Critically acclaimed cinematographer Matthew Irving has lensed an eclectic slate of 15 feature films to date, including Fox Searchlight’s hit romantic comedy Waitress, the teen comedy Waiting... , and the upcoming horror film THE ECHO.  He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, filmmaker Cindy Baer.   

I.C.  Why did you get into the entertainment industry?

M.I.  I’ve wanted to make movies ever since I saw “Close Encounters of the Third Kind ” in theaters when I was six years old.  I remember sitting there and being awed by the spectacle on the screen, with an awareness that it wasn’t real and that somebody had actually made this.  A few years later, when I was ten, “Raiders of the Lost Ark ” sealed the deal.  I wrote my first epic screenplay the next day, and my brother and I made several sci-fi adventures using our family’s Super-8 camera, adding laser beams to the developed film—frame by frame—using a red pen.  Unfortunately, since Super-8 frames are so tiny, our laser beams were ridiculously large.

I.C.  What was the first project you worked on?

M.I.  When I was at Stanford University for my undergraduate education, I was excited about the bay area’s great film resources, and jumped at the chance to take part in an internship program at Industrial Light And Magic (George Lucas’s famed special effects company).  Technically, I was accepted as an intern within the LucasArts marketing department, but by the second week, I had convinced my supervisor to send me over to the ILM art department.  Since I wasn’t getting paid, I made a decision to be proactive and make the internship into what I wanted it to be.

I was at ILM in the fall of 1991, which was a very interesting time in the evolution of visual effects.  They were still doing “Hook” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” using traditional models and optical effects (which was a thrill to see).  However, they were also preparing the first, basic 3-D computer-generated skeleton for the T-Rex, for what would become “Jurassic Park”.  As it turns out, I was witness to the end of one era and the beginning of the next.

I.C.  What were your goals when you started?

M.I.  When I first moved to Los Angeles after graduating Stanford, I’d been accepted into the grad film program at USC. At that time I still held onto my childhood goal of being a writer/director, although I’d been slowly falling love with cinematography.  Every short film I’d written and directed, I had also shot myself.  I was obsessed with achieving a professional look, and realized very quickly that smoothly executed, well-composed camera work was the key.  I started lighting intuitively to deliver a rich contrast-range within the frame: a “polished” look, I’d learned through experience, will almost always feature a healthy “gray scale” range from whitest white to blackest black.  I began to develop what would become my trademark style of slow, lyrical dolly moves so that the final film would cut smoothly together as a fluid “dance of images”.  Quickly, it became apparent that the things I enjoyed most in the filmmaking process were linked to the cinematography, and not to the directing.
Now, I’m a dedicated cinematographer, and my goals are to move “onward and upward” to bigger budgets and bigger challenges.

I.C.  What are the biggest mistakes a film school student can make while in school?

M.I.  Having too much of an ego.  This is the time to be helpful, collaborative, and even (gasp) humble.  The success of one of your fellow students does not diminish your success, and an open and collaborative attitude will inevitably lead to good habits later on.  I’m certain that part of the reason I’m hired on jobs is that people LIKE working with me; and I’m convinced that my “open” attitude as a film student, along with the supportive attitudes of my fellow students at USC, helped set the stage for who I am today.  Filmmaking is hard work, but it can still be FUN… and it’s not going to be fun if you’re always watching your back, or worried about the award that so-and-so’s film received.  Be gracious, be humble, be helpful… enjoy these crazy people you’re thrown in with.  You were all drawn together because of a common passion, and you may even run into a few of them again, down the road.

I.C.  Do you feel that you got the education you wanted from your time in school? Do you think you would have been better off going someplace else or simply just diving right into the industry?

M.I.  The graduate film program at USC was a very useful and formative experience for me.  I lucked out and happened to be enrolled with a particularly talented group of fellow students, who were all interested in helping each other out.  While we were aware of some of the older and younger groups at USC (and AFI and UCLA) getting torn apart by in-fighting and rivalries, my class somehow gelled together and collectively realized that one student’s success didn’t diminish anyone else’s.  Thus, it quickly became a free-flowing environment of teamwork and true friendship, where I’d be a grip for someone one weekend, a P.A. for someone else the next, and then a cinematographer the next.  My classmates included director Tommy O’Haver (Ella Enchanted ), producer Irene Turner (An American Crime), writer/exec. producer Cathy Yuspa (The King of Queens ), writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (Never Been Kissed), cinematographers Cort Fey (Lost ) and Byron Shah (An American Crime), and editor Jeff Betancourt (The Grudge)… among others.  Great people, all!
The classes themselves were educational, but they’re not really the point of film school.  The great thing about a film program like USC is the hands-on experience with equipment, and learning how to collaborate creatively with your fellow students.  By the second year of the program, I started to specialize in cinematography—which turned out to be a beneficial choice, because all of the want-to-be directors needed a DP!
  
I.C.  What advice would you give to a prospective student who is applying to film school?

M.I.  Be “entrepreneurial” about your time there, and make it your own.  If you can afford it, do it.  It’s a great place to hone your craft—particularly if you’re interested in a “marketable skill” such as cinematography, editing, or sound design.  There are so many projects being made all the time that need those kinds of specialists.  Even if you have the more popular goal of being a writer/director, it’s still a good move because you can come out with a reel or script that can show that you know how to tell a story.  
The biggest piece of advice I’d give to anyone in film school is to get yourself onto a professional, working film-set that is not in any way affiliated with your educational program.  This will expand your network of contacts, and—more importantly—show you how a set really works.  It’s an odd phenomenon, but I have yet to see a film-school set that’s got it entirely right.
During my last year-and-a-half at USC, I started doing camera assistant work on feature films outside of school, and it was a crucial part of my experience.  Although I’d built an impressive cinematography reel by shooting short projects, I didn’t assume it would immediately land me a gig as a feature DP.  But it did show that I knew my way around a camera, and was enough to land me my first paid gigs on camera crews.  By the time I finished the grad program at USC, my combined experience in school and out-of-school was good enough for me to land my first feature film gig as a DP.

I.C.  What did you do after film school?  Did you have trouble finding work when you first got out?

M.I.  I was fortunate enough to be working as the cinematographer on my first feature film only a month after finishing the program at USC!  About a year-and-a-half into the three-year MFA program, I met with a director named Tony Barbieri, who was putting together his debut feature.  He was looking for a cinematographer, and had found my name on a list of students enrolled in the “Advanced Cinematography Class” at USC.  Tony and I hit it off instantly; we saw eye-to-eye artistically, and we cracked each other up.  He was this wild, un-restrained artist who had never had any formal education, and I was this young obsessive-compulsive film student.  We were perfect for each other.
As I completed my time at USC and took outside jobs as a camera assistant, I also helped Tony develop the script and the film’s distinctive visual style.  As it turns out, our first feature “One”, premiered at Sundance 1998.  Critics and audiences embraced it, and the next issue of “Filmmaker Magazine” even counted me as one of their “25 New Faces of Independent Film”.  It was quite exciting.  I couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying experience as a first-time feature-film cinematographer.  Tony and I went on to shoot his second feature, “The Magic of Marciano” in 1998.

I.C.  What difficulties (if any) did you encounter in Hollywood?

M.I.  In this business, you’re completely responsible for your own forward momentum.  But as a creative person, I really don’t enjoy dealing with the business-side of my career. Although I had a reputable agent, and work coming in, I felt that I got stalled a little between 2000 and 2002.  Those three years were my doldrums, before my wife became my manager.  She had the business and networking skills that I lacked, and I was finally able to set aside my own ego and realize that she could help me in a very substantial way if I just stopped fighting all her good suggestions; I had to stop thinking I could figure it all out for myself.  Almost right away, my goals were more focused, my networking improved; better projects started materializing.  She’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and certainly one of the best things that ever happened to my career!

I.C.  What did you do for a day job while looking for showbiz work?

M.I.  I always tried to make sure that any rent-paying “day jobs” were directly related to the career I wanted to make for myself.  I also did a lot of work as a script reader for Spelling Entertainment.  My favorite anecdote from this time occurred when Spelling Entertainment actually paid me several hundred dollars to read Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” novel and offer suggestions about how it could be adapted into a teen drama like “Beverly Hills 90210”.  Only in Hollywood!

I.C.  What are the biggest mistakes a person can make when they first start working in the industry?

M.I.  It’s very important not to live beyond your means.  With all the palm trees and fancy cars everywhere, it’s easy to convince yourself that just by being here you’ve “made it”.  Too early in my career, I lived at an amazing apartment down in Hermosa Beach… and watched my credit card debt pile up.  My third feature, back in 1998 (“The Magic of Marciano”) was a $4.5 million movie that provided me with a large paycheck that was out of proportion to what I’d been earning previously.  I thought to myself, “This is what I can expect from now on.”  Turns out I didn’t see another paycheck like that for six more years!  It took me a long time, a solid string of work, and my wife’s financial wizardry to claw my way out of the debt and stress I’d created.

I.C.  Which was your favorite feature to D.P. and why?

M.I.  Tough question.  I’ve really lucked out and been given a broad range of genres to work on.  My resume includes art films, teen comedies, period dramas, and horror flicks.  I love so many of the films for so many different reasons, and each project offers its own challenges, frustrations, and amazing victories.  There are those certain shows where the entire crew seemed to gel together better than others—and looking back on those is like looking back on time spent at summer camp.  The “Waitress” experience was a particularly close family, as was “Groove”.  Those stand out in my mind, but they don’t make the others any less special.

I.C.  What was it like being the Director of Photography of “Waiting... ”?

M.I.  “Waiting... ” was fun.  It had such an amazing cast: Ryan Reynolds, Justin Long, Anna Faris, David Koechner…  When you have that much comedic talent assembled in one place, it’s going to be fun.  Plus, the director Rob McKittrick is a great guy, who had so much passion for the project.  That always makes for a good set; passion from the director is very contagious.  “Waiting... ” was a labor of love for him, and it had taken him seven years to bring it to fruition.
As a cinematographer, the biggest challenge of “Waiting... ” was that the entire thing takes place in one restaurant, on one day.  It was extremely important to shoot it in a way that we’d never get bored with it.  As with any project I undertake, a good deal of my prep time was spent developing the visual arc of the movie with the director.  In this case, we made sure that the visuals would have a definite progression from the early, calm, “un-crowded” hours; to fluid dolly moves as the customers start arriving; to more frenetic hand-held and Steadicam shots during the dinner rush; and then back to the calm after the restaurant empties out.  Even though it’s a commercial comedy, you can still infuse the visuals with an artistic arc.
My only frustration on “Waiting... ” came during post-production.  I had made distinct choices going into the project that were based on a photochemical finish (no digital manipulation of the image).  Months after we’d wrapped, I was told that the producers had found a “rock-bottom price” on a DI (digital intermediate), which means that the film would be scanned into a computer, and all the color correction would be done in the digital realm before a final scan-out to film for the theatrical release prints.  It’s a very standard procedure today, but at the time it was rare to have a smaller budget film go through the DI process.
I learned the hard way that “you get what you pay for”.  Our low-budget DI ended up with an extremely grainy scan; much more grainy than the film would have been had we gone the “regular” photochemical route.  To add to the agony, in the nine-months between color correction and theatrical release, two additional production company logos were added to the head of the film --incorrectly.  They had not been added to the original “digital master” as they should have been, and ended up creating two additional generations of quality loss.  As a result, the film prints that showed in 600 theaters across the country were a grainy, washed-out mess that hardly resembled the test print that I had approved.  At least the current blu-ray release of “Waiting... ” finally gets back to approximating the film I had shot.  

I.C.  Four of your films have been to Sundance.  What do you think of the Sundance experience?

M.I.  Sundance holds a particularly special place in my heart because that’s where my wife Cindy and I met and fell in love!
As for the festival itself, I always enjoy the experience of being there, although it’s definitely been changing over the years. When I first started going in 1998, it seemed more grass-roots; most films had actors you’d never seen before, and it was more about discovering unknown talent.  Now, it’s like a new studio; almost all the films have recognizable faces in them, and it’s all about the celebrity-spotting and the big stars.  It’s still fun, though… just different.
I do have to say: my favorite celebrity-spotting moment came back in ’99, when Cindy and I were having breakfast at the Yarrow Hotel.  We looked over and saw Roger Ebert and Bjork eating together at a small table.  How great is that?  What was THAT conversation like??

I.C.  What’s the biggest thing you depend on, on set?

M.I.  My crew.  I think it’s extremely important to keep up morale and to keep the crew invested in what’s going on.  You can never over-estimate what a happy and invested crew can add to a scene; they’ll often go the extra mile and add little flourishes that can take the project to the next level.  I love the people I work with, and I think one of the biggest “overlooked” jobs of the DP is to keep up the morale.  I try to be loose and easy-going on set, and I try to make sure that everybody there feels like part of the creative process.
I.C.  Did you ever come across a project or a person that looked promising, and then the whole thing blew up in your face?

M.I.  Once.  Early in my career, I said “yes” to a feature film that I didn’t really want to take.  I thought I should just “suck it up” and “be professional”.  It was the most miserable experience of my career.  On that one movie, the quality of my work suffered, my morale suffered… it was a low point in my life, all because I didn’t truly believe in the project and had only taken the job for a paycheck.  I’ve found that, for me, it’s okay for the paycheck to be part of the reason to take a job, but it cannot be the ONLY reason.  

I.C.  Were you ever put in a position where you were asked to compromise your moral integrity?  
M.I.  It’s not a black-and-white issue; there are many degrees of “moral gray” that I have to grapple with all the time.  I’ve certainly shot some films that I wouldn’t exactly recommend to my mother, but in those cases I had determined for myself that the positives outweighed the negatives.  I judge it on a project-by-project basis, and if I sign onto a project, I agree to take on everything that it is.  The big moral dilemmas come when I’m reading a new script, and may not yet know what the director intends to do with the material.  There have been cases when I’ve been offered projects that I just don’t want to be a part of, so I simply turn them down.
I.C.  What’s been the highest point of your career so far?

M.I.  I’d have to say 2007 as a whole.  The Sundance success of “Waitress” started the year strong.  As the year wore on, I landed two of the biggest budget films I’ve worked on so far: “The Pardon” and “The Echo”.  When I was in Shreveport working on the 1940’s period piece “The Pardon”, “Waitress” hit theaters, and reached #4 at the box office, behind only “Spidey 3”, “Pirates 3”, and “Shrek 3”!  I’ve been on a fortunate trend where each year keeps getting better, so I’m looking forward to seeing how 2008 turns out.

I.C.  Did you ever meet someone casually at a club that wound up leading to a great job, or a major step in your career?  

M.I.  I never met anyone casually at a club that led to a great job, but I did have a similar type of serendipitous encounter.  For a short time back in the beginning of 1998, I had actually decided to get out of the film industry (which is ludicrous, thinking back on it).  I was in an unhealthy relationship with a woman who didn’t value or understand my passion for filmmaking, and to make her happy I thought I’d try a different career.   Using my English and Communications degrees from Stanford, I landed a desk-job as a publications writer at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.  While I was working there, I became friends with a woman named Helen Torres, who knew about my “previous life” as a cinematographer.  She told me she had a writer/director friend who was putting together his first feature; could I read his script and give him some advice?  Turns out, her friend was Greg Harrison and the project was “Groove”.  Greg and I hit it off immediately, and he hired me to shoot his film once he had his financing in place.  By then, I had broken it off with the girlfriend, left the desk-job, and had even shot another feature.  “Groove” became a critical darling at Sundance 2000, where it was bought by Sony Pictures Classics and released theatrically.  It was my biggest success to that point, and ironically, it never would have happened for me if I hadn’t met Helen Torres at my United Way desk-job while I was trying to get OUT of the business.
 
I.C.  If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?

M.I.  I’d have driven my career a little harder from 2000 to 2002.  As I mentioned before, this time period was my “doldrums”, when I was shooting more PSAs than features. The PSAs paid well, so I wasn’t very proactive at doing the leg-work needed to get to the next step in my feature film career.  Sometimes it’s easy to get bogged down with what’s “comfortable”.  Now, I always do my homework regarding opportunities that are out there: who’s involved, what connections there are to past projects I’ve worked on, etc.  I also try to take as many meetings as I can.  You never know what a little “face time” today will lead to tomorrow.

I.C.  What motto do you try to live your life by?

M.I.  “Be someone you’ll be proud to have been.” I’d want to know at the end of my life that I’ve had the chance to inspire someone, not only with the legacy of filmed images I’ve left behind, but also because of the kind of person I was.