Matt Sobel
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Cinematographer Thomas Scott Stanton on Shooting Matt Sobel’s Sundance NEXT Picture, Take Me to the River
Director of photography Thomas Scott Stanton comes to Matt Sobel’s Sundance NEXT button-pusher Take Me to the River from a diverse background. Born in Maine, he spent much of his childhood in Guam and the South Pacific. In Washington D.C. he founded the Green Barrel skate shops, and he still directs skate videos in addition to acting and working as a photographer. When it comes to Sobel’s film, which tells the unsettling story of a gay teenager confronting family secrets at an annual reunion, Stanton connected with the first-time director over Skype and, using the RED Epic M, brought a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 26, 2015 -
Wroc and Roll: 5th American Film Festival, Poland
Recently announced as a European Capital of Culture for 2016, the picturesque western Polish city of Wroclaw (actually pronounced Vrotz-wav, thus rendering the title pun sadly unworkable) welcomed an extremely distinguished guest for its fifth annual American Film Festival: none other than flying POTUS Barack Obama. Well, it seemed so for a moment, but appearances can be deceptive. A closer look revealed the man to be Louis Ortiz, top Barack-alike and star of Ryan Murdock’s enjoyable Bronx Obama, which screened as part of the festival’s documentary slate. The personable Ortiz’s social ubiquity made for a pleasingly incongruous addition to a […]
by Ashley Clark on Oct 30, 2014 -
Matt Sobel
Currently in postproduction, Matt Sobel’s impressive debut feature, Take Me to the River, is poised to make waves on the festival circuit and beyond in 2015, but it’s had a circuitous path to the screen. Although he wanted to be a director since making short Spielberg-inspired films as a kid growing up in San Jose, California, Sobel enrolled not in film but in the fine arts program at the University of California-Los Angeles. He graduated with a sure sense of aesthetics and a short film he made on the side but not much knowledge of the industry. So, he hired […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 17, 2014
