Matt Palmer has been in the film industry for the past twenty years as a writer, director, and producer working in drama and documentary. He also has twelve years experience in location management on Hollywood movies and television series. His newest project is a multi-format (feature, web doc, educational) looking at global energy called “Unintended Consequences”. His documentary experience runs the gamut stylistically including: 26 films for the NFB national web documentary “GDP”, the cinema vertite styled theatrical feature documentary “Letters From Litein” about elementary school children connecting with orphans in Africa, the two hour documentary on the Alberta oil sands “Pay Dirt”, the docudrama on the Frank Slide “On the Edge of Destruction”, and the documentary series “The Rig” broadcast on OLN. Matt directed on the Nickelodeon children’s series “Caitlin’s Way” in 1999 and 2000, and was 2nd Unit Director on the British feature film “The Claim”. His award winning HD short film “The Outlaws” was screened across North America. He has won awards for writing and directing over the years including the Canadian New Media award for Best Online Program, Gold Awards at Worldfest, and a Silver Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival. Matt holds a BA in Creative Writing, and a BFA in Film Production, both from Concordia University. In 2005, Matt graduated from the UCLA Professional Screenwriting Program.
February 26, 2013 By Matt Palmer Woody Allen once said, “Time is natures way of keeping everything from happening at once.” Wouldn’t it be amazing if we knew everything at the same time, that the answers to our biggest problems presented themselves in ways that made them seem, well, obvious. Are we in this situation [...]
February 20, 2012 By Matt Palmer I am linking two articles today, post State of the Union, that lay out solutions for dealing with the world’s growing energy challenges. Both writers, Bjorn Lomborg and Amory Lovins make good points and suggestions, and I am sure many readers will work to find flaws in both. Mr [...]
February 6, 2012 By Matt Palmer “The Art of System Thinking in Driving Sustainable Transformation” is a great article from The Guardian about how systems thinking can help in the design of sustainable systems. Change of the scale we need in how we harness, deliver, and access energy involves multiple stakeholders being at the table, [...]
by Matt Palmer January 31, 2013 The amount of fresh water used globally for energy production is going to double by 2035 according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). This news is a concern for all of us as we increasingly face a water-constrained future, but the question is what can we do [...]
January 21, 2012 By Matt Palmer Carmen Medina, IBM Think Forum The dictionary definition for “heretic” goes like this: a person holding opinions at odds with what is generally accepted. In today’s polarized world we may feel we are surrounded by heretics, people who hold beliefs fundamentally different from our own. They scare us, and [...]
January 16, 2013 By Matt Palmer A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres shows that climate impacts from soot or black carbon has twice the impact on climate warming than previously thought. A great deal of the black carbon being emitted in the developing world comes from diesel engines, plus some wood and some [...]
Time for discussion about new energy solutions By Matt Palmer This is my first post for the new year, after a bit of a break, and a nice holiday with family. My intention for this year, apart from completing financing for “Unintended Consequences” and getting the project into production, is to highlight new energy [...]
December 17, 2012 By Matt Palmer The events of December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut shook our world. Since then, many us have read numerous articles, opinion pieces, rants, and essays trying to make sense of something that makes no sense. Calls are ringing out for gun control, and hard look at how we deal [...]
December 13, 2012 By: Matt Palmer Monday marked the opening of the new west leg of the LRT in Calgary. The $1.4 billion dollar project took more than two years to build, and was the first extension of the LRT in 25 years. The goal obviously, is to get more cars off the road and [...]
December 6, 2012 By Matt Palmer Have we become desensitized to beautiful pictures of nature, or blasé about too many pictures of ecological devastation? It is an interesting question to consider because if that is true it has tremendous impact on visual storytellers like myself. How can we can continue to tell stories or make [...]
