Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Hoodhood.
Hi Matt, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and from as far back as I can remember, I always had a camera in my hands. As soon as I discovered that my family had a VHS camera, it was game over. So much of my childhood revolved around filming skits and recreating movie scenes with my neighborhood friends. As I got older, I got into inline skating, and making skate videos became a major part of my life. I loved searching for different obstacles to skate and figuring out ways to make tricks look as epic on camera as possible. My friends and I would drive around for hours just hunting for new spots to skate that got our creative juices flowing. Through this process, I developed an eye for seeing the beauty in places that would go unnoticed by most people. This skill became very useful to me down the road when I started focusing more on cinematography.
In high school, I would go on to take TV broadcasting classes that I would take every single semester. At some point, I’m sure I stopped earning credits towards my diploma. In the class, we learned how to film and broadcast the morning announcements live to the entire school – TV newsroom style. My favorite part of the class was the pre-recorded segments we would film and edit. These segments were usually meant to be stories about student life, upcoming social events, sports highlights, whatever… but sometimes we would sneak in a comedy sketch that was pretty off the rails. My friends and I were watching a lot of Adult Swim at the time, so it was pretty crazy what we got away with showing the whole school first thing in the morning. Sometimes I regret not backing up all of those videos onto a hard drive, but then again, it’s probably for the best that those videos stay buried.
After high school, I followed a few of my close friends to film school at Columbia College Chicago. I didn’t really have much of a plan at the time, I didn’t even truly know what a cinematographer was. I just knew I wanted to keep on having a good time making videos with my friends. As I progressed through the program, I developed a deep passion for cinema, and I fell completely in love with the process of making films with a crew. I think the teamwork and the collaborative effort that goes into making films has always been the things that I gravitated towards most. After graduating, I moved to LA in 2014, where I have been living and working as a DP ever since.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I don’t think that there is such a thing as a smooth road in this industry or even a particular road to follow at all. We’re all carving our own paths as we go along, and the most difficult part is being willing to move forward even when you can’t always see so clearly what’s coming up ahead. There are intense highs and lows that come along with making art. When everything works out how you hoped and planned for, it’s an incredible feeling, but when things don’t go as planned, you have to be able to pick yourself up and find a new way. It’s all one big experiment, and you have to be willing to fail a lot before you’re going to ever find any sort of success. Being a filmmaker means that you’re often dependent on many people to create a singular work together, and a lot can go wrong in that process. That’s why I think one of the most important things is to find people you love to create with and try to stick with them, and that’s not always such a simple task either.
Being a cinematographer has given me immense joy and helped shape the person I am today and I consider myself extremely lucky to have found something I can be so passionate about. However, it’s rarely an easy job: long hours, physical and mental exhaustion, not seeing loved ones as often as you’d like, not always being sure where the next job is coming from, and the list goes on and on. It’s a hard thing to be a filmmaker, but not as hard as being a doctor, so how can I complain? I get to tell stories for a living, and that’s pretty cool.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’ve been working as a DP on narrative films, commercials, docs, and music videos for over ten years. One of my favorite aspects of being a cinematographer is that I get to enjoy so much variety in the types of projects that I take on. I am very driven by the story and try to have my work always feel like it’s coming from a place of honesty and staying true to the characters. Each project requires a different visual language and presents new problems to solve. I love investigating the human experience and what connects us all. To me, films are the perfect medium to help us better understand one another.
Lately, I’ve been focusing most of my attention on several narrative projects that are all in various stages of production. They are all very different stories, and I’m so proud to be a part of these films. My wife Caitlin Noah wrote and directed a sci-fi film, “Earthworms” which we shot earlier this year and is in the final stages of post-production. My good friend Joe Mischo directed a thriller called “Jade” which is also coming out soon. Recently, we just wrapped filming on my friend Dave Srock’s first feature, “Tom Doesn’t Care” which is a drama/comedy. I’m also very excited to have just started pre-production on a horror film, “Never Let You Go” directed by Alex Domenici. All these projects are vastly different stories, and I love being able to switch it up and develop an entirely new look and approach for each film.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I think the most important quality to being successful is having great communication and openness with your crew. We are trying to take dreams from pure imagination and make them a reality with a team of individuals with totally unique ways of seeing things. That can be an extremely difficult task so being able to clearly communicate your ideas to everyone involved is vital. Everybody has to be making the same movie.
Contact Info:
- Website: matthoodhood.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matt_hoodhood/
