This week, we are excited to feature filmmaker Matthew Aughtry. We recently featured Matt’s episode-by-episode reflection on Battlestar Galactica, but here is your chance to get acquinted with him in his element – as a filmmaker.
Below his profile, you’ll find embedded Hope for the Hopeless a short film he and his team created for Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. You’ll also find Scattered City, a short film fresh off the festival circuit which he has released to the public today.
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Matthew Aughtry
Writer/Director
Scattered City
Writer/Director
Hope for the Hopeless
1) How did you get involved in filmmaking and why?
I got involved in filmmaking thanks to Star Wars and my parents buying me a video camera. I was a drama geek all the way through high school until I got the chance to actually take a film class my senior year. That class was such an important part of my development as a filmmaker, I honestly don’t know where I’d be without it. Not only did I finally get to learn about all the practical aspects of making movies, I also met my best friend and frequent collaborator Nathan Willis in that class, and we’ve been making movies together ever since.
I studied Media Arts and Film Studies in college which made me rather unemployable for a while after I moved to Arkansas (which I did so I could be in the same city as the girl who later became my wife). I thought about continuing my education with an MFA in Screenwriting but after a year of waiting tables I finally landed a job as a video guy at a local church, so I opted for a more practical education in telling stories, taking notes, and meeting deadlines (and one where I could still be writing screenplays on the side, as I have for over two years now). Nathan came on about six months after me so it’s pretty much been the best job I could ever hope for in my 20s.
I ended up taking seminary classes online thanks to a tuition program through the church and stumbled upon Fuller and the Brehm Center. This August I’ll be moving to Pasadena to get my M.Div with an emphasis on Theology and the Arts, and I’m hoping filmmaking will continue to be an integral part of my life, even as I pursue a seminary degree.
2) What project(s) are you particularly excited about (current or past) and why?
I’m almost always working on some kind of screenplay, and currently, I’m in the middle of a fantasy/scifi pilot script set in 1940’s New Orleans with my writing partner Phillip Walker who lives in Los Angeles. Phil and I have been writing together for about 6 years now and we cowrote Scattered City, which Nathan and I directed. That’s the last narrative short that I made but I’m hoping to make one more before I move.
I just finished my first draft of a short film about Elijah and the widow of Zarephath from 1 Kings 17. It’s very influenced by Italian Neorealism, especially Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew. It’s going to be set in the Mississippi Delta (which also runs through parts of Arkansas) in the 1930s. We don’t have nearly as much money as we had on Scattered City, but I’m hoping that will help me focus on the performances and story instead of being overwhelmed with the size of the crew or if I’m going overbudget. I’m also excited about making something that is very specific in terms of setting, particularly something that shows off a part of the south that is often neglected.
I’m looking forward to my move to California but I know that part of me will really miss being able to just go out and tell southern stories, so I’m trying to take advantage of it while I’m still around.
3) How does your faith influence your filmmaking?
You know, I have no idea how much my faith has influenced my filmmaking. it’s just been a part of who I am for so long.
One way that I feel like it’s recently affected me is in my new appreciation of the Bible. I’m drawn to telling stories about real people, and real people are usually pretty messed up. I used to think the Bible was boring, because the people I heard talk about it did so in a way that presented it as this neat and tidy little book that told you stories about all of these nice people who loved God and lived happy, easy lives as a result. Only when I started to delve in myself did I find a world of people and stories that are anything but neat and tidy. Yet these people do encounter God. They talk to him, they wrestle with him, they run from him… basically everything that people still do when they encounter him. But it’s never simple and if you think you can tag a little moral at the end of all the stories in the Bible then I’d say you’re reading it wrong.
I think that’s where Christian filmmakers often stumble – they’re making movies that are more akin to the story of Noah’s Ark that we tell our five-year-olds instead of the version that’s actually in Genesis. The term “biblical” is only associated with huge, sprawling, epic films, but there are a lot of small stories in the Bible that are just as interesting as the exodus or the flood, and I think those stories are starting to influence me more as a filmmaker
Hope for the Hopeless
Scattered City