Matt McFarland was born in Omaha, Nebraska, graduating from Creighton Prep High School. He then attended Arizona State University where he was immersed in the Creative Writing program and began learning screenwriting, poetry, and fiction. He had the good fortune of learning screenwriting from Stephen Geller (Slaughter House Five adaptation). Matt McFarland then worked his way into the Independent Film community in the Phoenix area, using his Arri 16BL to produce his own short and feature films. This led him into a career as a local Cinematographer and eventually teaching film classes at Scottsdale Community College before moving to Los Angeles. Matt continued to shoot film in L.A. while beginning his work in Post-Production. After shooting two films in L.A., he transferred all of his efforts to Post-Production, specifically VFX, VFX film scanning, recording, and color-timing. His good fortune found him at the highly regarded, Pacific Ocean Post (P.O.P.) where he learned the art of digital color timing for film within a VFX pipeline. Matt was active with digital film as the advent of the Digital Intermediate emerged as a new workflow. Matt moved into management and VFX color-timing while managing the Film Department at R!OT Pictures and Ascent Media. It was as Digital Intermediates became more prevalent, Matt decided to open his own DI company, Cranium Filmworks, to address the need for DI's for the Independent Film market. Matt worked closely with Lasergraphics in their further development of their Film Recorders and subsequently gave input on their development of their world-class film scanners. After four years of Cranium Filmworks, where he was owner, operator, and colorist, he refocused his attention on being exclusively a Digital Intermediate Colorist and began this leg of his career at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, where for nine years he graded or collaborated on some of the industry's biggest titles. As technology trended toward HDR, Matt took his love for movies to Paramount Pictures where he focused on the remastering of Paramount's vast library of iconic titles into the HDR format, working with some of the most renowned directors and cinematographers in film.