MATT BARNES
in conversation with Lanie Edelson
Matt Barnes is a videographer, filmmaker, and fourth-year Computer Science student. He discusses his journey with videography and filmmaking, from taking videos of his friends, to going on tour with The Jack Wharff Band and making films for App State’s Film Club. Barnes is the social media manager of Film Club, and has been the cinematographer for many of their films, as well as having written, directed, edited, and acted in them. He shares his sources of inspiration for his work, favorite spots to film, and discusses his collaborative process with friends Deven Murphy and Adam Shelton.
This interview took place in The Peel Office on November 13th at 10:30 am.
LE: How did you start experimenting with cameras and videography?
MB: I was really young. My dad and my mom back a long time ago used to do photography. They had this tiny little digital camera that they would take pictures of my brother and me when we were younger. I started playing around with that camera, taking pictures, but mainly taking videos. I would record little Lego figures and set up storylines of my Legos, and I would do voiceovers for them, that's definitely how I got started with that. And then even more so when smartphones came out, I would take my dad's phone, and it had a built in editor so you can make cuts. That was really fun for me.
LE: Videography versus filmmaking, which came first for you? Wanting to do full films, or just filming things?
MB: I'd say videography came first. I would make small narrative films, but when I really got into videography—because that was just me kind of messing around—the narrative element wasn't a main focus of mine at all. When I really started getting an interest in videography was later on, probably eighth grade, and that's when I was just recording my friends and me hanging out. We'd go on trips or adventures, and I'd record it and put it together behind some music, and make an edit of our vacation and stuff like that. So I would say that's more videography because—I guess filmmaking doesn't always have to be narrative, but it was more so just capturing us having a good time than it was putting together a story.
LE: Did you really start to get into filmmaking when you joined Film Club here at App State?
MB: Pretty much. All throughout high school, I was mainly into music videos and like I said, these trips where I’d just document things. I'd played around with making a short film, but not with a ton of effort, and it was just me working on it. So when I joined Film Club, I saw that as an opportunity to explore this whole other side of videography, which is filmmaking.
LE: You've been a part of Film Club since your freshman year, correct? How did you find out about it, or come to join it?
MB: Yeah, I think I came to college with the idea that there was probably a film club, and probably the Club Expo helped. My roommate, Deven [Murphy], and I were both interested in making films, so we decided to join, and we've met several good friends through Film Club.
LE: What does being part of Film Club entail?
MB: We usually do semester-long films every semester. We have this thing called the “pitch party,” which is where everybody in the club submits an idea and presents it to the whole club and we then do rank choice voting on everybody's favorite ideas and we'll pick around seven films that we’ll then proceed with creating through the semester. Everyone gets to join the group of the film they're interested in, and then proceed to make that film throughout the semester. During the meetings, we usually do film related activities, trivia or writing exercises, stuff like that. And then we will have time for groups to talk about their films, and most of the filming is done outside of the club.
LE: What's the process like for making one of those semester long films?
MB: It always starts with the idea. It's what you want the film to look like, and what you want the film to feel like. So picking a genre is important; elements within that genre. And then also inspiration. It helps everybody that's a part of the process, if you have another film that you can reference like, ‘hey, I want this to feel similar to this, but look similar to that,’ so everyone can kind of get on the same page. Then you start writing and usually that happens with a writer's room. Everyone will get together, brainstorm ideas, and then put it on the paper, which can be pretty difficult. Everyone can have a good idea, but writing it down can be a harder process. After it's written—it depends on who is doing the cinematography—I like to plan out all the shots before we start filming. That way, on set, it's not a surprise and you don't waste time figuring out what you want to get. filming and editing usually will happen side by side because of the time constraints of the semester. So once you film a scene, you want to edit it, and then you'll go film another scene, and then you'll put it together, put the final touches on at the very end.
LE: Besides, cinematography, have you directed, or any of that kind of stuff?
MB: Yeah. I'd say cinematography and directing are kind of similar. They're not the exact same; I've certainly been a cinematographer and not the director. When you're behind the camera, you see a lot of what's happening with the actors and with what the scene looks like. As cinematographer, you get a lot more control with what the movie comes out to look like. If you're behind the camera and you don't like the way the scene looks, you'll make that adjustment. But other times you will like the way the scene looks and the director doesn't, so they'll make that adjustment.
LE: Have you acted in films?
MB: Yes. I have acted in a few of the films. Acting's fun. It's also pretty difficult, in my opinion. Some people have it, some people don't. You think you have exactly what you want the character to say and sound like and then as soon as the camera points you just forget everything. Some people are really good at it, though. Deven is a great actor and it just comes natural to him.
LE: Have you edited any of the films? Who edits the films?
MB: It's different for every film, but I did a lot of editing for a recent 48-hour film festival. Deven and I both edited. The first film I made in Film Club is called Garlic Knots and Gunshots: A Tale of Deliverance (2023), which I was director, cinematographer, and editor for. I did a lot of production for that film. Editing also can be a lot. That's why I like to say you edit while you're filming so that way you don't have an hour of footage that you have to sift through and put together at the end; you can take it in more manageable increments.
LE: I know the 48-hour film festival just happened, so walk me through what that's like.
MB: We get a bunch of groups that sign up, and then right at 8 p.m. on Friday night we reveal the theme of the festival. This theme is decided by somebody that is not participating in the festival. Once that theme's revealed, you have 48 hours to then write, film, edit, and submit your movie. So it's a really time restrictive event—the whole thing about it is what can you make in these 48 hours. Usually that first night, Friday night, we get together and we write the movie. And then Saturday, we wake up and start filming the whole thing. So ideally, Friday's writing, Saturday's filming, Sunday's editing. We've had times where filming rolls into Sunday just because we don't get everything done. And this is a problem with our group, but we always leave the editing to the last second. We submit with less than a minute left in the festival.
LE: For the [48-hour] film festival, do you have to be a part of Film Club to participate in it?
MB: No, the festival's open to anyone in the community, so you don't even have to be a student to be a part of the festival. We have alumni that participate and we have actors that are outside of school. We get someone's dad to be an actor. It's a community event. It's free to participate.
LE: Is there a winner of the festival? How does that judging process work?
MB: Yeah, usually we get three or four judges—these will be professors or alumni—and they'll watch the movies and rate them. They'll give points for each category; the categories are acting, cinematography, writing, originality, and I think there might be one other one. so they score based on those categories, and then they add up the points for a winner. And then the winner gets a prize, which this year was a little trophy with a clock in the middle.
LE: Has your group won before?
MB: No, we participated every year. Spring semester’s our semester. Most of us are graduating by then, so hopefully we'll take home the trophy.
LE: Is the festival a twice a year event?
MB: I think last semester, spring [2025], is when we started moving it to be twice a year. It used to be only a fall semester activity, but we really enjoyed the event; we know a lot of other people enjoy the event, so we decided to make it bi-yearly.
LE: Can you tell me about the film you just made for the festival?
MB: The theme of the festival was ‘unknowns,’ so we were trying to figure out which direction to go in with that, and we ended up with two roommates that lived together. One is a chemist that makes potions, and he leaves his potion in the fridge and it says ‘side effects unknown.’ The roommate is really thirsty, and he goes into the fridge and drinks the potion, and then the rest of the film is just a series of bizarre events happening to Deven as side effects from the potion. I played the chemist in this one, actually, and Deven played the roommate. And the chemist is trying to make potions to fix the side effects of that potion. It's a fun ride, for sure.
LE: You and Deven and Adam [Shelton] work together a lot on films. How does the collaboration process work between you guys?
MB: The three of us, we have worked on a lot of films together. Usually we're all throwing ideas out; the hardest part is deciding on which direction you're going to go in. We'll usually come up with ideas together. I'd say Deven and I are more into the writing, and Deven and Adam are more into the acting. Well, I'm okay with being in front of the camera. They're definitely better at it than I am, they like to act. And I'll sit behind the camera doing the cinematography, usually, because that's my favorite part.
LE: How do you know Deven and Adam?
MB: Deven and I met in, like, first grade. He grew up in the neighborhood adjacent to mine and so we went to school together. We had some of the same friends. And we were friends throughout middle school and high school. We became a lot closer in high school over the COVID era. And we were talking about where we were going to go to school, we both decided on App State, we like the mountains—so we became roommates. Freshman year, we roomed in the dorm together. We met Adam through a mutual friend, and Adam stuck around, and he was always hanging out with us. Adam became one of our good friends and we became kind of a trio. Deven and I were already part of Film Club and Adam wanted to get in on making movies too, so he joined and has been a part ever since. It’s definitely a good time. I think most people in the club would agree that— or anybody that's like made a movie with the club, at least I hope they would agree—that it's a pretty fun process. Film Club was pretty small when we joined, and I think we all had a pretty big part in building the club up to where it is now because Deven and I were both really interested in filmmaking—we put a lot of effort into it. Not to say the other films didn't have a lot of effort, but we took our time to make our movie stand out and to both look really good, but also sound good. And the writing—we spent time on it, we put a lot of effort into it, so I feel like we were just excited about it. And we were kind of motivated by the idea that there was an award show at the end; we wanted to win the awards. We still do the award show. That's a fun end of year, end of spring event.
LE: Have you won any awards?
MB: When we first joined the club with Garlic Knots and Gunshots, we won a lot of awards. I think Deven's movie Bucket List (2023) won awards too, which he directed and I was acting in.
LE: What's your favorite film that you've been a part of for Film Club?
MB: We did Dream Girl (2025) for spring’s 48-Hour Film Festival. And that was really fun, we got in the pool for that. We went into the SRC pool and I had a GoPro, and we were filming underwater. That was pretty fun. Deven's movie called Origami Club (2025); it was Deven's movie last semester. That one was fun to film as well. There were a lot of cool scenes that I got to execute. The only film I've really acted in, at least as a main character, was Bucket List. Going back and watching that is a nostalgic experience because I think we were freshmen when we made that. So I like that movie too. And then Garlic Knots and Gunshots—we had a lot of fun filming that. I know I just listed like four movies. I'm bad at deciding.
LE: Do you have an officer position in Film Club?
MB: I'm the social media manager for the club.
LE: What does that entail?
MB: It's updating Instagram, sending reminders. We have a TikTok, too. Sometimes I'll make edits of our movies for TikTok. On Instagram, it's a lot of posting about events. I made a flyer for the 48 hour film festival. I made a collage of our members and their Halloween costumes recently. It's updating the YouTube channel—I upload our movies on YouTube. It's promotion, mainly. Having a space where people can go and see what the club does; when anyone’s interested in joining, they can go look at some of the stuff we've made and see if that's a good fit for them. I make the attendance questions too as part of my duties. Very important.
LE: What kind of freelance things have you done unrelated to Film Club?
MB: I started in high school. Like I said earlier, I used to make videos on my phone a lot, and my best friend in high school was a musician. I made a music video for him on my phone. This was already in the midst of me making travel edits and stuff. But yeah, I'd really wanted to make a music video. I really liked music videos—any of my favorite songs, I would go watch the music video for, and I definitely really like that side of videography. So I made a music video for my friend, and it kind of kept going from there. He kept making more music, and I would make another music video for him. And then TikTok came around and we would make short form content promoting his music on TikTok, that was really fun. We spent a lot of time, a lot of effort on that. He had the music, but he let me take full creative control over the videos. We would have a lot of shots that I curated and really liked the look of, and we had that short form content. And then I came to college, and my sophomore year, somebody had seen my work on Instagram and they reached out to me. It was the manager of an artist named Zachy. He makes indie music. They were like, ‘Hey, we want to get some short form content like you were doing for Luther,’ who was the artist I worked with in high school. ‘We're going to get some short form content like that.’ And I was like, ‘Sure, yeah.’ And the dude came up to App State and we shot a bunch of content for him. That was a really fun and cool experience, and that was the first time I'd ever been paid for a videography gig. I was like, wow, I just made money off of this thing that I really enjoy doing. And that manager, the manager of Zachy, managed a few other artists, one of them was The Jack Wharff Band. I started shooting a lot of their content and their music just kept getting more popular, and they would do concerts and stuff, so I would go out to Richmond and video their concerts. Then eventually, they started going on tour and they invited me along; they opened for Sam Barber. I got to go on tour with them; I went to Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia. Adam and I actually went together. I shot a bunch of their content and that was such a fun experience, they're great guys. They're really fun to hang out with. It felt like, again, when I was in high school, just with my friends recording stuff. That was a really fun experience—traveling, going to concerts, Sam Barber was great. That was super cool.
LE: So what does the videography process for doing that look like?
MB: I try to get a lot of content, so that when I'm editing I have a lot to work with. Usually with concerts, they want both videos and pictures, so I'm taking pictures for a lot of it, and then I'll know what they've asked me to record for part of the song that they can put on social media. I'll take pictures up until that part, and then I'll switch to video, and then record that. Usually musicians like to get their deliverables back pretty quickly, so I'll try to go home and edit the photos at least, and send those right away. Then I'll go through the videos and pick the best sections and send them that content. Concerts are a lot more fast paced because you don't really get a second chance. You see a moment and you have to capture it. They're not going to go back and redo a song, you know? You only get one shot at it.
LE: Was this over the summer, or while you were in class during the semester?
MB: The tour was fall ‘24, so right when Hurricane Helene hit. I was planning on just missing class, but the hurricane came, which was unfortunate, but I was able to go to Mississippi and Tennessee.
LE: Would you want to do that again, or what are you interested in doing?
MB: It was definitely an amazing experience, and I still sometimes think back and can't believe that it happened. It was so cool, and I felt like a rockstar or something, but it was definitely tiring. So it's definitely something I would do again, 'cause it was such a valuable and unique experience, but it was certainly very tiring. Sometimes we'd leave the venue at midnight and then we'd have to drive, you know, pretty far to get to where the next hotel is. We wouldn't get back until really late. And then we'd have to get up the next morning and drive even further to get to the next venue, so you're constantly moving, you don't really get a break. I can't believe artists do that for, like, years. I was pretty thankful to lay back down in my bed once I finished it. But I would definitely do it again. It was such a good experience, but as a career, I don't think I really see myself doing that. I picture a quieter career. That being said, I'm getting my degree in computer science; I like programming. So hopefully I'll get a job in software engineering.
LE: Is filmmaking kind of the same—a hobby?
MB: It's interesting. I still do freelance work, usually for musicians, and that's fun. I like musicians that I know already. The most recent one I did was for this guy named Jessiēque, I've worked with him a lot before. He's someone that is really easy to go shoot with, he's open to a lot of ideas. He lets me have my vision with it. When you're working for somebody else, it becomes their work, not your work. You'll send them a draft and they'll say, ‘Hey, you know, I want to move in kind of a different direction from this’ and then you go, ‘Okay.’ Well, now I go back, fix it, change everything they want; it's not even what I set out to make anymore. It becomes work. It doesn't become fun. And that might be a mindset thing because for me, it's the most fun when there's pretty low stakes and I'm kind of doing it for myself. But then at the same time, I'll also make some of my best work when I am working for someone else. I look back and I go, ‘Wow, that was really cool.’ So it's a trade-off, whether for enjoyment or work.
LE: What's your favorite thing that you've been a part of, whether it's a film for a film club or doing the tour, or any of it?
MB: There's different aspects through all of it—film club, I'm with my close friends and we're just having a good time, making a film. I really cherish that part of the club. Going on tour was such a profound experience, it's something I know I'll never forget. That will definitely be long lasting for me, so I might say the tour just because it was artists that I was friends with, and then they're opening for Sam Barber who I listen to. Getting to meet him was cool, and listening to him perform every night was awesome, and then hanging out with the guys in the band was fun. I enjoyed a lot of the videos I got from that. So I'd say that was probably the most rewarding filmmaking experience I've had.
LE: What serves as your inspiration for what you do?
MB: In high school, my biggest inspiration was this guy named Cole Bennett. He runs a YouTube channel called “Lyrical Lemonade” where he makes music videos. I'd been a fan of his music videos for a long time, throughout middle school. I wanted to make videos like that. If you look at my early music videos, there's a lot of visual effects in them because I was inspired by him a lot. There's a lot of creative people on Instagram, so sometimes I'll just go on Instagram and I'll see a really cool shot, and then I'll be like, ‘Man, I’ve got to go make something now.’ There's a lot of different outlets, inspiration strikes at random moments, really. There's this guy named Vuhlandes on YouTube and he's a cinematographer and his artwork is so beautiful. And so a lot of times when I'm coming up with ideas for what I want shots to look like, I'll just pull up his YouTube videos and be like, this is like the vibe I'm going for with it.
LE: Do you have favorite spots to film?
MB: Blue Ridge Parkway. I love shooting at the Moses Cone [Park]. It's along the Blue Ridge Parkway, there's Moses Cone, and by it there's this big hill that—an open field and there's a tree on it. I like going over there and shooting. I like going on hikes. I go to Rough Ridge a lot, also along the parkway, and I'll shoot nature content there. We film a lot of our movies in the apartment, just because it's accessible.
LE: Do you have favorite movies that serve as inspiration for what you do? What are your favorite movies in general?
MB: Big fan of Hereditary as a horror movie. And while I only made one horror film, it wasn't similar to Hereditary at all. When we make films, it's pretty original. Like this last one, you know, I don't think I've seen anything like that.
LE: Is there anything that you want to discuss that I haven’t mentioned?
MB: I'm gonna touch on what it's like to have other people view your art. I get really nervous when people look at something I made. And I think it's because you know, producing art is—you're producing an extension of yourself and your emotions. And so when someone watches it, they're in a position to critique you, basically. Putting a movie on the screen for everyone to watch is kind of, you know, I get a little nervous before that. And just in general, anytime you put something out there, you're putting a part of yourself out there and that can be really hard because it is an outlet of creative expression. You're being very vulnerable when you post your art. whether it be on Instagram or just for the club to see or or even sending it to a client. It's like, this is something that you've taken creative liberties on, and I hope you like it. you know? it's definitely another aspect of art that is, I don't know, maybe not talked about as much.