Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt McCarty.
Matt, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My past is pretty vanilla. I’m from a very boring but aesthetically beautiful place. I grew up in a small coastal town south of Boston, Massachusetts. I loved movies and music and generally any type of art. I got involved in theater at a young age. I started writing my own scenes in acting classes and then moved into filming that writing. Making little movies was a fun way to screw around and I’d make these films with neighbors, friends, my dog, my cat – anyone that would sit for the camera. Anything to kill the boredom. I also had a Telecommunications teacher in high school that really took me under his wing and allowed me to take his class all four years, editing shorts for the school’s morning TV show.
I went to Emerson College in Boston for Film Production with a concentration in cinematography and a minor in Photography. It was a really great school, though, I don’t know how any Emerson graduate is dealing with the crippling debt with which we are left.
Having willingly stayed in Boston to pursue an education in the heart of the dark and icy winters, depression definitely fueled my creativity. Most of my time was spent making films for my classes, photographing friends, improving my editing skills and waiting tables to make ends meet. After I graduated college, I moved to Los Angeles to join my friends and creative partners in the city with the most opportunity for doing what I love to do.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
In the grand scheme of things, it’s been a very smooth road. Any struggles I’ve had along the way, have been shining examples of first world problems. Growing up in an Irish suburb as a white male I really didn’t have to overcome any societal adversity. I had friends, I have only bullied a handful of times, my family was generally accepting of me being gay. I had a good childhood.
The biggest struggle – which is still true today and definitely not unique to me – has been having to take jobs creating content that I don’t necessarily believe in and still find the time and energy to work on my own projects that I do believe in, projects that I am passionate about. It’s not fun to have to do something that you don’t like just to pay the bills. Conversely, it’s not fun to be a starving artist. I’ve taken a handful of jobs to be able to eat and have a place to sleep at night that almost – but not quite – sucked the soul right out of my body.
I’ve waited tables at a gay club where I experienced sexual harassment on a regular basis. I had to shoo away drag queens who would drunkenly steal olives from the condiment bin and decide whether taking off my shirt was worth a little extra rent money. I camped in the woods of Northern California for a year, working on several farms that didn’t provide lodging or bathrooms, never knowing when (or if) I was going to be paid next. I worked as the marketing director at a real estate company in Beverly Hills for as long as I could stand it but it’s not fun making websites for multi-million dollar properties and having your invoices for the work go unanswered. It’s not fun being asked to do things for free because “it’s good exposure.”
Los Angeles is a city full of hundreds of thousands of people in competition to do the same thing as me. It’s not easy, but at the end of the day it is the American Dream and I’m lucky and grateful to be able to pursue it. It’s character-building and everything could be much, much worse. I know that I’m a hard worker and an autonomous learner, constantly bettering my skills. I will continue this labor of love in whatever free time I have and hopefully someday be able to make a living at it.
Oh also – I did have a brief stint in the mental hospital because I overshared with a therapist about how I believed all humans think objectively about killing themselves. That was a struggle at the time, but now it’s just a really good story.
Royalrugrat – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I have ample experience in high-end marketing, branding, website building and video editing. I love to work with the Adobe Creative Suite and other editing software. I’m really passionate about what these programs allow me to create on my own and I’m constantly working on these programs in my free time. They have allowed me to make myself a professional over the years. I have a lot of experience taking what I can do in the editing room and using that to make people a whole lot of money off of the high-end graphic design.
I’m most proud of the wide range of graphics, images and videos I’m able to create depending on who I’m creating them for. I’ve created for large commercial companies in Beverly Hills and small business organic farms in Northern California, all the while creating experimental content for myself. I try to produce content that I haven’t seen done before.
What sets me apart from others is most evident in the content I produce on my own, for myself. I specialize in film, photography, writing, installations, drawing, painting, digital collages and art direction. Video editing is really important to me, and it’s what I spend most of my time doing. I use my videos to visualize abstract and odd sensations that I find interesting. I incorporate a range of collage elements into these videos to transform the content. They’re usually a bit dark for some people, but I try to make them beautiful through the moving collage work. My work is visually abstract and experimental at times, but I’d really love to get into working with people that bring me a treatment or a script and have me do what I do in a narrative context. I’m currently working on a short documentary about a woman I met in New Mexico who believes she gave birth to a star child who lives on white dwarf Sirius B – so that’s where I’m at right now.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
David Lynch. That man is my definition of success. Being able to bring ideas that aren’t mainstream to the mainstream. Having the balls to make a totally “out there” movie that is so weird it could essentially ruin my career, but having enough faith in it that it happens and it works – and not only do I make money off it, but it also changes the way people can make movies. It’s a lot to hope for, but I’m shooting for the stars here.
A notable marker for me was this past November when my friend and I had a month-long artist residency at a really amazing gallery, Parse Seco, in Arroyo Seco, NM. Galleries like that and the incredibly generous and supportive people behind them, give artists like me a platform to show the work that we make, gain experience and exposure and feel a sense of accomplishment. It really fuels the desire to keep pushing forward with our art and for that, I am incredibly grateful.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.royalrugrat.com
- Phone: 310-488-6521
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/royalrugrat/
Image Credit:
Matt McCarty
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