I'm not going to lie and say "I always knew that I wanted to make films", because that's just not true. Sure, I remember trying to recreate scenes from Star Wars with my friends in the playground when I was 10 years old, but who didn't? Sure, I did some "Stagecoach" acting then, too, but everyone has a hobby!
Discovering online video in my tweens pushed me a little further down the rabbit hole, as did taking a Media Studies class in school. Similarly, I inherited a family love for theatre and literature, especially the works of Shakespeare. Acting cropped up again in the form of some youth theatre courses and school musical productions when I was in my teen years.
I think that, deep down, I knew that I wanted to be a filmmaker by the age of 16, when I was choosing my last subjects for school. Film, Media, Photography and... Physics. I was under some delusion that I would go to Oxford to study science.
I didn't truly admit my love for the medium until I was 18, however, and decided that I would go to study film at the University of Westminster in London.
Even then, working as an editor and (I'll be honest, a very sub-par) sound recordist, I was denying what I truly wanted: to craft my own pieces of work and express myself through film. Directors, in my mind, where these mythical creative beings who were infinitely better artists and more insightful people than I was, or ever could be.
I honed my skills at university primarily in post-production, whilst occasionally writing projects that I was fairly certain would never get made.
At the end of University, I went on to edit some other short projects, as well as do corporate videography work for various companies. Most of the editing work dried up as everyone I knew from university went on to other projects, however, and I was left creatively unfulfilled. Which brings us to the current stage of my life, finally realising that a director isn't a mythical title bestowed upon people by the gods.
A director is just someone who directs films.
I started putting some of my more ambitious scripts out to other local filmmaking crews, who started making them, and shorter scripts of mine I started directing myself.
A few years on from graduation now, I've won awards, my work has been seen and praised by filmmakers I respect, and I'm excited to keep on going.
So that's me. Matthew D Gilpin, Writer/Director.