Meet Matt Everitt | Filmmaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matt Everitt and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, how do you define success?
My idea of success used to be defined exclusively by external factors: how many likes did a post get, did a film I directed get in to a prestigious festival, etc. Spoiler alert: It was never enough. I kept moving the metric for success further and further away because I didn’t know how to find motivation that wasn’t rooted in the feeling that I wasn’t good enough.

I’ve done a lot of work (with my therapist and some incredible friends) to refine success by internal factors. Rather than metrics, success is a lot more about the questions I ask myself along the way. Am I proud of the work I’m making? Does it reveal something in the world that brings me peace? Am I better at my craft than I was yesterday?

Now my motivation comes out of a curiosity in response to those questions. I plan out what’s next based on where I want to grow and experience the joy of filmmaking instead of how the world responds to my efforts.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As a filmmaker I’m obsessed with merging high and low concepts of cinema. I’m as influenced by movies like Titanic as I am Iranian and Russian films from the 70s and 80s. My first short film Southampton has a climactic scene where Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” plays over a grieving family trying to find some peace over someones death without an ounce of irony. My most recent short Waffle Home is about how movies themselves are obsessed with damaged males characters at the expense of everyone around them. I’m always excited about re-contextualizing things an audience is familiar with and trying to make something new.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Few things have had an impact on me as an artist as reading through Sculpting in Time by Andrei Tarkovsky. I learned to view filmmaking more as an artistic endeavor than a technical one. There’s a lot of amazing advice about how to approach your work in a meaningful way (and a lot of horrible advice if you want to make the kind of movies that are making millions of dollars right now). Whenever I begin to think I’m crazy for trying to do the kind of work that brings me joy I pick this up and within a few pages find myself on stable footing again.

Website: https://www.thematteveritt.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thematteveritt/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheMattEveritt

Image Credits
First Image: Phillip Palacios Others: Tyler Appel