VFX artistry and Storytelling
Matthew Steele Finley was born in Bozeman, Montana where he started his professional animation career at 19. He has a unique skill-set because every skill was acquired to specifically be a storyteller via filmmaking. When he started out, everything seemed off limits without massive budgets unless he learned visual FX. Like many young directors in Hollywood today, he developed those skills alongside his filmmaking and learned how they complimented his vision within any story. He knows how visual fx shouldn't be used as much as how it can be and has a solid grasp on the theory of post production to use every tool in the right doses at the right time.
He is passionate about bringing that expertise to other directors supervising and instructing on VFX on set. He has spent his life pushing the limits of what's possible entirely through creative use of computer effects in hopes that budget will never be a hindrance from letting the creative spirit thrive and imagination be truly limitless.
Story
In 1993, Jurassic Park was released and my life changed forever. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to make movies. More than that, I wanted to make impossible things come to life on the screen to take storytelling in film into the places that were previously only reserved for imagination. I wanted to make the things my creative mind could visualize come into reality on the screen.
As a kid, I loved drawing. Dinosaurs attacking cities, Star Wars battle scenes, tornadoes crashing into civilization, the fire was vivid in my mind's eye and I wanted to get it out for others to see. I always longed, then, to take my drawings into the computer, because I was amazed at what you could do to it from there. My Dad had an early version of Corel Photopaint and I would make meticulous drawings in Microsoft Paintbrush and bring them over to Photopaint to see what filters and FX I could add to bring it closer to realism. This practice started to develop the foundations of what my whole life would be based on. Start with something good and take it to 3 levels higher to excellent.
Fast forward a few years. My cousin visits one summer and he brings me a copy of Photoshop 4.5. I'm in love. I had just bought my first digital video camera, and my own computer so I was already experimenting in filmmaking. My digital art explodes into new realms. I went from Paintbrush to Photoshop in 60 seconds and never looked back. It gave me the foundations of color matching different layers and blending many sources into one image. Of course, I sought to always achieve photo-realism because of my love for visual fx.
My passion grew and I added more software and skills to my repertoire to continue growing in many areas. I've since had the pleasure to work with amazing people all over the world on TV shows, feature films and documentaries. I'll still always be that kid whose eyes lit up when he saw dinosaurs come to life in Jurassic Park but I have become a serious filmmaker, taking storytelling to new levels as I draft new ways to accomplish the unbelievable. I want to stop at nothing to see the dreams of my seven year-old self come to fruition as I work to inspire my own kids to achieve bigger dreams.
Now, I am a well rounded VFX artist with years of experience in production as well as post-production. I am an on-set VFX Supervisor for film and television. For years, I served as a Senior Compositor who has always found efficiency in being a CG generalist to create all the content and elements to see what was in my head (or the client's needs) come to life on screen. I’ve become a swiss army knife of a CG artist able to adapt and learn any role to meet tight deadlines with limited resources and often alone. This does not mean I prefer independent work, I thrive in a team, but I have learned to take ownership of any task and bring a sharp creative eye into the problem solving necessary to see it done in the highest degree of quality.