Starting with a wild trip to California, Conant graduate Jeff Stone’s bid to enter the movie industry has come to fruition with “Where the Wild Things Are,” opening tomorrow.

Stone served as assistant editor on the blockbuster film, getting footage to the editor and working on visual effects.

“I got the job the way people in Hollywood get jobs,” Stone said Tuesday. “I had been working for three years and met a bunch of people.”

One of those people was offered a spot on the film he had to turn down, and he recommended Stone as his replacement.

“The crew was fantastic,” Stone said. “It was one of the best crews I’ve ever worked with, and it was the first studio film I was involved in as heavily as I was.”

Now, seeing billboards, television trailers and Internet ads everywhere for something he worked on for nearly a year, Stone excitedly reflects on his journey from Jaffrey to Hollywood.

Traveling to the land of the wild things

Stone graduated from Jaffrey Grade School, Jaffrey-Rindge Middle School and Conant High School before heading to Fairfield University in Connecticut. He finished college in 2003, moved home for a month, then hit the road.

“I was always interested in doing the film thing — telling stories by creating short films,” Stone said. “I couldn’t think of anything else I could do that would be as exciting and fulfilling on a day-to-day basis.”

Moving to Orange County, an hour south of Los Angeles, Stone encountered competition, weather and an attitude vastly different from his home in Jaffrey.

“It was tough, but I was fortunate,” Stone said.

Soon after moving out there, he got a job in radio. Doing what he described as “peon work,” he earned money for a year at a radio station he had found online.

And he decided he would go for film.

“L.A. is where everyone comes to do this business,” Stone said. “I had to make a lot of unanswered calls. After I stopped working in radio, it took another year or year and a half to get into film.”

Staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once

Stone had lived in Orange County for about two years when his part-time job was cut down in hours and his roommate had to leave.

Unable to stay where he was, Stone moved out into a tent for two-and-a-half months. While camping in different campgrounds around the area, he discovered that one could live in a motor home on the street rent-free.

Enlisting a friend who was about to get out of a lease, Stone acquired a used mobile home and started his own film production company, called Hobo Soul.

“That is how Hobo Soul and the Winnebego experience got started,” Stone said. “We wrote about our lives trying to make it and our careers as filmmakers without water or power and without showers and the basic things you get in a house.”

Since 2005, Stone has not had a permanent address, but has resided in Los Angeles, one place or another.

“It saved me a lot of money and gave me the opportunity to take film jobs I want,” Stone said. “Sometimes it is slow, but I don’t have to stress out as much. I don’t have to go job to job.”

Negatives of such a lifestyle have been numerous. Stone has been forced to move the vehicle every three days to avoid getting ticketed. There was constant worry about being egged or vandalized in some other way. Once, his windshield was bashed in. He has no Internet at home, and must go to libraries and coffee shops. Showers are taken at gyms.

Through it all, Stone said his experience in Jaffrey somewhat helped. Stone’s father, John Stone, who is now the principal of Rindge Memorial School, worked at Monadnock State Park, so Stone was used to camping.

“I didn’t grow up with a whole lot of money, and I was used to living in simple situations,” Stone said. “I don’t have a lot of stuff, which is good, because I also don’t have a lot of places to put the stuff.”

The biggest adjustment was to the fast paced life of the city where the atmosphere is not always friendly.

King of all wild things

After Stone had lived in Los Angeles for a year, other Conant graduates joined him, including visual effects technicians David Sliviak and Anthony Bussiere, who work for Beau Studios. Tim Weissman, also of Conant, lives there and works for a talent agency called the House of Representatives.

Sliviak and Bussiere have worked with Stone and the Hobo Soul on just about every project they have completed. Stone said Hobo Soul also contacts Weissman looking for talent in their films.

“We’ve had a couple of short films in 48-hour festivals and had some music videos we’ve done that have wound up on Web sites and on MTV in Europe,” Stone said of Hobo Soul.

The company also produced a documentary of the band Cold War Kids and their work on the album “Loyalty to Loyalty.”

Now he is working on directing a film with his business partner Charles Oldfield called Project 86. He is also editing a film for a director named Walter Robot tentatively called “Mermaid.”

And tomorrow, his work on “Where the Wild Things Are” will be available for all to see.

“That is really exciting to me, to see this thing I was a part of coming to life for people to see in theaters across the country,” Stone said.

For more information on his production company, visit www.thehobosoul.com.