Matt McWilliams is a writer, director, and producer raised in Prior Lake Minnesota. After finishing his film degree at the University of Arizona he spent time in Montana and Wyoming until moving to Los Angeles. For the last ten years, he has been working in the entertainment industry in film, TV, and commercials.
He currently develops and Directs original content for MadWest Content and Palindrome LLC, creative production companies specializing in development through post-production.
He is known for his Directorial debut indie horror film Chupacabra Territory, his award-winning horror shorts Bath Bomb, Mushtown, and Candy, as well as his work in the Art Department on the Bachelor and Bachelorette television reality series. We caught up to discuss his career and horror short, ‘Angel City Horror’ which screened at the FirstGlance Film Festival.
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. Congratulations on your career to date. For readers unfamiliar with you, how did you get into the film industry?
A little by accident and a little on purpose I suppose. I studied film in college but this wasn’t any kind of natural selection for me. I started out as a Communications Major at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul Minnesota. I was really there to play soccer and had no clear idea of what I was going to study since I was never particularly good in any one subject, nor very interested in what was offered. But through their curriculum, I was introduced to different video projects that I took to rather naturally. It was fun, and creative and for the first time, I was enjoying my classes.
At this time I had lived my whole life in Minnesota and was needing a change of scenery so I transferred to the University of Arizona where I could major in film. This was where my understanding of cinema really opened up. We spent our classes learning about the history of cinema and screened films that we dissected critically. It was all very captivating to dive deeper into film theory and learn about the different genres, and conventions and break down films scene by scene and shot by shot.
I found a few industry-related odd jobs around town. One of them was working as a studio cameraman at the local nightly news station (I forgot which one). There were several college students working there with me. I couldn’t believe they trusted us to be the camera operators for a live broadcasted news show. I also volunteered to help out the National Association of Latino Independent Producers when they rolled through town. I was basically going to school, going to my day job at the Marriott then heading to help as a Production Assistant on set.
While most of my college friends were interning in Los Angeles I decided to go in the opposite direction and interned at a company in Jackson, Wyoming for Bridger Productions. I was very interested in wildlife documentaries at the time and wasn’t convinced that LA was the place for me yet.
After college, I moved to Bozeman Montana where I celebrated my new college degree by couch surfing supplemented with more odd jobs. Jackson was only four hours away so I would travel to work on video shoots when the opportunity would arise. That mountain pass is no joke in the winter. Eight-foot bluffs of snow on both sides of the road!
My first real taste of Hollywood was on a Saab car commercial that was filming in Montana around Glacier National Park. I remember we had to shut down for a day because there was a blizzard in June. I made a few contacts that came into play later. After that, it became apparent if I was going to get serious about my career I would need to move to LA. It was a big leap for a country boy from Minnesota who didn’t know anyone in the city but I knew it was a move I needed to make. So there I am in Los Angeles couch surfing again and flying blind, age 24.
I spent a month at the New York Film Academy in North Hollywood where I learned to shoot on 16mm black and white film. It was a really fun school with a lot of international students. We were allowed to shoot our films on the Universal backlot so that was exciting, especially when the tours came through and tourists were taking pictures of us thinking that we were a professional Hollywood film production.
I eventually hit up the few people in town I met on the Saab commercial and slowly got enough jobs to stay afloat. I worked as a Production Assistant on commercials for years, on set and in the office, and eventually fell into Art Department on The Bachelor Television series where I have been working for the last decade.
Working in TV, Film, print, commercials and through my travels, I have been fortunate to meet other incredibly talented artists in the industry, filmmakers, special FX, costume designers, makeup artists, armorers, prop masters, composers, and editors, illustrators and producers. Eventually, I met other people who had the same passion for filmmaking, and through these connections, I made my first feature film Chupacabra Territory and several short films including Mushtown, Bath Bomb, and Candy which are part of the Happy Horror Days feature horror anthology. Angel City Horror is the culmination of my accumulated knowledge and skills, my many influences, and a decade of connections, experiences, and trials and errors in independent filmmaking.
Who are your biggest industry influences?
Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, James Cameron, Perter Jackson, Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, Nicolas Wing Refn, Luc Besson, George Romero. Robert Zemeckis. Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Sam Mendez. Movies that made the biggest impact on me are Terminator 2, The Abyss, The Thing, 1917, and Alien to name a few.
You made your directorial debut indie horror film Chupacabra Territory and continued with award-winning horror shorts Bath Bomb, Mushtown, and Candy. What draws you to making horror movies and are there any cardinal rules to making films of this genre?
I have always responded to the macabre and otherworldly phenomena since I was very young. I love mythologies, fairy tales, and lore from all reaches of the earth. Taking from the X-Files series I have the “I want to believe” gene. I think there is something magical in the “unknown” that functions at a subconscious level. Similarly, this subconscious element taps into a very primal latitude in the human mind. I love that horror is primal because it affects us all universally whether we are aware of it or not and reaches our very basic needs (food, shelter, protection, sex). There’s nothing purer than stimulating our basic animal instincts. This is what draws me to horror.
As far as rules I would say I am always guided by the conventions of the horror genre and refer to them constantly. Rules are there for a reason because they are necessary and proven to work. It all depends on how you use them and if they are effective in the way they were intended. For example, the jump scare is a very important and effective tool if used right. But like anything it is an art form in itself and if overused or incorrectly executed it can become distracting to the story or even have the opposite effect and become comical. But then again maybe the story doesn’t call for it at all. My cardinal rule, tell a compelling story that will engage the audience. Build tension. Write within a realistic budget and always have more fake blood on set than you think you will need. Practical special effects are a must.
I remember growing up, watching the classic films of John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, and Wes Craven. Their movies relied less on special effects and more on storytelling, character development, and creating an atmosphere. Many of my generation will argue the genre, like many others, has become too reliant on CGI, lost its originality, and run out of ideas. What’s your view?
I think this is a generational response that we all eventually share at some point in our lives. We all have that grandpa that used to talk about how music was better back in his day. Then the son grows up with a new set of music, becomes a father, then a grandfather, and is telling his grandkids the same thing. Life is very circular when you break it down. One reason we see that same circular storytelling pattern in so many scripts. Film imitates life. We love what we know and what we grew up watching. I know I do. There is nostalgia in our adolescent development that is ingrained in our identities. It is also typically this universal time in America’s youth when they have nothing better to do than go to the movies with friends. So they see a lot of content in this short window of time and it gets time-stamped in their DNA. I’m starting to be the guy that says all new music is bad and have to laugh at the notion that every old person says these kinds of things…and that I’m now old and nobody recites lines from the Simpsons anymore.
But I actually think that saying that films of today don’t focus on character or storytelling is a short-sighted statement when you consider the brass tax of it. There has always been low-hanging fruit. There have always been films that have fallen short of their potential. But if you really think about the quality of films that have come out in the last twenty years there are a ton of amazing films that have incredible special effects, great stories, and characters. Some that come to mind are Inception, The Matrix, Interstellar, The Shape of Water, The Joker, 1917, and my personal favorite The Lord Of the Rings.
Yes, there are plenty of films that overuse special effects and undercut stories but that has always been there since the dawn of cinema. Good stories are hard to write, great films are hard to make and even if you get lucky to have both you could screw it up with a bad edit, bad score, bad performance, bad weather on your shoot day, or a producer who wants to put his niece in the film. But there are a lot of groundbreaking films that would not be possible without the technology of today. We have so much more content that is more accessible than ever before. Anyone can find a dozen films that they are going to love without needing to go to a Blockbuster. It’s a grain of sand in an ocean of content but those films are there if you know how to dive for it.
You develop and direct original content for MadWest Content and Palindrome LLC. Can you tell us more about the company and its projects?
MadWest Content is a production company that specializes in producing high-quality storytelling in TV, podcasts, documentaries, horror, and short-form media. Owner Josh Murphy and I go back to our college days and have been working together for the last several years to develop and produce narrative content. Palindrome LLC is a creative production company that I started years ago. We teamed up to develop engaging content that we believe has been underrepresented in today’s homogenized media tsunami. Angel City Horror is the first production of this relationship. We are currently in development of a prequel podcast series for Angel City Horror in addition to a feature-length film.
Congratulations on the making of your film Angel City Horror. It was screened at the FirstGlance Film Festival. Please tell us more about the film, and how you came to write it.
I can sum this up in its most simplistic form using this equation (Monster+location=time period+available resources=script). Angel City Horror was originally developed for Crypt TV. My short film Bath Bomb was already streaming on their site and Josh and I had recently taken some meetings with their development department. So at this time, I was trying to cater to the content they were looking for. In that sense, Angel City Horror was originally developed to be a short series for their platform which then dictated much of the development process.
As a result, the film was basically reversed engineered revolving around the (monster). I was looking for a creature that could not only be recycled and introduced in uniquely different ways in each episode but also made sense in multiple single locations, which was equally important for the budget but could also transcend time. This made it possible for unlimited creative options for where and when this film and each episode could take place. I was researching (locations) and standing sets around Los Angeles that were both conducive to our needs and affordable when I landed on this extremely small decrepit patient room that had great production value. The look was there but the space was not. It was a logistical hurdle that we had to navigate around which required some critical problem solving through the camera lens and production design. When creating the shot list I knew that we would need so stay close on the characters and maximize close up shots in order to make the space believable and also functional. So this location solidified an older (time period) in an asylum which transitioned seamlessly into a noir horror monster mystery.
In other films, I never paid much attention to wardrobe and makeup. It was always an afterthought. But I knew that in this film it would need to be a central focus if I was going to sell the time period. So I went all in. Luckily I had recently met Costume Designer Shon LeBlanc and the head of the Hair and Makeup department Desiree Falcon on Disney’s TV show Encore! So through these (resources), I knew I could give this script the authenticity it required.
Now as far as the graphic elements go, those were used for three specific reasons. The first was to help build the backstory of the characters and create a bigger world for them to inhabit. The second reason was to literally make the world bigger on screen. Since our standing set was small and inhibiting it was a way for me to get the wide establishing shots that we could not get through principal photography. Lastly, it allowed me to go bigger on some of the SFX that we couldn’t achieve on a shoestring budget and limited shoot days. All made possible because my editor Wes Sneeringer was friends with a talented illustrator Jason Ragosta who created all of the graphics.
Circling back to my equation (Monster+location=time period+available resources=script).
Of the many accolades received, what is your proudest achievement as a filmmaker, and why?
The first festival that kicked off our circuit for Angel City Horror was the Macabre Faire Film Festival 2021 where we were nominated for nine awards, which was pretty incredible. It seemed like we struck a chord. The film won Best Short, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Special effects, and Best Editing. Winning Best Director and Best Short was my proudest moment.
There was a slate of amazing films at the festival and winning those two awards meant a great deal to me not only because it was the first time I had been awarded them in my carrier, but at this time I had poured so much into this film over the last two years, I was burnt out, just had our first child and was really questioning my path as a filmmaker and storyteller. But I believed in the film and getting those awards acknowledged that others believed in it too.
For me, this was the first time that I felt an acknowledgment of my work and to receive that meant a lot to me on a personal level, as an artist and a filmmaker. Don’t get me wrong, getting the other awards are equally important for the film and filmmakers and is a way to give credit to the other talented artist in the film whether they were in front of the camera or behind. But for me winning Best Director and Best Short were the ones that stood out.
What projects are you currently working on?
I have been in development with MadWest Content for the feature to Angel City Horror. We will have some updates coming out here soon but if you liked the short then you will love the feature. In addition, we are developing a prequel to the story into a narrative podcast series that I am really excited about.
Lastly, I am developing a concept for a feature that takes place in 18th century Ireland, of which I cannot disclose much of accept that it is a psychological horror with a lot of blood.
Where can our readers find out more about you and your projects? Note: please provide website and social media links.
You can follow my projects and stay up to date with my past, present, and future works by going to my:
- https://www.mattpmcwilliams.com
- https://www.angelcityhorror.com
- https://vimeo.com/mattpmcwilliams
- Instagram: @mattpmcwilliams @angelcityhorror
About Author
