Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Hunter
Hi Matthew, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
MMH Productions started as a “company name” really back in December 2016, we shot the first official MMH short film that month, “Apples” but didn’t have the MMH Production logo or intro created, it was just the film. Before that, my first ever movie created was back in 2013, when I was 13. I believe it was my 7th grade English teacher that told us to write a short story and we would get extra credit if we actually made it, I thank her for starting me on this journey fully. I created a short film called, “Puppets of Darkness” which is a Puppet Master Fan Film but being 13 years old, I wouldn’t say it’s anything great. We used my mom’s camcorder, I used my cousins and mom as actors, had ketchup for blood and had very visible dental floss to make one of the puppets move.
After this project, I went to Cuyahoga Valley Career Center (CVCC) for a summer program with Bernie VanTilburg (VT) who is one of the greatest people I thank in all my interviews, more on him after this part. For the summer program we were in groups of 5-6 and could only make 4 of our movies out of the 6 of us. After Puppets of Darkness, I started writing stories on my great-grandparents typewriter which I still have and occasionally will still bring out, the noise it makes just make me happy. I wrote a select few shorts, “Middle School Werewolf”, “Trees”, “The Typewriter”, “Killer Toys” and “Cricket Boy”. I decided it would be great to bring live crickets in a cage to the summer program and luckily because I did, that was the next project we made, as VT said “Well you brought some props I see, guess we’ll be doing yours”. and little did they know I had a whole duffle bag with me of extra props also haha.
We create Cricket Boy and I find out my Sophomore Year of High School, our school is one of the schools that get to go to CVCC for my Junior and Senior year of high school. I hated real school, my senior year, I had maybe 2 classes then hung out with my one English teacher, Matthew Chamberlin as a teacher assistant for 2 periods, but even cooler, he did 90% of the music for my first feature film. But luckily I was a few selected since they only picked 1-3 maybe of each school and I was a lucky one, thank goodness since without CVCC, I would never of made movies fully.
Through CVCC and VT, I learned so much in those two years from hands on experience and will thank him still in interviews since he believed in me from the start, I always did movies outside of class. Summer of 2017, Junior year, we shot my first feature film (I was 17). And our film, “Darkside Stories” was an anthology film of three stories, “Silver Bullets” which is the new version of that “Middle School Werewolf”, “Balloons” and “Late Fee”. We shot a werewolf story, a nightmare I had about killer balloons and shot on Family Video for “Late Fee” before the video stores went away. I figured out how to submit films myself on FilmFreeway and submitted “Apples” and “Darkside Stories” and “Darkside Stories” became an award winning film and I was an award winning filmmaker at 17 years old.
When senior year came around, some students from CVCC, alongside few cast from my last two projects, and we came up with the “Guerrilla Filmmakers Group”. Where we shot a different short film every single weekend or every other weekend which is how MMH now has over 250 films created since 2017. We just did it and never slowed down. It made us happy and we had a blast. Having that while at CVCC senior year and soon larger projects came through. My biggest film during high school era was “Nightmares Unleashed” which eventually became a winner for best film, 7 weeks in a row and won for best original story and luckily we have recreated it as a feature film that is coming out this summer. When at CVCC that senior year, one thing we had to do was learn animation, luckily I did learn some in Adobe After Effects but when we did full out cartoon animation, my main concern was Nightmares Unleashed. VT saw me always editing and working on it in class while we were supposed to do English or other projects, and he never got too mad or anything since I was at least doing what I loved and did a lot outside of class and I even used it as my final project at CVCC.
The Guerrilla Filmmaker Group would run and gun on random locations from a bowling alley, to a real alley, hotels, motels, Marc’s, Walmart, etc and only had the police nearly called on us once in 2018 when we started out so we got better and sneakier and we stayed strong till 2020 where most everyone went their own way but we created a whole lot of arsenal and luckily I still keep in contact with two of them and one of them, I’m the godfather to his child which now she is 3 years turning 4 and is into making movies so this summer, she’ll play with my camcorder and just go crazy. But the guerrilla filmmakers had a great run from 2018-2020 and we did so many project and won lots of awards, we had a lot of people in most the films, had others join and some left, some stayed for one film only and now from 2021-2025 I have a selected group of friends again I can call upon to appear in my movies and the crew has gotten better, the cast is great and everyone has a great time on set.
The years of 2019-2022 I was attending college at Cleveland State University, again like high school, the normal classes were a pain and boring and a waste of time, I only wanted to make movies and create horror, now that didn’t really happen at CSU for film first year or two since we had a class to watch a movie and talk about it, but I wanna do hands on learning and have a choice of what to watch since a lot of older horror films are really influential in the world of film, but 95% of what we watched was just not for me. I never cared for Charlie Chaplin and most silent projects, I slept a lot in class and really was still just making my own movies outside of college and even brought my friends who didn’t go to CSU and we shot movies in the classrooms without permission since we loved doing run n gun shooting so we had access to classrooms and the whole area and didn’t need permission so we did a lot of that while I was at school.
Now I had some good grades but some weren’t that grand but a lot of the non film classes, weren’t needed to me, “grades don’t determine intelligence, they determine obedience”. Film classes were always A’s and B’s so that’s really all that mattered and I still graduated with a diploma so, works for me haha. The last year of college was the best where we shot movies and I learned something brand new with making an interactive film, and doing more with green screen but even when the professor told us to make a certain project, we were always making new things at MMH so we just started using what we made for fun and things, and increase them up a notch for the film class check marks. We never did call sheets and call logs but would write them for that class project. We always shot at the film studio house so no need to find locations since we mostly changed the house up and used people we knew. The last two years of CSU were really the best times. Mainly the last time there. Big thanks to Rich nova Milne, Maria Gigante and Cigdem Slankard.
After graduation, I still apply to every kind of film job under the sun from editing to production crew. Trying to find a way to make it a stable living while I still create and make movies with MMH Productions. We hit over 250 movies, I was awarded best filmmaker of 2023 in Scene Magazine for Cleveland, I’ve worked with Full Moon and Charles Band, I have movies on streaming services and have worked with Lloyd Kaufman and Troma Entertainment and have had the man himself in multiple MMH projects and keep close to him. Two of my big goals was to work with two creators and company’s that inspired me to make movies which is why we also make horror movies with blood, gore, practical effects, puppets, toys, and so much more!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Nothing is ever a smooth road in life. We have faced so many struggles throughout MMH Productions from small things like the cast that got selected but then never showed up having it where I need to re-write scenes on the spot and the script and luckily the cast we had were troopers and killed it. Outside the horror realm of MMH Productions and Bloody Horror with an 80’s Twist, I took a different turn in 2020 and started a children’s education style show like a Reading Rainbow and sesame street since I really enjoy watching horror films and cartoons and children’s entertainment.
When I started the children’s show on YouTube “Matthew and Ophelia’s Wonderful World of Fun”, we had many people comment and react before even watching an episode that we are bad and trying to turn their children into liking horror movies, when in reality if they watched the show, we never did. We had moments like, Dealing with the Death of a Pet, Family member or would it do something not serious like learn about crickets and we did an episode on saying thank you, all about caring, how some people may have two dads or moms, dealing with divorce and many other topics and we also did an arts and craft project and sometimes did a letter of the day. We then started a second show, called “Edgar and Vespera’s Spooky Storytime” which was a little bit for older kids where we did little spookier books and then talked about the author and traveling. We didn’t release many but still have the footage and this past year we started a third show, Cowboy Jim and Benny’s Wild West Show”.
The funny part about people saying we are trying to turn their kids is a lot of the voices of the puppets on the show and guests were child actors who also appeared in our horror films. Creators can do more then one thing. Luckily for us, MMH has been talked about as a great studio that works with young actors and we’ve had actors start with us at the age of 4 and up. A lot of first time starters that go on to bigger stuff also.
For the horror side, it’s always creating things to shock people and make them remember something about your movies or company, we have a lot of young actors on sets, we have a Krampus series, we had a children’s show, shocking people is fun and easy when I’ve killed some of the young actors and most creators don’t kill the children or dogs/pets and we do both on shoots.
I don’t have the greatest sound equipment, or camera equipment, but we have the heart and stories to make up for that and now we have even more resources and friends on set to make even higher quality films while still making movies on a VHS camcorder and edited on a VCR, and editing on a VCR will always be a challenge haha.
Aside from making movies, I also do my own distribution by getting the films on streaming, and I make all the DVD’s from scratch at home I take to events and conventions traveling around OH and surrounds states selling movies and merch. Being able to say I create the movies from the script to the DVD, is amazing as a creator and having full creative control.
Sadly the biggest issues we had was last May (2024) our whole YouTube channel catalog from 2013 was all terminated and deleted. We lost all 400 videos and all the views and subscribers and sadly haven’t been able to get the traction back again. We are slowly reuploading content when we can and trying to rebrand again. The channel was taken down on YouTube for nudity when we had none shown on the channel. We tried fighting it, but never got a real person to view the content and see that we never had any kind of nudity shown in the movies on YouTube. But we lost the battle and thousands of subscribers and are back to square one.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Our motto is bloody horror with an 80’s twist and we uphold this as much as possible. If it doesn’t have an 80’s feel, we try to make it bloodier to make up for it.
We have many awards for best makeup, best gore, best kill and production design. I love production design and making sets looks amazing, I also know the shoot was bloody if my hands are stained at the end of the night. We love doing practical effects over VFX any day of the week. If we can make it happen in person, we will.
We do shoot on canon, blackmagic and we shoot a lot on a 90s VHS camcorder that does take mini tapes that we then have to put on a VCR and I’ll do some editing then we need to transfer to DVD and then transfer DVD to digital for me to edit more on premiere pro or davinci resolve.
We have over 250 films so that means we have a lot of monster and creatures and we specialize in bringing things to life. It could be puppets, a doll, clowns, a box an elliptical, washing machine, cars, even an Air Fryer. We can make things have life to them and most likely they will start talking and killing people.
We also enjoy having anyone on set, sometimes it’s their first ever movie and we welcome that. We’ll write you a role if you want to be in a movie. We’ve also had a actors with physical and mental disabilities on cast and crew so everyone can have an IMDb credit and say, “Hey, I was in a movie” or “I helped on that movie”. It works great if they want to start and get a resume started. We always have a fun and relaxed set but always get our work done.
We also have a lot of younger actors on set from age 4 and up. Some are now even wanting to make their own short film and we welcome them to do it with MMH and help them get what they need and will film their idea and help with cast and crew to make their film great! They are the future of film and if they go on a film set and have a bad time, they won’t want to do it again, we have been grateful that parents come up to us saying how well we worked with them and how they can’t wait to come back. That’s what we strive for.
We’ve had over 200 actors on the movies so we are open to new faces getting their foot in the door, and I have even made a public post if anyone wants to appear in a movie, I will write them into the script so they can have something to show after the fact. Everyone deserves a chance to be in a movie, as long as they are kind, caring, and at least show up to the film set haha.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
During the Covid-19 time. We still did movies. I think it was a week before or after the restraining about not being around many people, we shot a zombie film with 20 actors all in a small house and then outside where they fake attack and bite people and for us, nobody got covid after.
We never slowed down during covid, we made sure to keep filming and we did just that. For 7 weeks however we did this idea to have a lockdown 7. I made a new movie every week for 7 weeks and had people send in VO or remote roles and we made sure to film, edit and release a new film ever week. However we still all met up and filmed movies. We didn’t want one order and someone to tell us what we couldn’t and could do, so we kept doing movies.
Some people were mad at us during the time, but we kept saying to each other “none of us are getting covid” so we must be doing something good. Even a bit after when some filmmakers were making people be vaccinated before coming back to film sets, we had actors that were both vaccinated and not vaccinated in the same movie and scenes. People got mad at us, but at least we kept making art in a troubling time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://matthew5191.wixsite.com/mmhproductions
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mmh_productions/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mmhproductions524
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-mark-hunter-b0b992154/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mmhproductions2/videos
- Other: https://imdb.com/name/nm8707194/?ref_=tt_ov_dr_1
