We recently connected with Maty Young and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Maty, thanks for joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

Basically, yes I’ve been able to earn a full-time living from my creative work. Sometimes it feels like it was a very organic journey growing the business to what it is today. My journey of getting there is intertwined with introducing myself which is best laid out in my response to the next question so I’ll keep this brief. A quick recap of me before I go one. I was a musician my whole life since 5, on stage as an actor since 13, never looked back. Now I’ll jump ahead to the first camera I purchased for filming when I was in my late 20s. Our (my partner and I) very first camera was a budget Nikon something or other. For inspiring creators wanting to film, a Nikon was not the best choice at the time. After about 6 months of filming and directing for camera (after years and years of directing for stage) I became hooked. I realised I needed a more film-centric camera. We very quickly upgraded to our much loved and now long gone Panasonic GH5 which at the time was a very popular entry-level “cinema” camera. We created some silly little skits (that will never see the light of day) and once our network of artist friends (we’d developed from both being in the industry for years and years) heard the news they immediately asked if we could film scenes for them. And that’s how it happened. We said yes, they gave us money, we mildly panicked because now we had to create a product we’d just been paid for, we made the product, and they were happy. Young One Studio, as it exists today, was born.

For the next couple of years, it was a creative mix of continuous acting, gigging as a musician and learning all there was about cameras, filming, lighting, editing etc. We brought our breadth of knowledge from our combined years in theatre which made the actual writing, directing and performance aspects a lot more effortless, allowing more time to focus on the technical aspects of filmmaking. Looking back I believe knowing that I could rely on my expertise in the field where most creatives struggle (the connected, emotional, true human element of performance) allowed me to spend all my time addicting over the technology. In the beginning, it was a cycle of mild controlled panics and fast-focused learning. I’d finish a project, be happy with it then a more ambitious project would come up. I’d take the gig, mildly panic, have to lean a lot more to be able to accomplish it and so I did. The cycle continued for several years, a larger project would come along, mild panic, I’d learn, I’d do it, I’d learn some more then move on to the next. After years of this process, there isn’t any project I can’t handle one way or another between my expertise and connections in the industry.

Some important lessons? I start by saying I’d already been to University (college here in the States) twice and knew I didn’t want to go back a third time. With youtube, google, and the internet in general, teaching yourself filmmaking is a pretty “simple’ task. In my opinion, my hard work had been done in the field, the actual acting and directing. You’ve gotta get up and do that for years and years, no youtube video or class will ever teach you that. In saying that no amount of internet searching and video watching “how to be a filmmaker” will do you any good either if you don’t get out there and apply. Again, I think I’m lucky in that I put myself in a position of accountability and was constantly creating content as I was absorbing all the filmmaking information. A cycle of, taking a project a little out of my comfort zone and experience, internet research the crap out of it, getting on set and applying, cutting it together, seeing the mistakes, get better. Quick note, BE AN ACTORS DIRECTOR! I can’t stress this enough, we are fortunate to have been actors for years and years so we know how actors think, feel, and take direction. If you want to film and make films, if you want to be a director and/or a cinematographer, TAKE ACTING WORKSHOPS! I can’t stress this enough. Do you want to be a painter? You need to know how to work a paintbrush. You want to be a filmmaker, know how to work as an actor and learn how an actor thinks and feels. The best way to do that is to do the work in their shoes.

To be honest, if I could change anything, I think I always knew I wanted to create in the way I do now but I wasn’t fortunate enough to grow up in a household that held much respect for the arts so I never pursued it freely in the ways I wanted. I would probably forgo University for the reasons I initially went and would have gotten into filmmaking much younger. Then again, I may have burnt out, developed a bad taste for it (as I know so many people here who have that experience. They dreaded their filmmaking time at college and stepped away) and now be doing something entirely different.

Not the most popular opinion but I think influencers (I say this after working with and filming some of LA’s hottest influences for a couple of years with numbers in the millions) have it completely spot on. Just create anything, all the time, and keep making content. If you’re churning out content there is no possible way you won’t be getting better in front of and behind the camera. I think that is also something I wish I’d known sooner. I was doing it already with acting and making sure I was always on stage, always holding myself accountable, but I couldn’t step out of my performance self to see that the always performing, the always-on stage, was why I was developing such real-world practical performance skills. I grew up constantly holding myself accountable by actually being on stage and taking very few classes and workshops. I wish I’d realized sooner that it’s the same for anything film. I would have started filming much much sooner. The more you do the better you become. Simple.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

From the beginning I was a trained musician my whole life, going on to study at one of Australia’s premier music conservatories and making a living performing in bands for a few years. I stepped on stage for the first time as an actor when I was 13 and signed with an agent when I was 16. I would continue to be an actor for 20 years. I wrote for, directed, performed and toured with some of Australia’s best talent. I still perform on stage and in front of the camera when I get a chance but the music has taken more of a back seat over the past few years.

Being on stage, and constantly performing throughout my childhood is important to mention as it played a pivotal role in knowing I would always be a creative. I realized early on, to the dismay of my family who still doesn’t take the creative arts as a truly serious profession, that it wasn’t simply child’s play (though that’s exactly what acting is) but a viable way to live, make a living, play, experience the full breadth of human emotion and get paid for it. I also mention my heavy involvement in the arts over the past 20 or so years as it meant our (my partner and me) network grew organically and was populated with friends and friends of friends who we not only met in the industry but performed with, stood on stage with, directed, wrote for, created with etc. These beautiful artists, friends and creators became our very first clientele.

Around the time I left the music conservatory, I was still heavily involved in acting with some of the country’s best young performers. I was performing most weekends in very reputable cover bands and my agent was landing me commercial television gigs here and there so the money was already coming in. I moved to Melbourne a few years later bringing my love of acting and music with me. It was here, along with my partner, that we set up a small home studio and began offering voice-over services for the aforementioned artists and friends. This was a bit of a eureka moment as the studio was originally set up for my personal use. The turning point came when my partner returned home one day after just having recorded her first professional voice demo (that was well overpriced). I listened to it, and knew I could make a better product and so I did. That was the very beginning of Young One Studio. Over the next few years, I directed hundreds of actors across every single genre to lay down some of Melbourne’s best voice reels.

Still living in Melbourne, I continued to perform in bands, both my partner and I would always be in rehearsals for the next theatre production and the voice reel work was trickling in. It was about this time when we both were looking for more narrative content for our demo reels. We were throwing ourselves into student projects, pining for new content, and wanting amazing footage. After a short while, we noticed we’d both had continuous gripes and had questions regarding the turnaround time of the project we were in 6 months ago, issues with the quality of the footage, the direction, the audio etc. We were constantly full of complaints. How did they have such a good camera and the footage looked so terrible? What on earth happened to the sound, I can’t hear myself talking, where was the director? This was another small eureka moment. We had over 30 years of combined theatre experience, we’ve toured shows, we’ve directed, we’ve written, and we’re actors, let’s just buy a cheap camera and start making our own content. So we did. This is where the Nikon/GH5 comes in and the cycle of filming, learning, delivering and filming some more began. These days with a feature film on HBO, music videos featuring Grammy award-winning artists, world-acclaimed short films, countless demo scenes, commercials etc. we’ve found our groove.

So, we do a few things well. First off, we began with highly affordable demo reel scenes for actors, and at 100 scenes, written, directed, filmed, and edited later were pretty darn good at it. We then began creating music videos which took off once we moved to LA with the huge array of standing sets to hire, the creativity and production value tripled overnight. Then, of course, we create short films, of any genre, mostly any budget, and these all generally do very well with awards across the board from writing to directing, cinematography to an original score. We were cinematographers on a feature film in 2021 that sold to HBOMax which was an awesome experience.

We are known for our incredibly affordable prices, high-quality product and extremely fast turnaround. This is due to the nature of the business mostly being run by my wife and me. Since we film and direct it, most of the time also write it, we know exactly what we want in the edit and that includes sound design. A very solid vision shared by two people who can do it all from home once we get off-set makes for a very fluid focused post workflow. We bring in bigger crews when the project demands, but we have learnt to cover almost all aspects of the filmmaking process between the two of us. Yes, the stress is high, but it allows us to keep the costs low and the clients happy.

One thing that sets us apart from the competition at the moment (besides our pricing) is again our fast turnaround. Whenever we are asked, “How long do you think it will take to get this to me?” and we reply “Within the week”, most people look genuinely stunned. I’m just going to mention it again but the magical team of my wife and I putting in the long nights gets the edits done.

Brand-wise, at the moment, the awards are speaking for themselves. It’s the nature of the game really, the more narrative projects you make the more awards you want to see coming in as it means someone somewhere thinks you’re doing a good job. Collect enough of those awards from the right festivals and you’ll keep creating better projects. I know it’s not all about those laurels, but it does spark the interests of clients. Clients with bigger budgets, actors with better chops, larger rental house budgets, crews who want to work with you because they know you can deliver, etc.

I love creating demo reel scenes. I get to write in any genre, create these little magical moments out of a larger cinematic context, light it, film it, edit it, deliver it, done. We get a client, we have an idea and we get to create it and have a finished product typically within a few days. On a larger scale, we are hunting at the moment for better scripts. We’re all about the story and I think sometimes we forget that and get caught up in filming whatever comes our way for a dollar and hoping something sparks interest somewhere. We want to see scripts that wow us. If we find that the budget isn’t of the utmost importance. We made a very conscious pivot to move from the mindset of “Oh yeah, if it pays we’ll film it” to, “Oh wow this script is incredible, please let us make this with you”.

We’ve worked with everyone from Grammy award winners on their music videos, to upcoming local Hollywood stars, and actors from Disney, Netflix, Amazon. We pride ourselves on being actors who direct as actors, we’re proud of our quality sets and our fluid ability to adapt in any situation, at any moment, at any time.

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 think truly understanding what the creative arts encompass, in my arguable opinion, is something that eludes most non-creatives. People see glitz and glamour, they see a seamless performance or a finely polished product and they miss a few things. One, I think most people instantly miss the hard work, sweat and tears and believe that it’s very easy, or a line of work that’s an “easy way out” enforced by comments of “that’s so easy” or “I can do that, no worries”. Oh, boy don’t we know that’s wrong. The second thing, I believe, is that most people entirely miss the exploration of true human emotion and the endless search for the true self that is at the core of the creative arts. The genuine human experience.

The first struggle is easy and the most common to encounter, counter and educate on. It’s as simple as, if you innately think that it, it being any form of creative arts, is easy then you should get into it and give it a try. You may be right and you may be naturally inclined to be a creative, or you may very well find it’s your hubris showing. Most people who become creatives, from my lived experience, are the people who have given it a try and once they have there are two very common comments, it’s either “That was a lot harder than I realized, I never want to do that again” or “That was a lot harder than I realized, man it was fun and I wanna do it again!”.

The second thing I think most non-creatives struggle to understand is the emotional exploration at the core of the creative arts. I remember once my mum very brazenly saying, “Oh yes, all actors are weird, they’re just weird people”. For my mother and father, for them, the arts are perceived as slightly weird, odd, strange, bizarre and a whole myriad of other adjectives. It was a light bulb moment for me and I realized there are people whom simply cannot connect or perceive the emotional core and work these creatives are putting in. Being older now I no longer receive these comments directly, but through my teens and 20’s there was a lot of, “You’re wasting your life”, “the arts are strange”, “performing artists are odd people”, “I don’t understand this”, “You’ll need a real job, a real degree” etc. People laugh, scoff, and worry about you and your career choices. The emotional core of the creative arts isn’t considered or it is completely passed over as if it’s something not worthy of dedication or exploration.

There is a reason that when people study performance arts there is so much work needed to be done to break down socially constructed and internally constructed walls to even begin to explore the depth of real human emotion. This, I believe, is the second part of deciding to become or not become a creative. As before, most people will try it, hate it, and move on. Those who already have a bit of an innate understanding of emotional honesty will find it liberating, freeing and highly expressive. Some people who are emotionally closed suddenly find a release and a way to express themselves freely like never before and they also become creatives, sometimes overnight. Those are the ones who are the artists. I’ve learnt that some people will simply never understand or see the emotional exploratory nature of performing arts, and thus they miss the point entirely, and thus never become a creative.

From my own experience, these seem to be two very common struggles most creatives face, and I have faced, from those not in the industry. A general lack of understanding and a lack of empathy toward the work being done. I could have talked about the long hours, the labour, the months and months of unpaid work honing your craft or wanting to keep making, creating, and expressing anything. I could have mentioned the behind-the-scenes work, the meltdowns, the communications issues, equipment failures, weeks upon weeks of editing in a quiet room by yourself, being berated by acting coaches for not finding your truth and not being present in the space etc. but that all feels superfluous to me when compared to the two points above. It’s the nature of the business really, people want the glitz and glamour but none of the emotional honesty or lifetime of hard work. Some create moments of honesty, some consume them because they can’t conjure it themselves.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

The true power of the internet and online learning. I am in the camp of, you don’t need to go to film school to learn how to make films. You can go to go to film school to make contacts if you need them. Though I’m hypocritical cause I did go to a conservatory for music, and admittedly I would constantly tell people that I advanced 10 years in 3 by being in that place. However, that was my lived experience. There were kids in that course who played better than the 50-year-old jazz musicians I’d listen to on albums. They didn’t need the conservatory, but they did get amazing contacts and opportunities.

It’s all subjective, some of the best actors I’ve ever worked with haven’t had an ounce of training in their life, while others are amazing and still have consistent training. I guess what I’m trying to say is, no matter your creative art, keep applying, keep getting up and doing, that’s all that matters. Me, I’ve learnt most of my filmmaking skills from the internet and by constantly, constantly applying the newfound skills and making myself accountable.

Don’t underestimate the power of online self-learning. As long as you are being accountable and applying what you are taking in every day, you will get better much, much faster than you realise. Just make, just film.

• Website: www.youngonestudio.com
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Image Credits
All images belong to Young One Studio