We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matthew Oquendo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matthew below.
Hi Matthew, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I’ve always been a believer that the worst idea that has been completed triumphs over the greatest idea that never left the shower. That said, when you see work that has been done, it doesn’t matter if people perceive it to be great or they do not, but that it is *done* — That feeling of having completed something for me is so satisfying, that it makes me want to keep working and create.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I’m a filmmaker and show runner of the series METRO, an anthology of stories set across trains and buses in LA County. We finished our first season before 2020 and are currently prepping our next season.
Where did the idea come from?
When most people move to Los Angeles, the version of it in their mind is that it’s a place where movies are made and celebrities live with houses that overlook the beach. And while the media industry is LA’s biggest racehorse, it is not just a one-industry town. This is an artificial notion that has been propagated by over 100 years of media and pop culture.
Los Angeles, and I mean Los Angeles County, is in fact, comprised of 88 cities.
For example, Burbank, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Culver City are all actually cities independent of the city of Los Angeles but is constantly seen as representative of LA.
What about the other 82 cities I didn’t mention? My series METRO, explores the unseen cities of LA County through stories connected by and viewed from the lens of public transportation.
A bit on my background: I grew up in one of the “unseen” 82 cities and as an occupation, I currently work in the public center for a Los Angeles County governmental department. These experiences / years have inspired to create human works that are representative of the diverse geography and ethnic communities that live here.
How did we start our series?
Myself and a group of friends wrote some scripts, met actors, and started filming in 2017, ending in 2019 with a self-produced 8-episode season that resulted in screenings at AFI, UCLA, and film festival screenings in South Korea, Colombia, and the Philippines.
I can say it was a wonderful learning experience for myself in that I met so many creative people and overall, we learned so much about the process of filmmaking just by “learning by doing.”
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Three qualities / areas of knowledge:
1. Problems are often opportunities in disguise.
2. Putting yourself in uncomfortable positions will pay future dividends when you overcome them.
3. Keep your nose to the grindstone. You’re on your clock, not someone else’s.
Advice:
Your dream film (or dream project) doesn’t have to be “perfect” — it just has to be finished because a bad, but finished work is always better than the greatest *idea* that never left the shower.
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
We are in year 3 of the pandemic and while it has started to ease up, it has been an absolutely gauntlet for a show centered around public transportation.
Additionally, all that good juju / connections, and momentum we had from 2019’s finished season is all but lost.
Essentially the next season we are starting from scratch again but it’s exciting because I value the journey rather than the end point.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://matthewoquendo.com/la-metro-project
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/la_metro_project/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LAMetroProject
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-oquendo-61a66436
Image Credits
Temo Reyes @bagger5150 UCLA
