytime and the second two weeks filming through the night. While the actors could sleep during daylight, Jones said, she had to be on set overnight plus talk to lawyers, bankers and other professionals during the day, leaving her with two to four hours of sleep at a time.

“It was beyond intense,” she said.

Despite the long, difficult hours that can come with the job, Jones is excited to have a career in the film industry — an industry she has loved since she was a child. Her father, Ric Jones, who ran Hermiston Hearing Aid Services until his retirement last year, bought a VHS player in the early 1980s before watching movies at home was common, she said. Their family used to have “movie vacations” where they closed the blinds, built pillow forts, put all chores and other responsibilities on hold for a weekend and watched their way through a stack of movies from Friday night to Sunday night.

“I fell in love being transported to different worlds, different ideas and perspectives, and different times,” she said.

After high school, Jones majored in history at Eastern Oregon University and returned to Hermiston to complete her student teaching. But a financial downturn hit and teaching jobs became scarce, so she took a job at an insurance company and ended up working in the financial sector. In 2017, a director approached her with a script and asked her to consider funding his movie, and she and a business partner launched Wandering Dragon Productions.

While moviegoers may notice women are often underrepresented on screen, they hold even fewer off-screen jobs in the industry. According to the Women in Hollywood project, in 2019, only 34% of speaking roles in the 100 top-grossing movies in the United States were women, while behind the camera, only 22% of leadership roles on those films (including directors, producers and writers) were held by women.

“I’ve been in a lot of rooms where it was all men,” Jones said.

She said having female leadership included on a film is important. While filming “Burn It All,” a movie with a female lead character but a male director, Jones said she and the two other female producers on the movie were often able to provide insights on making the lead feel more authentic that would have been lacking with an all-male production team.

She said not letting gender constrain her dreams is one of many lessons she took from growing up in Hermiston, which had about 10,000 residents when her family moved there in 1984.

“There was always this underlying energy of, ‘You can do anything,’” she said. “There was never a moment growing up where people told me, ‘You can’t do this because you’re a girl, or because you’re from this neighborhood,’ because we needed everybody.”

She credits her small-town upbringing with instilling her with a strong work ethic and sense of teamwork that have also been helpful.

“Everything in the film industry is all about community, all about working together, all about problem solving,” she said. “You come together on set and know, come hell or high water, this film needs made.”