My name is Matt Coakley. I grew up in Central California as the fifth child out of eight in an Irish Catholic family. My mom homeschooled us all the way through high school.
The filmmaking bug first bit when I was eight years old and I saw a 5-minute action film that some friends of mine had made. I thought it was so cool that kids my age had made a movie. I wanted to do the same.
When I was eleven my family bought our first camcorder, and while technically it belonged to mom and dad, for all intents and purposes it was mine and my brother's. We used it to make a whole range of films, mostly in the genres of action, war, and comedy, with an occasional attempt at drama. In high school I started getting asked if I was going to pursue filmmaking as my career, which until that point hadn't occurred to me. I just knew I enjoyed it.
When I started at Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH, there wasn't any question as to what I was going to major in. I graduated in 2007 with a degree in Communications with a TV/Radio concentration. I spent that summer in Los Angeles working with Capistrano Productions on their television series, “The Soccer Academy” (www.SoccerAcademy.tv). Finding LA to be too busy for my tastes, I returned to Central California for a couple of months while doing some contract video editing work for Capistrano. In October of that year I moved to the DC area.
In April 2008 I purchased my own video production equipment and started moonlighting as a videographer. Within three weeks I had quit my job at Trader Joe's and I've been doing video production and filmmaking full-time ever since.
If you'd like to see some of the work I've done, check out my site www.bluemantlemedia.com or my YouTube page here.
This summer I'm very excited to be walking with Crossroads and documenting the journey. I'm sure it will prove to be very challenging yet very rewarding. Time-permitting, I will be using this site to keep people updated as we make our way across the United States. Feel free to check back here often to see where we're traveling and the work we're doing.