Matthew Celia: “Take the time to vet people you hire”

“Take the time to vet people you hire.” I’ve learned that you can only be as good as your team and finding that team is really important. Hiring people is hard, but finding the right people makes the project go so much smoother. It’s important to take the time to find good people and get recommendations from several people, not just one. We’ve been burned a few times with bad recommendations. Ultimately, I blame myself for not doing a good enough job vetting.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Matthew Celia the Managing Partner and Creative Director of Light Sail VR. He is a creative visionary with over a decade of experience spanning technology, film production and entrepreneurial endeavors. Celia fuses his knack for crafting authentic narratives and technical prowess across all sectors of VR production to create compelling cinematic storytelling. His work has amplified the impact of immersive content for such top brands as GoPro, the Soma Fashion Network, Dr. Phil and Google, Refinery29 among many others.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I was born in Pasadena, CA but moved to the east coast at the age of five. I spent a few years outside of NYC where I picked up several child acting gigs and earned enough money to buy my very first computer. I’ve always been a really technical person and I love the power that computers give to people who want to create art, whether it’s a game, a song, a photo or a movie. When I was in eighth grade, I modeled the Globe Theater in a 3D program called Bryce 3D and rendered out QTVR clips that I hooked up via hotspots to create a virtual tour — I guess that was my first immersive project! It took about 2.5 months to render, but my teacher was pretty lenient about me turning it in late. Theater and music have always been big parts of my life, and although most people in high school assumed I would pursue a career in acting, I decided to head to film school at Chapman…