Filmmaker | Writer | Director | Rogue

SYNOPSIS
“With Marvel showing up DC at the box office, Man of Steel better make lots of money if the other members of the Justice League stand a chance of having their shot on the big screen, and Wonder Woman is not going to take it lying down.”

There’s a whole lot of pressure on “Man of Steel”. In fact, the weight of the entire DC universe rests squarely on Henry Cavill’s steel shoulders. So a group of some of the most talented actors and musicians came together to make a hilarious music video to explore all of DC’s past attempts -for good or for ill- to make it off the page and onto the screen.

Dig the song? Then download it for free!

Enjoy!

~M@

My name is Matt Campagna and I make westerns.

But not your father’s westerns. I do love Sergio Leone, so these are a little bit Fistful of Dollars, but a little bit Firefly and a little bit Sin City as well.

I’ve also been making web series since before YouTube was invented. Some for distributors like the Food Network, others in partnership with Dailymotion, Blip and YouTube.

And now I want to bring my knowledge and experience in both areas together with your help.

I need a lot of views to get funding to make the rest of SIX DAY ROAD.

I mean A LOT.

So please share SIX DAY ROAD episode zero, engage in conversation here and on and if you’d like, reach out to me; I love to talk westerns!

~M@

When I first heard that the casting choices in Tom Hooper’s adaptation of Les Miserables included Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, I thought “Cool! Wolverine is going to sing-fight Gladiator!”. But once I started to see how the film was shaping up thanks to YourGeekNews.com I realized I wasn’t likely to see the epic sing-fight the way I hoped, and set out with Melissa D’Agostino and Adam Lazarus to make it.

And now that we’ve had over 24,601 views, it seems like it’s as good a time as any to tell you how we did it!

First, my exceptionally talented cast sang the Valjean and Javert parts of “The Confrontation”, and we filmed their heads on greenscreen, shot by shot, set-up by set-up and light by light for the way it was shot in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and in Gladiator.

Second, each clip of Melissa and Adam needed to be edited in time with the right clip from the films, and the green of the chroma key needed to be removed.

Thirdly, I then painstakingly rotoscoped and motion-tracked them onto Wolverine and Maximus to make sure mutton chops and hairlines matched in every frame.

With a final colour correction pass to make all the pixels seem more or less at home in the same frame, we had brought an oddly fluid but hilariously obvious effect to life.

With over 23,000 views on Dailymotion.com alone, some people have already gotten a kick out of the fruits of our labour, and I hope you did too; we had a blast making it!

~M@

This has been a big week.

Although, I can only talk about some of it, since the ink is only dry on one big announcement: I now share an agent with Kiefer Sutherland and Christopher Plummer.

And I have a new demo reel to commemorate the occasion:

The illustrious talent agency of Oscars Abrams and Zimel, who repped Colm Feore and helped get him into Six Reasons Why, has signed me as a writer and director.

What does all this mean? Well, with folks like Karen LaRocca and Perry Zimel looking out for me, I’ll be much more likely to find myself directing and writing for others, and doing it more often, instead of working on my own projects from top to bottom.

In short, you’ll get to see a whole lot more of my stuff out there in the world soon!

~M@

After winning the award for Best Science Fiction at its world premiere in Atlanta at the Dragon*Con International Film Festival, “D.N.E.: Do Not Erase”, the short film I directed, Rudy Jahchan and Nar Williams wrote, “Defiance” and “Eureka”‘s Dr. Kevin Grazier produced, and features “Battlestar Galactica”‘s Richard Hatch and the music of “The Walking Dead”‘s Bear McCreary, is having its Canadian Premiere on Saturday October 20th as Official Selection at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival!

It plays in front of “Cockneys vs. Zombies” at 9:45pm, so if you want to watch “D.N.E.” on the big screen with me, hit up the After Dark site for advanced tickets to make sure you get in, but they will be selling tickets at the door if there are seats still available on the After Dark Website.

And just to tease you, here’s a one-minute excerpt of DNE as featured on BleedingCool.com:

~M@

If you know me, you know I’m a bit of a loudmouth.

Well, so is the immensely talented comedic actor Melissa D’Agostino.

Which is one of the reasons she was the perfect star for this very politically charged spoof I directed, thrashing Kellogg’s “Kashi” brand for putting GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) into their ‘Natural’ products without labelling them.

In California there is an initiative to label GMOs in food called “Prop 37″ that is being squashed by big business like PepsiCo, Kellogg and, of course, the ever-present Monsanto. But it’s not too late… yet. So if you’re interested in what’s in your food, you should follow @CARightToKnow on Twitter and get involved!

~Matt

With a name like BleedingCool, how could it NOT be one of my favourite sites for geeky news? Well, needless to say, I was pretty excited when Bill Meeks from Bleeding Cool wanted to chat about D.N.E.: Do Not Erase at Dragon*Con!

I also got the chance to see an advance copy of one of the Dragon*Con Film Festival’s selections called D.N.E.: Do Not Erase (http://www.facebook.com/DNEDoNotErase). It’s a great little time travel story and features an appearance by Richard Hatch from Battlestar Galactica. It really is a great short and will be making the festival circuit in the coming months so be sure to check it out if it comes to your area.

Check out the entire article on BleedingCool.com.

Keep up with DNE on Facebook.

The world premiere of my short film, “D.N.E.: Do Not Erase” at the Dragon*Con Film Fest was also D.N.E.’s first film festival win!

If you missed the event that makes Comic Con look like a Hollywood Flea Market, don’t worry, D.N.E. will doing a victory lap when it screens at Dragon*Con again next year!

Here’s the synopsis:

When Brian’s graduate thesis on Time Travel costs him the love of his life, he forces himself to choose the best way to live out the rest of his days.

I directed the film, shot it, edited and did all the visual effects and production design, but Do Not Erase was written by Rudy Jahchan and Nar Williams, with music from Walking Dead composer Bear McCreary and featuring Battlestar Galactica’s Richard Hatch. Produced by Amy Skerkoski and renowned Hollywood science advisor Kevin Grazier of Eureka, Defiance and Battlestar Galactica.

D.N.E. will be doing the festival circuit over the next several months, just LIKE it on Facebook to stay in the loop on the when you can catch it on the big screen!

~Matt

After making its way through AMC, Netflix, Amazon, HMV, Walmart, Blockbuster, iTunes and the Superchannel over the past 4 years, the last window to conquer happens the day before my birthday. Well played, E1 Entertainment… I wonder if they’ll put Twilight out on Catherine Hardwicke’s birthday eve too.

A film goes through several ‘release windows’ in its commercial life. Step one is usually the theatre, but not always. Six Reasons Why was fortunate enough to get a theatrical release, but a lot of films skip step one and go directly to step two: home video. Once it was just VHS or DVD for sale at video stores, but now it’s Amazon, Netflix, iTunes and Cable-on-Demand as well. That release window is often followed by a premium cable release, in the case of Six Reasons Why it was Superchannel that bought the first TV window. The final release is then basic cable for everyone to see over the air. The idea is maximum dollars and maximum audience as the arena of exclusivity gets broader with each window.

Until the contract with the distributor elapses and the rights revert back to the filmmaker so he can sell it all over again.

Often the new version of the film gets sold with some deleted scenes or remastery, and then we all buy the “10-Year Anniversary Edition” because we need to upgrade our media to the next higher definition version. You know how you own Star Wars and Reservior Dogs on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, Blu-Ray and Sony PSP? That’s why.

If you’ve heard of Day-and-Date release, that is the idea of releasing a film into multiple windows simultaneously. So you might be able to watch Dark Knight Rises on your iPad or home theatre the same day that I’ll be lined up for a midnight screening. Studios are terrified of the idea, but with piracy making that possible already, the studios are keen to try to scoop some of that cash themselves.

And there you have it: how movies are exploited… and how we are, too.

~Matt

But I’ve always been an artist, whether it was sketching for sketching’s sake, or painting, or sculpting. Or now, doing the production design and storyboarding on my films.

Although I’ve never sold it before now.

And on Etsy, I’ve put up a few pieces. So far it’s been met with a warm reception, and a few people have bought my first offering: Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger, seeking the Dark Tower printed on actual pages from the book that introduced him to popular culture: The Gunslinger.

I love westerns, so it seemed like a good fit.

After that one, next came Katniss Everdeen and her Bow and Arrow printed on the Hunger Games pages, then Team Werewolf’s Jacob Black on New Moon pages, and most recently Boba Fett printed on book five of his own Star Wars book series.

If you want one, you can get one at my shop on Etsy.com

But what to do next? Any suggestions? Hit me up on twitter!

@MattCampagna