HD EXPO Education Instructors

Matthew Williams

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Matt grew up making photographs from a young age when he was given a Kodak instamatic still camera. After high school and various college still photography classes, he attended and graduated from the Academy of Photographic Arts in North Hollywood, where he learned the art of commercial studio still photography, (both product and portraiture).

While working at a job processing film in a commercial photography lab for Disneyland, he became more and more influenced motion picture work and decided to attend to UCLA's film school, where he also became a teaching assistant in the visual design and classes so that he could continue to be exposed to the ideas of production design in relation to cinematography; the very ideas that changed his direction to that of cinematography instead of still photography.

Matt's break came in 1987 when he was asked to take over the 2nd unit Director of Photography / additional photography duties on the feature film, "Promised Land" starring Meg Ryan and Kieffer Sutherland, where he worked closely with Swiss cinematographer Ueli Steiger, (who recently photographed "The Day After Tomorrow"). Ueli's work as well as the work of Academy Award winning production designer, Eugenio Zanetti, had a major influence on Matt's visual training. In 1989 at the Sundance institute Matt met New York director Elliot Caplan and dance choreographer Merce Cunningham and began a (3) film collaboration. starting with "Changing Steps," a dance performance piece narrated by Robert Redford, "Cage/Cunningham" a feature length documentary exploring the career-long collaboration of Merce Cunningham and music composer John Cage, and "Beach Birds for Camera” (35mm b&w/color), a theatrical dance performance film. All three films have won numerous international awards.

In 1993 Matt served as on of the director's of photography on the staff at the Sundance institute's Director's Lab, where the participants work on various scenes from upcoming projects. During this time period Matt continued to shoot commercials, features, (2) TV series; "Hollywood Detective" (A & E's first in-house dramatic project), and the television series, "Encyclopedia Brown:Boy Detective" for HBO.

In May of 1999 matt completed all 3 seasons (68 episodes) as director of photography on the CBS Network show, "Promised Land," a dramatic tv series which was a spin-off of the top rated "Touched by An Angel," of which he also photographed several episodes. Matt believes strongly that a good cinematographer should have a broad range of experience, and be versed in as many as the disciplines and styles of shooting rather than be pinioned-holed into just one style of shooting. This philosophy led Matt to take up one of the biggest challenges, IMAX. Some of the projects have included, "Hearst Castle: Building the Dream", "NSYNC: Bigger Than Live", "Stephen Hawking's: Beyond The Universe", "India: Kingdom of The Tiger", and 2nd unit / additional cinematography on Disney's latest IMAX project, "Roving Mars" as well as the recent "Wired to Win: Surviving The Tour de France", where Matt shot the dramatic re-creation sequences for the film.

That same open-mindedness led Matt head on into the emerging high definition world several years ago. Matt was one of 7 cinematographers chosen to shoot, "Bud Greenspan's Stories of Olympic Glory" the Official Film of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Also on 24p, Matt photographed the award winning, "Hiding in Walls", which had its World Premiere screening at HDFEST's 2003 World Tour and HD Film Festival, where it won best HD Short Film, and Best HD Comedy. The growing list of projects on 24p HD includes commercials, features, as well as various television projects. Last year’s campaign for Children's Miracle Network, was shot on 24p hd, edited in 1080 / 24p hd and scanned to 35mm film, where the resulting 2200 prints were screened theatrically nationwide, as well as the soon to be released "Boxboarders" a comedy feature shot on the Varicam High Definition format.

Matt currently works in both film and high definition, ranging from feature films, television projects, IMAX, commercials, and is versed in a wide variety of production formats from 16mm, 35mm, 65mm (5-70, 8-70 and 15-70 formats), to the latest 24p High Definition formats. Matt has been involved with Panasonic Broadcast for several years now, and shoots many of the Panasonic promotional HD materials, including the Panasonic/Apple Access HD announcement for NAB in 2004 and the film festival trailer "Waiting" highlighting the wait for the HVX-200 last fall, which was shot with a Varicam, not an HVX-200. You can find Matt on the web @ http://www.williamsdp.com. He is represented by Susan Wright / Criterion (818) 998-8885.