ITP Alumni Focus: Matthew Rader, 2012

Name: Matthew Rader
ITP Year: 2012
Hometown: Wellington, Ohio
Current Location: Brooklyn, NY

What was your favorite class while at ITP?

Future of the Infrastructure with Art Kleiner was my favorite because it was a nice non production class where we could talk about hypothetical crazy futurist scenarios and take those crazy things seriously. Computational Cameras was also fairly fun because the Kinect had just come out.

What are you working on now and where?

I’ve been working with my wife and partner Pamela Reed for over a decade. We’re the dynamic director and VFX duo Reed + Rader and we make videos and GIFs set in fantastical 3D worlds.

We just finished conceptualizing and directing all of the promo materials for the 2015 MTV VMAs with Miley Cyrus. It was a lot of fun because we got to make her ride a giant version of her cat Shanti and give her some dolphin boobs.

Earlier this year we directed the digital campaign for StellaSport with Adidas where we shot athletes with a 360° bullet-time camera array.

Right now we are busy with a bunch of other commercial projects but we are most excited about doing more motion capture, photogrammetry, 360 video, and continuing to push the Unreal Engine as a platform for film making.

What advice would you give a current ITPer?

Spend as much time as you can hanging out on the floor but don’t beat yourself up over it if you have a life outside of it. It helps if you can come into ITP with some direction. It’s easy to get distracted with all the crazy new opportunities surrounding you but always remember your focus.

Make friendships that will last a life time. Figure out how to pay back your student loans.

If you could learn a new “thing” (language, place, person) right now, what would it be?

How to program C++ like a boss.
Markerless Real-Time Motion Capture.
Photorealistic 16K Photogrammetry.
How to dunk a basketball.

Originally published at itpalumni.org.