Need 20 Helicopters On Set? A White Elephant? Call Matt D'Amato
The Film/Digital Arts & Design grad's work as a Visual Researcher at Smuggler is full of surprises
As a Visual Researcher and In-House Designer at Smuggler, a film and television production company with offices in New York, London, and Los Angeles, Matt D’Amato has been asked to do things he could never have imagined while a student in Full Sail’s Film and Digital Arts & Design programs. Since graduating with a double major, Matt has spent the last year and a half doing project research, writing script treatments, and collecting assets for the company’s various projects – responsibilities that have often ranged from the unexpected to the absurd.
“The visual researcher’s job is to be a jack of all trades,” Matt says. “We work on a number of different types of projects here, and so you have to be able to find every type of object, and handle any situation for a shoot, because you never know what can come up. I’ll get a call from a director and they’ll be working on a TV spot, and need me to find out things like how much it’ll cost to get 20 helicopters on set, or where to find a white elephant for a scene, or we’ll need to get some trained guinea pigs to do tricks. It can get really crazy sometimes, but that’s what I love.”
Smuggler has become a major player in the New York production scene since opening an office there in 2001, and the company attracts a number of high profile clients wanting to create edgy advertising blasts. Matt’s most important role comes at the beginning of a new project, when he’s responsible for putting together the script treatment – a portfolio of information and visual references that documents the look and feel of a film or video shoot. Some of Matt’s most recent credits include on-set work for Coke, Wal-Mart, and IKEA commercials, treatments for AT&T, Captain Morgan, LG, and Axe, as well as the Internet marketing campaign for Oscar-winning film Revolutionary Road, and viral videos for Net10 and Guitar Hero.
“The one I’m really proud of is “Bike Hero,” the YouTube video that was made for Guitar Hero: World Tour,” he says. “My boss came to me after it was posted and told me to get the buzz going, so I did whatever I could to get people talking about the video, going on blogs, making phone calls. Three days later me and my interns had gotten it a million hits on YouTube. We got it on different news stations, we got it on G4TV, and there were articles written up on it. It was really cool to know you contributed to something that took off that big just from word of mouth.”
As an artist himself, Matt is constantly inspired by the images he sees during the day, even when he’s off the clock. No matter what situation he’s in, his eyes are always absorbing new material to bring back to the office, some of which has even ended up on your TV set.
“Every day I do a lot of research and keep up to date on what’s new out there in the film, art, and design world, so in my head I can keep an encyclopedia of what I could pull from,” he says. “I also always have my phone with me so if I ever see anything – graffiti or wall art or billboards – I always take a picture of it, because you never know where you’ll pull research from. It’s always good to have everything documented like that for reference. And it’s so cool when I do a treatment and I see one of my ideas show up in the final commercial, whether it’s a color or an image that the director picked to be in there.”
Any kind of television exposure is a major accomplishment for a visual artist, but Matt has also been fortunate enough to contribute to the biggest night of the year for commercials – Super Bowl Sunday, where Smuggler handled spots for Audi, Bud Light Lime, and E*Trade. And while he didn’t quite comprehend the weight of that experience at the time, his friends and family soon gave him perspective on how far he’s come in only a short time since graduation.
“The weird thing is when friends come up and ask me what I’m working on, and I tell them something like the Super Bowl spots, which to me are normal, they’re just jobs,” he says. “But when they get real excited about them I realize it’s because so many people are seeing what I work on – that I’ve had a hand in this stuff that everybody in the country is watching. And it really puts my career in perspective, and right now I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
“The visual researcher’s job is to be a jack of all trades,” Matt says. “We work on a number of different types of projects here, and so you have to be able to find every type of object, and handle any situation for a shoot, because you never know what can come up. I’ll get a call from a director and they’ll be working on a TV spot, and need me to find out things like how much it’ll cost to get 20 helicopters on set, or where to find a white elephant for a scene, or we’ll need to get some trained guinea pigs to do tricks. It can get really crazy sometimes, but that’s what I love.”
Smuggler has become a major player in the New York production scene since opening an office there in 2001, and the company attracts a number of high profile clients wanting to create edgy advertising blasts. Matt’s most important role comes at the beginning of a new project, when he’s responsible for putting together the script treatment – a portfolio of information and visual references that documents the look and feel of a film or video shoot. Some of Matt’s most recent credits include on-set work for Coke, Wal-Mart, and IKEA commercials, treatments for AT&T, Captain Morgan, LG, and Axe, as well as the Internet marketing campaign for Oscar-winning film Revolutionary Road, and viral videos for Net10 and Guitar Hero.
“The one I’m really proud of is “Bike Hero,” the YouTube video that was made for Guitar Hero: World Tour,” he says. “My boss came to me after it was posted and told me to get the buzz going, so I did whatever I could to get people talking about the video, going on blogs, making phone calls. Three days later me and my interns had gotten it a million hits on YouTube. We got it on different news stations, we got it on G4TV, and there were articles written up on it. It was really cool to know you contributed to something that took off that big just from word of mouth.”
As an artist himself, Matt is constantly inspired by the images he sees during the day, even when he’s off the clock. No matter what situation he’s in, his eyes are always absorbing new material to bring back to the office, some of which has even ended up on your TV set.
“Every day I do a lot of research and keep up to date on what’s new out there in the film, art, and design world, so in my head I can keep an encyclopedia of what I could pull from,” he says. “I also always have my phone with me so if I ever see anything – graffiti or wall art or billboards – I always take a picture of it, because you never know where you’ll pull research from. It’s always good to have everything documented like that for reference. And it’s so cool when I do a treatment and I see one of my ideas show up in the final commercial, whether it’s a color or an image that the director picked to be in there.”
Any kind of television exposure is a major accomplishment for a visual artist, but Matt has also been fortunate enough to contribute to the biggest night of the year for commercials – Super Bowl Sunday, where Smuggler handled spots for Audi, Bud Light Lime, and E*Trade. And while he didn’t quite comprehend the weight of that experience at the time, his friends and family soon gave him perspective on how far he’s come in only a short time since graduation.
“The weird thing is when friends come up and ask me what I’m working on, and I tell them something like the Super Bowl spots, which to me are normal, they’re just jobs,” he says. “But when they get real excited about them I realize it’s because so many people are seeing what I work on – that I’ve had a hand in this stuff that everybody in the country is watching. And it really puts my career in perspective, and right now I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
