CANBERRA actor and top costume designer Fiona Victoria Hopkins, notable in the past year for her role in David Atfield’s “Exclusion” at The Street and for costuming “Twelfth Night” on the lake, is branching out into film production.

Hopkins, a London-trained designer who also made an early career acting in horror films there before returning to Australia, is launching her own production company, Mirror Mirror Productions, and will produce her first feature film using local cast and crew.

Hopkins keeps busy. She’s been working at Canberra Theatre Centre as a wardrobe technician, starting up a screen acting course with Canberra Youth Theatre, planning her designs for the next “Lakespeare”, designing costumes for Orana School’s production of “The Tempest” and studying at the ANU for a B.Sc. in Psychology.

Her planned film, “The Last Train”, will be based on a work by playwright Natacha Astuto which Hopkins performed at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles, where she met Astuto and director Cedric Laubscher.

Declaring her personal fascination with the acting method knowns as TAP (The Actors Psychology), she says: “I knew I had to make the play into a feature film… Five years later this desire and passion is ever so real… We are dealing with extremely dark personalities.”

Hopkins will be directing and acting in the piece alongside Canberra actors Amelia Forsyth-Smith, Luke Hendrickson, Summa Connolly, Brendan Hawes and Mike Wheeler.

Now to help support the film, she’s hosting an unusual training weekend for actors with visiting master coach Greg Van Borssum, the stunt and weaponry trainer for “Mad Max: Fury Road”, who will teach correct pistol and long gun handling, drawing and safety, combat changes between weapon systems, tactical moving and grooving, as well as “correct intent” and mindset.

Van Borssum was recently named Toastmaster of the Year in the US, and is the first Australian speaker ever to be accredited as a Toastmasters International speaker for his presentations in the area of suicide prevention.

Greg Van Borssum’s Theatrical Movement and Film Weapons Masterclass, Digital Content Studios, 11 Bedford Street, Queanbeyan, 9am to 5pm, September 21-22. Registrations to mirrormirroproductions.com.au or 0466 781474.