Film Sensei: An Introduction

Posted by Mat on 30th, 2008

Mat Nastos, sex symbol and idol to millions With this new website, I wanted to take a few moments to introduce myself. My name is Mat Nastos and you might be aware of me from some of my other websites: www.theNiftyNerd.com, www.WatchMeLearnGuitar.com or www.NiftyComics.com. Or you might even know me from some of the comic books I’ve worked on: Elfquest, Thor, Spider-man, Superman (well, the Man of Steel title) or my self-published comic, the Cadre. What I really am at heart, aside from being a Sex Symbol and inspiration to millions, is a filmmaker.

I love everything about the filmmaking process — preproduction is fun, post production is a blast (who doesn’t love editing?) and production itself is one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had the pleasure to go through, especially on low, low budget films. Sure, there is a ton of pain, hard work and a lot of sleepless nights involved, but that just caramelizes the experience for me. It’s kind of like going away to camp or college where you’re thrown head-first into a group of people and you spend every waking moment with them: laughing, crying, arguing and bonding amidst the pain of early call times and 16 hour days. Once the pain of the actual production process has faded a bit, you’ll look back and realize you have some truly great memories…even on bad films. And, truth be told, a lot of times the finished piece won’t be as important to you as the memories of the process itself. It’s a bonus if you wind up with a great movie when you’re done, but you’ll often find the bad movies are even more fun.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t start out wanting to make movies. I went to comic book school and wanted to create comic books. As a poor art student who was eating bologna or ramen noodles far too frequently, I wound up assisting a local storyboard artist who was doing a lot of work for low budget horror films (Roger Corman, Full Moon, etc). Slowly over time I worked my way up from assisting on storyboards to being a fairly prolific storyboard artist myself — since the early 90s I’ve literally worked on hundreds of movies and TV episodes. Eventually I began writing and directing, mainly on low, low, low, low (you get the idea) horror movies, but also for places like Disney.

The funny this is, whenever I’d go to industry parties or events and was asked what I was looking to do in the future I would always say I wasn’t a big fan of film making and just wanted to do comics. People would always give me a bit of a half laugh because they weren’t sure if I was serious or not. But it was true, at the time I would have preferred to create comic books over doing films or television work. Needless to say, everyone who knew me thought I was a bit eccentric.

That all changed in 2001.

Well, not the part where people think I’m eccentric — I doubt that will ever change.

Bite Me Fanboy, the myth, the legend, the DVD In 2001 I co-wrote, directed, produced and even acted in a microbudget flick called “Bite Me, Fanboy.” Set mainly in a comic book shop, the film was shot on weekends over the course of about 6 weeks from the end of March through the beginning of May. Over the course of that shoot, and in spite of arguments, actors getting buzzcuts without telling us, a lot of nights shooting until 4am and a crazy art director, my opinions about filmmaking changed. I have to say I had one of the absolute best times of my life shooting that little $5000 movie.

I was hooked.

I was addicted.

I was in love.

Stinger - I wrote it, but don't blame the film on me! Since then I’ve worked on a bunch of other projects and while nothing has yet to match the sheer fun of “Bite Me, Fanboy,” my love for the process of filmmaking has grown exponentially. Which brings us back to this website and why I started it. This site is for those of you who are newer to filmmaking — there are already tons of sites out there for the experienced filmmaker or for those who are hardcore into the technology side of DV film-making. But there really isn’t much out there for someone who wants to get started. I’m hoping to demystify the process a bit and help those of you who want to give it a try figure out how to get started as a new filmmaker and put together your first movie.