We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matt Fore a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
It’s funny when any of my long time film friends or co-workers and I discuss what else we might be doing besides being freelance camera or lighting crew in the industry, we literally both shrug and take a beat to then admit that none of us would have any remote clue what else we’d be doing. The last time I had a “regular job” was a part-time office job I had during film school where I filed papers, answered the phone, drafted invoices, and general clerical work — this was 2004. For the last 21 years, I’ve been a freelance Cinematographer / DP, sometimes dipping in camera operator or 2nd Unit work, and early on as a Gaffer and the lighting department. While there have certainly been ups and downs over the years (and now decades, oof…), there is an overall galvanizing consistency of thought that rises to the surface of “this is what I should be doing.” In those fleeting, sporadic moments where I may briefly wonder what it might be like to have a “regular job” where my standard day is 8 hours instead of 10 or 12 hours or beyond, I’ve always come to the conclusion that this freelance film life is the only true path for me. It’s a wonderful feeling to reinforce what one has invested two decades or so into doing with themselves for a living, and after weathering the first writer’s strike and global recession in 2008 to the recent SAG/writer’s strikes of 2023, its incredible and heartening to see work come back and income slowly rise back to sustainable levels to regain some sense of normalcy. As Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, “Life…uh…finds a way….”
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Ever since I was a wee lad, I had always dreamt of “making movies,” whatever that meant. Growing up in Ventura, CA only an hour away from Hollywood, allowed me to subconsciously validate these hopes and believe I could actually do such a thing. In the early 90s when I was a second-grade public school kid, I pooled my friends together to make not only a fourth installment to the beloved “Alien” franchise but also “Terminator” and “Jurassic Park” follow-up pieces.
I collected props, began customizing wardrobe (crafted from my own clothes at the time, much to my mom’s chagrin), and even built set walls out of cardboard (never mind if they could stand upright on their own). While none of these elementary school projects ever came to the fruition of principal photography, my family eventually bought a Sony 8mm video camera (yes, you read that right — not even Hi8 or Digital8, but 8mm video) in the mid-nineties.
That allowed me to make my short film debut in the summer of 1996 before starting 6th grade with “Psycho Kid,” a 6-minute “horror” piece about a new kid who moves to town who harbored secret motives to kill his peers, all crafted “on screen” with wonderful plastic Halloween weapon props and masks. I, of course, cast my best friend Owen Thayer and my pal from up the street Chris Adam, along with, of course, my baby sister Laurin, five years my junior. Having no editing system at the time, everything was shot in sequence, and camera roll cuts were surprisingly well-crafted and timed to afford close-up coverage and inserts (never mind the accidental line flub or prop-drop, which thus made their way into the non-edited final cut).
Over the years as I moved into middle school and high school, I began to make more and more short films with my group of friends that grew and evolved. In high school, I managed to scoop up quite a few awards from local film festivals, and eventually found myself accepted to the prestigious Brooks Institute of Photography film program, which lo and behold, had just opened up their film campus in the summer of 2002 right after I had finished high school, in my hometown of Ventura — how perfect was this?
I attended Brooks Institute of Photography and received my Bachelor’s Degree in three years before zipping right down to Los Angeles in late summer of 2005 with a few film school pals to take on Hollywood in earnest. I dove into the industry at the cusp of the film vs. digital collision, having the luck to experiment with some of the first 24p HD cinema camera systems available in the early-to-mid 2000s. This dual-format background still provides me with a rich technical knowledge from which to draw upon to create robust storytelling images for every unique project, no matter the budget. Ever since I was that 90s kid with my Sony 8mm video camera, I’ve always believed story and mood are the top priorities when making visual decisions, not just aesthetics, and as such, always try to make it a habit of finding that visual balance.
I’m now known for shooting independent features like the sci-fi horror festival favorite “The Human Race,” the action thriller “Bus Driver” and many more including period pieces, comedies and dramas, as well as shooting a bevy of commercials and music videos, I’ve also worked as a Camera Operator in the action/stunt units for some of today’s larger Hollywood films, including “Limitless,” “Real Steel,” “Little Fockers,” and “Godzilla.” In addition to my narrative work, I’ve also shot two feature documentaries, “Harvard Park,” and “The Spirit of the Pony Express” as well as numerous docu-series, TV spots, and promos for corporate clients such as DirecTV, AT&T, Nvidia, Honest Tea, ESPN and more.
I have been called “The Fastest DP in the West” due to my knowledge and experience of being able to maximize production value and imaging with limited resources. Having gone through the ins-and-outs of countless productions over the years, I always find the best and most efficient way forward in any situation on-set.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
While COVID was the spark that transmuted my freelance cinematography business career into also producing and creating my own works, it was also a double-edged sword. There were minimal jobs to work throughout 2020, and when I did my taxes for the year I was able to see I had lost about 70% or more of my income from the previous year when times were good. While I tried to hang on as best as we good, month-by-month the expenses keep digging away at my meager income sources and little bits of savings. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do, but luckily I was able to pivot from production-only to post-production as I dusted off my film editing skills that I had begun to develop in the late 90’s that I used to cut all of my middle school and high school films. I was able to stay fluid and embrace a secondary skill set to land clients for editing jobs and post-production delivery to help keep myself above water. These services and this skillset also lended itself to my new feature works and blended nicely into my new creative workflow to expand my future, just in the nick of time. I’ve now incorporated this skillset into future jobs with new clients and offer both DP/cinematography services as well as editing and postproduction services to essentially double my income on certain jobs.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
From being an elementary school kid with a dream of making movies to jumping into the industry in my early 20’s gunning to be a cinematographer and to now producing, creating, and selling feature films to distributors and navigating that larger process as a whole, I feel like I took my childhood spark and blasted it off into fireworks. Inch-by-inch of not really knowing what I was doing, with no details of a path visible, I suppose I simply trudged ahead step-by-step, eyes always on the prize, never knowing how long it make take to get where I thought I wanted to be. I now run my own production company and develop and create our own work to sell to distributors to then fund the next subsequent project. If I were able to show and tell my childhood self where I made it today, I don’t even know how he’d react.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mattfore-dp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfore
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattforedp
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattfore
- Other: IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1864437/
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/mattfore
