Filmmaker Matt Croyle’s Guest Lecture At Clarion University (Full Video) – April 9, 2013
(CLARION, PA) Filmmaker Matt Croyle recently spoke to students at Clarion University of Pennsylvania about film, writing and creativity. Below is the video of the event:
For more information on “Potential Inertia”, or to help out and support the film, please visit: The Official Potential Inertia Production Site.
Filmmakers Spike Lee, Matt Croyle To Guest Lecture @ Clarion University In April
(Clarion, PA) Filmmakers Spike Lee and Matt Croyle will be guest lecturing at Clarion University in April of 2013.
Lee will be giving a three-hour talk at Marwick-Boyd Auditorium at 8pm on April 3. Tickets must be purchased. Croyle will be speaking for two-hours on April 9 at 6:30pm in Hart Chapel’s Auditorium.
Both filmmakers are part of Clarion’s Speaker Series on Film and Cinema for the Spring 2013 semester.
More information can be found by visiting www.clarion.edu.
To find out more about both filmmakers you can visit their respective production company sites at: Spike Lee www.40Acres.com & Matt Croyle www.onefishfilms.com.
2012 Year In Pictures
Not much happened before the end of March, but I soon had boarded a plane in Pittsburgh because my web series “Monster” was selected to screen in Los Angeles.
In thought, in flight.
Downtown LA. A nice change of scenery from dreary western Pennsylvania.
Spoke on a panel at the 2012 LA Web Series Festival. (w/Danny Torgerson, Sean Oliver, Tara Garwood)
Walked around Hollywood.
Watched my web series in Los Angeles, my first ever LA screening for my own work.
Had a New York-style lunch in Beverly Hills, off of Rodeo Drive.
Hung out at the Santa Monica Pier for the first time.
Got to walk my first red carpet.
Found my favorite LA cafe.
Won some shit.
Went to a Pirates’ game with my dad.
Spent time on the Allegheny River with some friends.
Made a comedy short with some more friends.
My friend, Gavin, came down twice from Toronto to play live.
Found out I’m only two degrees from Kevin Bacon.
Played some water volleyball.
Started filming “Potential Inertia”, my first feature film.
Shot a scene, in which I needed 150 extras, with just four extras. Epic win.
Lost my good friend, Josh, and I had to give his Eulogy.
Found out where my fucking polling place was.
Shared a big turkey leg with my little sister, Courtney, at ALF.
Saw a Batman, with no shirt, standing guard for an ATM customer.
Tracked Sandy.
Met Sara Louise.
In Response To Quentin Tarantino’s Look At Digital Film
So, apparently, Quentin Tarantino wants to quit directing. That’s the rumor. Why? Well, supposedly, he doesn’t like the industry’s lean toward digital filmmaking – leaving traditional, hundred year-old film stock a part of the past.
“Part of the reason I’m feeling [like retiring] is, I can’t stand all this digital stuff. This is not what I signed up for,” he said. ”Even the fact that digital presentation is the way it is right now – I mean, it’s television in public, it’s just television in public. That’s how I feel about it. I came into this for film.”
He continues, “I hate that stuff. I shoot film. But to me, even digital projection is – it’s over, as far as I’m concerned. It’s over.”
I love the medium of film, and the history of cinema. I love the look of real film. Celluloid rules. As a filmmaker myself, I wish everything I shot could be on celluloid. It’s gorgeous. I started out shooting (much like Spielberg, and J.J.) on an old Super 8 camera. However, the ease at which I could complete films (or, rather, home movies) was painstaking. I had to send the shot footage away to a lab, wait a few weeks for them to develop it and get it back to me, use a magnifying glass to help visually cut the film by hand, use tape to splice it back together. Finished project: Three minutes. Total time: One month. I don’t remember what the cost was in those days to develop the film, but it was an every-shoot thing.
Currently, I’m shooting my first feature film Potential Inertia. Would I liked to have shot it with a big-ass Panavision camera on 35mm film stock? I would have LOVED to shoot it like that, but the reality of it is that I can’t AFFORD to. What I can afford to do, with the help of people who are helping me crowdfund my film, is shoot at 24fps (like real film) at 1080p using digital technology with data I save on cards, ready to be cut as soon as I can get the card to a computer. I’m going to have a wonderful looking picture at a mere fraction of the cost that it would take to shoot “Django Unchained” – which is great because I don’t have the budget an established Hollywood director does. It makes practical, financial, and logistical sense to move to a more digital medium – especially when you can produce pictures with the quality of 35mm film using a variety of digital means.
Why Mr. Tarantino doesn’t embrace the advancements in the field he has chosen to be his profession is beyond me. My film may turn out to be the worst piece of cinema ever shot, but at least it won’t be the worst looking.
A Special Q&A With Musician Gavin Slate
A Special Q&A With Musician Gavin Slate
By Matt Croyle
Gavin Slate and I have been facebook friends for a little over a year. I dig his music. The last time we got to hang out, he played a wonderful night of music in my hometown of Oil City — travelling all the way from Toronto, and for (what he expressed as) a nice getaway from playing in the hustle and bustle of a big city.
Gavin will be back, this weekend, playing in Oil City on Friday night at Billy’s (8 PM), a local sports bar/restaraunt, on a stage he feels is intimate and comfortable. There are no cover charges, no skyscrapers, no horns blaring all night, no trains running. It’ll be Gavin, a guitar, and an audience.
Gavin Slate – Friday, Sept. 28, 2012 – Billy’s. 275 Seneca St. Oil City, PA
I recently was able to sit online with Gavin and ask some questions about his influences, differences in audiences, and what’s in the future. Here’s that interview: (Scroll down after the interview to watch some of Gavin’s music videos.)
Please check out Gavin’s official site at: www.gavinslate.com
MC: What were your earliest musical influences, and how did you become interested in the profession of music?
GS: I grew up listening to a ton of things from The Beach Boys to Buddy Holly. I went through a bunch of different phases as a kid. I was huge into punk music so I played in a bunch of different punk projects. At the same time, I also listened to a ton of hiphop and rock stuff. Now I just listen to things that have great writing and hooks. That doesn’t mean annoying repetitive hooks necessarily, just things that catch my ear, words, phrases, melodies, rhythms etc.
MC: How would you compare the Toronto music scene to smaller towns? Is there a difference in the fan base?
GS: Toronto has a huge music scene which is good and bad. The good thing is that there is really no shortage of places to play in the city. There are so many venues and so many bands playing around town. There’s a lot of opportunity. The downside is that there’s sometimes just too much music that people get overwhelmed and don’t even know where to start. I also find that when I play smaller towns, they appreciate the music so much more because they know how far you’ve had to travel to play there. I think a good combination of both is the best way to play.
MC: Your song “Falling”, which you are so graciously letting me use in my film, was recently included in an episode of NBC’s “Saving Hope”. What was it like having it included in the show, and have inquiries and downloads of the track increased since?
GS: It was certainly an incredibly cool opportunity. I think it’s one of those career moments you always dream of. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d have anything I’d written air on NBC (haha), but you just never know where a song can take you. The show (Saving Hope) has gained me several new fans and a lot more dowloads and YouTube views which is great. I think, in a lot of ways, shows like “Saving Hope” have become a modern day form of radio. I’ve discovered so many great songs and artists just from hearing them in a show.
MC: A lot of your online videos have been directed by Gavin Michael Booth. What’s it like working with Gavin, and what have you learned about the process of making music videos from him?
GS: We work incredibly well together. It’s rare to find a creative relationship in this industry like the one he and I have. The ideas just keep flowing and it’s all very natural, we don’t force anything. I’ve learned so much from him, but primarily that any idea/concept is possible in this industry and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
MC: Your video for “Life of a Salesman” garnered quite a bit of press regarding Starbucks. How important do you think viral marketing is to an artist today? Has Starbucks contacted you about the video?
GS: As a musician, any marketing that you can accomplish on a small budget should be done — and the ‘Life as a Salesman’ video is just that. If you have a cheap viral concept, just do it! Don’t talk about wanting to do it! The hardest part is doing it… the worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t go viral and you lose a few bucks. Starbucks has contacted me and they wished me all the best in my musical endeavors!
MC: What fellow Canadian artists do you most admire for their hard work in the industry?
GS: I probably should be saying someone like Neil Young or Bryan Adams, but I don’t really know them enough to know their work ethic. I grew up playing shows with a ton of Canadian artists around Toronto and beyond and I’ve really seen how much of a grind this industry is and how many people just give up. That being said, I’ve always admired the work ethic of my friend and fellow artist, Lindi Ortega. She has always stayed true to herself and has never given up, and she’s now touring with the likes of K.D. Lang, Brendan Flowers and is about to go back out on tour with Social Distortion.
MC: How different are the Canadian and American audiences that you’ve played for?
GS: Basically the same, just a little more ‘y’all’ in the States and a little more ‘eh’ in Canada.
MC: We’re looking forward to having you back to Oil City, PA this week. You seemed to have a great time the last time you played here. What about a small town like Oil City draws you to share your music?
GS: I really love how appreciative the folks were the last time I was in Oil City. Everyone was there for the music and everyone was just such good vibes. They all truly appreciated the fact that I made it a touring destination. Oil City is definitely one of my favourite cities to have played in all of my touring.
MC: The music scene in Oil City is growing, along with the arts scene. What advice do you have to artists trying to refine their craft — trying to get their music heard?
GS: If you love it, just don’t stop. Try to get into the bigger cities as much as you can, record new tracks, put up videos, basically, utilize all the outlets you can for getting your music out there. Don’t make excuses for yourself. Thinking up excuses just takes away time you could spend creating.
MC: What’s next for you?
GS: I’m currently sitting on a TON of new material. I’m just trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with it all. The beauty of not having a label, publisher, manager or agent is that you can do whatever you want! Gavin Booth and I are brainstorming all sorts of fun ideas for videos as well. I’ve also been working away producing new material in my own studio, as well, and just writing a lot on my own and with other artists. Lots of great things in the months to come!
“Falling”
“Life As A Salesman” (Starbucks Prank)
One Fish Films Welcomes Moby To The Feature Film “Potential Inertia”
(OIL CITY, PA) - One Fish Films is pleased to announce that International recording artist Moby will be featured on the soundtrack to the “festival” cut of its upcoming feature film Potential Inertia. Moby joins Canadian artist Gavin Slate as the only musicians on the soundtrack outside of Western Pennsylvania.
Matt Croyle, Creative Director of One Fish Films — and Director of ‘Potential Inertia’, notes that eight tracks from Moby have been secured to use as additional scoring for the film. Moby joins Brent register as the main composers for the feature’s “festival” cut.
Moby – (Photo by http://www.billboard.com)
Brent Register
Day One Production Stills For Feature Film “Potential Inertia” Released
(OIL CITY, PA) – The first production stills from Matt Croyle’s upcoming independent feature, “Potential Inertia” have hit the web via the film’s official Facebook page. The film is being entirely grassroots funded. To make a donation to the project, and get your name on the film as an associate producer, you can visit: The Official Potential Inertia Site. Check out the production stills!
First take. Kevin (Paul Schermerhorn) and Katie (Brooke Bartolomeo).
Matthew King as Declan Holmes, the central character in the story.
Katie Williams, portrayed by Brooke Bartolomeo.
Kevin (Paul Schermerhorn) and Katie (Brooke Bartolomeo) share a moment.
Kevin (Schermerhorn) and Katie (Bartolomeo).
Declan (King).
Your Name On The Big Screen – Fundraising To Continue Through Post On Pennsylvania Feature Film
Funding To Continue Through Post-Production On Pennsylvania Feature Film
By Tabitha Leroux, Associated Correspondent
OIL CITY, PA - Want to have your name in the credits of a feature-length film? Want to be able to do it for as little as five dollars? That’s right! For five bucks you can be an “Associate Producer” on Matt Croyle’s upcoming, debut, feature film entitled “Potential Inertia“. The entire film is being grassroots funded and is being shot — not in Hollywood or any normal production hub — but in Western Pennsylvania. Venango County and its surrounding areas, to be exact.
While Croyle has been on major motion picture sets and has “hob-nobbed”, as they say, with people in the industry, he’s chosen to produce his first feature film where he grew up. Croyle gives credit to the area’s natural beauty and a strong sense of “home” to his decision to make the production local.
“We have some great support here in the region to make the film,” Croyle stated. “It’s a very underrepresented area in the film industry. And, while the people in the area are totally for us making the film here, the funding is always an issue. This area doesn’t have the economy that other major production hubs have — like New York or Los Angeles. So, we’re branching out and opening things up to fans of independent cinema, from around the world, using the internet as a funding tool.”
With a talented cast assembled of local actors, as well as veterans from the Pittsburgh and Erie regions, cameras are scheduled to begin rolling in approximately about a month (somewhere in the first couple weeks of June) in the small town of Oil City, Pennsylvania. The fundraising effort for the film will continue through post-production.
“A lot of effort is going toward pre-production right now, especially on my part,” Croyle said. “It’s a small production crew, and everyone is making this film as volunteers. I’m finding that a lot of my time is being spent doing the pre-production work of like five or six people – location scouting, scheduling, casting, securing musicians for the soundtrack – it’s an extremely engulfing experience. I’m learning a lot in the the process by doing the majority of the work myself, but I’ll be glad once we start principal photography because I’ll really be able to just settle in and shoot and direct my actors.”
Croyle is no stranger to “doing it all”. His web series, “Monster”, just screened at the 2012 Los Angeles Web Series Festival last month. In the series, Croyle was in front of the camera, wrote, edited, and directed.
Croyle’s One Fish Films is the production company behind the film.
For more information about how you can get your name on the big screen, please visit: The Official Potential Inertia Production Web Site
Copyright (C) 2012 Tabitha Leroux. All Rights Reserved.
OCHS Grad Ready To Produce His First Feature Film
OCHS grad ready to produce his first feature film
By JEREMY JOHNSON Staff writer
Fresh from an awards ceremony in Los Angeles, Oil City High School and Clarion University graduate Matt Croyle is gearing up for filming and producing his first feature-length film, “Potential Inertia,” to be shot on location this summer in Venango County.
Croyle returned earlier this month from the Los Angeles Web Series Festival, where his Web series “Monster” won an award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in a Comedy, Sketch Comedy, Translated or Mockumentary series.
“Monster” (available for viewing at http://www.monster.onefishfilms.com/) is what Croyle considers to be standard movie fare — a semi-autobiographical story about growth and empowerment following a loss (or, in this case, a break-up). The series is described as a pseudo-fictional, documentary-style, Web series focusing on a man and his attempt to explore the monster in himself and those around him.
“It sounds cliche, but we write what we know,” Croyle said of his award-winning series. “In a nutshell, it’s about this guy who’s getting ready to make a feature movie … and he has a camera crew come in for pre-production. But instead of using them for what they’re there for, he instead uses the opportunity to say things to his ex that he should have said to her a long time before.”
Croyle said loss and separation — as it is for many writers — is an underlying theme in much of his work. “I am fascinated by loss because that’s the one thing I feel is truly universal to every person … on the planet,” he said. “We ultimately leave this world by ourselves, alone, and it’s that understanding that forces me to examine why we have a tendency to clash, to drive each other away, to abandon and forget, to fight with each other.” In that way, Croyle said he’s not just a filmmaker, but a documentarian of the human condition. “I write about (loss) to understand how I deal with it myself, and how others ultimately do so, as well,” he said. “I think we’re recording a sociological fingerprinting of the human condition at his moment in our history. And the more we understand ourselves, the closer and better we can be as a species.
“’Monster’ tries to stay true to that human condition we all share,” he added. “I think that by giving an audience member something that he or she can relate to, can gravitate toward, then you’re building a future audience in the process.”
But aside from storyline, Croyle said “Monster” is an important example of how movie-making — and for that matter, movie viewing — is changing in light of increased technological developments. “’Monster’ was a way to explore the realm of new media,” Croyle said. “The Internet has changed everything, and it’s still evolving. New entertainment forms, such as the Web series, have been birthed from its evolution, and ‘Monster’ was a way to experiment with that medium.”
Momentum rolled into “Inertia”
“Monster” is just another step in the progression from novice filmmaker to feature film director for Croyle, who just last year saw his one-act play, “Jerry’s Pub,” selected for the first-ever Canton One-Acts Festival in Michigan.
Croyle’s past filmmaking experiences will culminate this summer when he begins shooting his first feature-length film, “Potential Inertia,” a One Fish Films production. “(The movie) has been a project in the works for quite some time,” Croyle said. “It’s something I’ve always planned to do. It’s a personal story to me that I think everyone can gravitate to, that everyone will understand.”
Croyle said pre-production and casting is finished for “Potential Inertia,” and he expects filming to begin “in the next couple of months.” He said the film will feature a soundtrack furnished entirely by local musicians.
“We’ve assembled a great cast consisting of actors from the area, including Pittsburgh and Erie,” he said. “We’re aiming for the festival circuit. We want the movie to make the rounds.”
Croyle calls the film a “grassroots” effort, and said he is still trying to drum up funds for production costs. Anyone interested in learning more about the movie or how to contribute can visit http://www.potentialinertia.onefishfilms.com/ for more information.
History of a filmmaker
While Croyle has always had a keen interest in movies (he was inspired early on by the works of directors like George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg), it wasn’t until Croyle reached college at Clarion University that he started seeing filmmaking as a career opportunity.
“In high school, I had access to my parents’ VHS camcorder and my friends and I would shoot little skits and things like that just for fun,” Croyle said. “I think we just liked capturing images, or at least seeing ourselves on TV. “But it wasn’t until college that I really began to take an interest in filmmaking,” he added. “(Clarion University’s) English department offered a screenwriting course, a movie genre course, a movie studies course — things of that nature. In taking those courses, that was the first time I’d ever actually shot and edited anything semi-cohesive.”
Since his early days of filmmaking, Croyle said he has grown as a director from his experience working — mostly as an actor — with stars such as Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal and Seth Rogan and directors like Greg Mottola, Kevin Smith and Academy Award winner Edward Zwick. But what inspires Croyle most, he said, are the endless possibilities for telling a story that only film can provide. And as technological advances continue, so, too, does the medium of filmmaking expand, he said.
“With the rise of digital technology, the limits of what can be done on a movie screen are dissolving away,” Croyle said. “That’s extremely exciting to me because that doesn’t confine me as a writer at all, and telling stories that connect us is what I truly love to do. “It’s important to have something to say, and more important to share it,” he added.
Copyright (C) The Derrick. 2012.
“Monster” Gets A Nod In Cinematography At The 2012 Los Angeles Web Series Festival
(Los Angeles, CA) Matt Croyle’s web series, “Monster”, was awarded Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in a Comedy, Sketch Comedy, Translated, or Mockumentary Series at the 2012 Los Angeles Web Series Festival held earlier this month at the Radisson at LAX.
“Monster” screened twice during the festival, and Croyle also participated in a panel on Saturday entitled: “How We Made Our Webs Series Outside Of Hollywood”.
“Monster can be seen online at: monster.onefishfilms.com, or on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/onefishfilms.
