Joining Chris for this week’s podcast is Matteo Santoro, an energetic, enthusiastic, and versatile filmmaker who might just be revolutionizing the way movies are made. After graduating from art college, Matteo created opening titles and VFX for film including The Incredible Hulk, Aliens vs Predator - Requiem, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. At the same time, he created his own sci-fi IPs, including the short film Offline and the feature Higher Power.
Now, Matteo is working on SIFT, an ambitious sci-fi feature film constructed through NFTs, allowing fans to own parts of the movie and even shape its direction. Matteo discusses SIFT’s richly detailed world and how he built a practical robot to inhabit it. He also talks about The Sunflower Kid, a series of NFTs that aim to raise money for charity and promote world peace.
Links:
5:48 Matteo’s opening titles
9:36 Rendering “Offline”
14:47 “SIFT,” NFTs, and fans
19:53 The process of creating “SIFT”
22:45 Scavengers, souls, and sun-gods: The world of “SIFT”
28:18 Releasing concept art and the Tombstone project
31:11 Helping humanity with “The Sunflower Kid”
37:46 The Sunflower Kid’s backstory
41:41 Concerns about Crypto
45:52 Defying the studio system
50:09 Matteo’s superheroic inspiration
56:35 What’s next
Chris is a CG industry veteran and Director of Chaos Labs. He can also be heard regularly as the host of the CG Garage podcast which attracts 20,000 weekly listeners. With a background in both VFX and Design, Chris has worked for Gensler, Digital Domain, Imageworks and Method Studios. His credits include Maleficent, Oblivion and Tron: Legacy.