Today we’d like to introduce you to Dominic DiMaria.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
It’s hard to know where my story truly starts. You could say it’s when my great grandparents landed on Ellis Island from Italy, or maybe when I saw my first film. Perhaps when my parents met, or when my grandfather was pulled out of Germany two weeks before the Battle of the Bulge due to trench foot. All of those are good answers. From my perspective, I start to see the connections converged on April 7, 1933. That’s when RKO Radio Pictures premiered the original KING KONG at the Grauman Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
Sometime around 1970, a young pre-teen Kiwi named Peter Jackson got ahold of KING KONG and fell in love with cinematic experience. This inspired him to make his own films and, after thriving in the indie horror scene, he brought THE LORD OF THE RINGS to life in the early 2000s.
What does this have to do with me? On August 26, 2003, in Flagstaff, AZ, my brothers and I watched THE TWO TOWERS at my friend’s birthday party. I was ten years old and I was obsessed. That day, after we finished watching the film and before we had fully re-wound the special 2-day new release VHS tape, my friend’s dad Mark walked into the room with a Hi8 camera and told us that, since we were so in love with these movies, we should shoot our own. That camera might as well have been on a silver platter, a choir or angels might as well have bursted into chorus. Because that’s when shit got real.
We started shooting about five minutes later and never stopped.
Fast forward a few years and my family had relocated to the east coast. We were homeschooled and didn’t know many people on the east coast so my brothers and I made movies together on the weekends. In high school, my older brother Geno and I created our first LLC and started scouring Craigslist for anyone that would pay us any amount to shoot just about anything. Nothing to write home about.
I had a brief career with Apple around this same time and my sense of branding and aesthetic started to collide with my desire to create films, but I didn’t have a strong sense of what to do with these passions outside of making low budget local commercials.
On November 1, 2014, things finally became clear to me when I attended a screenwriting workshop facilitated by my friend and mentor Peter Fox. For the first time, I had a sense of not only how to create a strong story and screenplay, but also what to do with it, who to show it to, and where to find the right decision-makers. I walked out of that event, having decided to move to Los Angeles in January of the upcoming year.
Best laid plans.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Just over a month after my epiphany at the writing workshop, on December 14, 2014, I was riding my bike to my local climbing gym when I took a Toyota 4Runner to the face. I fractured my skull, lost all my front teeth, and zeroed out my bank account overnight. The accident spiraled my life in many ways and I found myself wounded, broke, and on a two-year trajectory of recovery.
The beauty of my financial destitution during that time was that I couldn’t afford to do anything but work. I took every commercial directing job I could get my hands on and, consequently, our business began to grow. I said yes to everything and this led to me to produce my first feature film in 2016.
On the last day of production for my film SCORN, I received the settlement check from my accident. I paid my debts and moved to Los Angeles in May of 2017 and never looked back.
There were other frustrations during this time as well. As a director, I was routinely frustrated with the lack of resources in small market commercial work. I had a hard time expressing my vision for projects within constant budget constraints. I was a small-minded thinker at the time so I quickly fell into victim mentality about my output. If only other people would lay the groundwork for me, I could shine. Side note: this is a bullshit idea.
The most important work I’ve ever done has been on my mindset and my how it relates to adding value and creating opportunity for myself and my community.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Soulmatter is a company built upon the idea life is art, and art comes from the soul. The journey within is where we derive and assign meaning. We create meaningful original content for the modern era. This means we focus on challenging the status quo through impact-focused film, TV, and digital content. This doesn’t mean that every project has a “message” or “theme” but that we’re creating inviting spaces for diverse creators to do their best work.
Our current slate includes a thriller about what happens when people start using each other instead of loving each other, a documentary series uncovering and providing solutions around the topic of child sex trafficking, and an original series about career excellence, communication skills, and emotional intelligence. And there’s a lot more in the works, including cartoons about psychedelics.
I also produce commercials with an incredible brand called Territory 6.
What were you like growing up?
I’ve noticed that many people I talk to seem to have the same feeling, but I couldn’t help but feel like an outlier when I was young. I was a pretty quiet kid, but always adventurous. I had a good social life, between homeschool groups and Little League baseball, but I truly enjoyed being outside and being alone.
I wanted to be more of a leader in my friend groups but I always struggled with anxiety and insecurity. These are all things I’ve learned to grow through as an adult. (I’m super fun now)
I had a hard time reading when I was younger but eventually fell in love with it which led to me taking a lot of inspiration from literary characters like Frodo Baggins and Huckleberry Finn. Most days I would don my quiver and bow and head out into the northern Arizona pines and simply exist among the rest of nature.
I had a vivid imagination and I still count it a blessing to be raised in Flagstaff around spiritually open, big-minded people. My visual mind and sense of possibility is one of my greatest strengths and I attribute much of my cosmology to growing up in such a fruitful environment.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.soulmatter.co
- Phone: 323 834 2139
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/dominicdimaria
- Other: www.territory6.com
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