Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to MariAlda Matos. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

MariAlda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you have any thoughts about how to create a more inclusive workplace?

In the wake of Barbenheimer, we saw some concerning announcements come out of the major studios and toy companies. A Polly Pocket movie, a Hot Wheels movie, a Rubix Cube (huh?) movie all intent to ride the coattails of the billion-dollar behemoth that graced our screens in glitter and pink. When asked about this rising tide, actor Randall Park made the brilliant point that studios are missing the lesson entirely.

The Barbie movie isn’t a sign to make more movies about toys, it’s a sign to make more movies for women, by women, about women. It seems almost comically obvious to those of us hearing that point being made but in those boardrooms where decisions happen, the sad fact is, women still aren’t seen as the valuable demographic that we are. Our dollars can always be attributed to some other growing trend, it isn’t the feminity it’s the nostalgia, the marketing, the great soundtrack, the stars.

In an industry that so easily dismisses the power of womanhood it can be hard to be a woman on the inside. My first professional position as in-house production had me as the ONLY female on my team. The only other women I interacted with were clients and contractors and they were few and far between. When I was touched inappropriately by male coworkers, pressured to partake in after-work events I didn’t want to attend, and regularly subjected to “locker room talk,” I had no empathetic ear I could turn to in my struggle, no one that would truly understand.

Fostering a space for women in film is not making diversity hires, it’s not putting women front and center as virtue signals to “woke” clients, it’s hiring women (more than one of them) and giving them the space and respect to excel.

My experiences and those that I share with almost every other working woman in our world are, I believe, what shapes us into the leaders we hope to one day become. It’s easy to look back at those situations with resentment, and sometimes I do, but the strong choice is to take them as lessons on what not to do, as examples of bad leadership, and to swear to ourselves and the women we hope to uplift with us that we will be the change we once needed.

MariAlda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Alda Matos, I’m a producer and production coordinator. I have my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film/Television production and Art History from the Savannah College of Art & Design. I started working professionally in film in my junior year of college, small indie projects with laughably little pay.

At that time, I was hungry for approval, professional validation, and I took every chance I could get. Eventually that led to some pretty amazing things, massive studio projects, jet-setting across the country every weekend with major fashion brands, brushing elbows with A-list stars, and putting together multi-million dollar YouTube projects. It was… a lot… in a very short amount of time.

These days, I’m taking things slower, living with more intention. I still love what I do but my philosophy is to immerse myself in every project I sign onto and a life of hopping on last-minute flights and working two gigs at once isn’t really conducive to giving each project my full, undivided intention.

As a professional, I work with empathy, with purpose, and with poise and that shows in the work that I do now moreso than ever before. I hope to be an affirming, calming presence in every office and on every set I may find myself on. I hope to be a person that I definitely wish I had around back then.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Reputation is a funny, fickle thing but thankfully I think I have my finger on the pulse of mine. If I had to define it in one word I’d choose ‘reliable.’ Back in college, I liked to consider myself the go-to for a lot of things, assistant directing being the main service I was providing at the time.

Anyone who knows anything about being an AD knows it is not a job for the weak, it’s a thankless, brutal position that lends itself to making enemies. I, however, thanks to some wonderful mentors, was determined to make it work for me. It’s that word again, empathy, that I employed most frequently. I put myself in the shoes of everyone I encountered. People could trust that things told to me in confidence would remain between us, that if something was asked of me I’d see it through without a reminder.

I wanted to make my sets places people WANTED to be and that all starts with making people feel heard. This philosophy did wonders for me once I got it truly nailed down, people wanted to lead the way I did, even when I was still figuring it out myself and I was happy to share long documents full of my ramblings about how to run a good show. I’d like to think I left a bit of a legacy behind me at SCAD, I hope the students who come after me continue to lead gently.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I explain this to my corporate loved ones all the time. Working on a film, a show, or any creative endeavor really, will always have one glaring, fundamental difference that you simply don’t see as often in “non-creative” fields… love.

If you’ve written a script or joined a blossoming project on the ground floor you know how easy it is for your ego, your self-worth, to get tangled up in the success and integrity of a project. Sometimes in life and in the professional world, someone’s gotta be the bad guy and it’s not quite as easy to come in and bring the hammer down on a project when the people involved literally see it as an extension of themselves.

A personal anecdote: my senior thesis for my BFA was a short film that I wrote and directed. In the glorious days before COVID-19 I had penned what I considered to be my magnum opus. By the time we were finally able to film something under the iron fist of my school’s (generally reasonable) safety regulations my script, my baby, was a chewed-up Frankenstein of the story I had so loved, the story I planned on dedicated to my great-grandmother.

I spent hours sobbing in my professor’s office, looking for loopholes to get out of filming the project, so ghastly did it seem to me to take something I had put myself intimately into and parade it around in this unrecognizable state. At the end of the day, we shot the film, I made it work, and I fell in love with it all over again, shaved down though it might have been.

That film has gone on to earn official selections at seven festivals so far with more on the horizon, it’s one of the crowning achievements of my career and I’ll talk about it to anyone who will listen but it would’ve been easier removing each of my teeth without anesthesia than getting me to film the damn thing.

Contact Info:

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marialda-matos-7b8141192/
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11412057/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_0_nm_8_q_alda%2520matos

Image Credits
B&W photo shot by Andy Pedroza Forest photo shot by Sarah Layton Photo at table shot by Val Higgins Photo of my back shot by Kyla Rys