Matthew Santo
Project Regina Spektor’s “Fidelity”
Director Marc Webb
How did you get interested in cinematography?
When I was a child one of my favorite pastimes was shooting home-movies with my father’s super-8mm and Betamax video camera. Throughout high school, I was fortunate enough to work as a locations assistant and then eventually transition in the camera department for out-of-town TV shows and features shooting their 2nd unit and FX units in New York. Fortunately for me, I was mentored early on by a DP named Michael Carmine, who eventually became one of my professors at NYU.
Why do you want to shoot commercials?
Great TV commercials have the potential to be their own sort of visual poems. You have a very limited amount of time to tell a story and not only hold someone’s attention, but also hopefully evoke a lasting emotion. I enjoy having the need to attend to that level of detail and precision. Obviously, it seems that the ad industry is being forced to evolve as the way that we watch television is changing. In many ways, this is forging an era of increasingly creative and visually imaginative advertising.
What was your most recent project?
A commercial for an SC Johnson air freshener called the “Glade LightShow.” We shot this spot in practical locations in Chicago with a Panasonic Varicam, Pro-35 adaptor and Zeiss Master Primes, all on a floating Steadicam to mimic and track the glowing stream of light and scent that will be added in post. The directing team was Jeremy Hollister and Judy Wellfare of Plus et Plus, and the agency is Draft FCB.
Regina Spektor’s “Fidelity”