‘Growing Up Guide Pup’ is a webisode series focusing on raising awareness of the service dogs and its growing benefits for their community. We have reached out to Matthew Thomas Chapman, who combined his passion for dogs and filmmaking to interview him and hear more about his wonderful journey creating this series.
UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Where do you find people within the service dog community to be a part of your webisodes?
Matthew Thomas Chapman (MC): When we first started we built a big fan base on Youtube while we were volunteering with the Mid-Peninsula Puppy Guides. A volunteer group that works with Guide Dogs for the Blind. This was February of 2010. The momentum carried us for a few years into 2013 where we moved a large amount of our efforts to Facebook and became a large Service Dog Blog aggregator from many service dog users across the country. Those efforts built a lot of service dog friends. We then continued our web series 2015 through 2017 and worked with lots of people in the community for that. I started a 501(c)3 in 2015 and became a charity which helped Amie and I to build relationships with even more service dog people and organizations all over the United States. I also served as a board member for Mobility Service Dog West Coast Project and Brigadoon Service Dogs in the last four years which brought more relationships into my sphere. All of these efforts have given me a large reach into the service dog community for recruitment into our webisodes and more importantly the mission to create public education initiatives. All our webisodes can be found at https://growingupguidepup.org/series/. All our blogs can be found at https://growingupguidepup.org/blog/. People can also donate on the GUGP homepage via Benevity, Paypal Giving Fund, or we can take Bitcoin at https://growingupguidepup.org/ as well.
(UM): Do you sometimes find it a challenge when filming with a certain dog?
(MC): Yes. Just like people, some dogs are easier to work with than others. Some breeds are easier than others. Older dogs are easier than younger dogs. Well trained dogs are easier than dogs that have no training. One of my secrets to filming dogs is to give them a positive experience and get them accustomed to the sights, smells, body language, and equipment associated with filming. We do it on a regular basis, and make it part of everyday life when we are in production. That is the way to make incredible programming and to have fun at the same time. We don’t put pressure on the dogs which is important for non-fiction filmmaking. Fictional production is ten times as hard with dogs but i enjoy doing that too.
(UM): How long does it take on average to film a webisode?
(MC): It depends. I’ve created webisodes in many different ways in the last ten years. In the first and second season I would acquire all the footage I needed for a webisode in 4 to 12 hours. In the third season I changed it up and it took as long as a week to acquire all the raw footage for the longer form episodes. The GUGP 2.0 webisodes for season three at times were shot in as little as 2 hours so it depends on the type of webisodes i am looking to create. Generally I go for a ratio of 5:1. If I want a 5 minute webisode I should have at least 25 minutes of raw footage but the format depends on how long it takes to film.
(UM): Are there other filmmaking projects you do while working on this series?
(MC): Not yet, I have dedicated myself to the mission of GUGP since 2014, however I am beginning the process of looking to fulfill my own desires now that GUGP is getting closer to where I want it to be. Hopefully this will enable me to get back to work with other filmmaking projects and we can see GUGP flap its wings at the same time.
(UM): When did you decide to become a filmmaker?
(MC): Although I have been making videos since I was a kid, I decided to be a filmmaker in 2002. I went back to school and attended the Community College of San Mateo. I had a Middle Eastern Film class where I took the opportunity to show some films for the first time to someone other than family and friends. I showed my teacher a few of my early films. He said that they were good and I should keep going, so I did. When I sold my first house, I took out $30,000 out of the profits and bought equipment, started Chapman Digital Motion Pictures, and started producing wedding videos, music videos, dance recitals and other miscellaneous things. I got my first film drama entitled In Case of Emergency into the Film Festival Circuit in 2006 and it won a special mention award while premiering at the Twin Rivers Film Festival in Asheville, North Carolina.
(UM): Have you made submissions in film festivals to get the word out?
(MC): Yes! I have submitted to 140 festivals on FilmFreeway which have rendered 69 selections, 30 winners, 1 nominee, 7 finalist nominations and 18 more submissions still pending. This has been my main strategy to get the word out for a the last few years. I think it has been smart, affordable and enabled us to go International to raise awareness as our mission goal requires.
(UM): What is your relationship with service dogs since making the web series?
(MC): I think our relationship with the service dog organizations and users is strong. We have lots of connections to service dogs themselves too. We have lots of friends who are service dog users. People who live with all kinds of disabilities are in our life. We have produced two litters of puppies in the last few years and donated all the pups to help people with disabilities. We currently have one pup in our program named Ivy. She is training to be a service dog and we also have her on breeder watch for the future. A lady I call my Godmother, is a guide dog user, and is featured in the Emotion Code webisode. Her name is Carolyn Wing Greenlee and she is amazing. I think we have become respected and known in the service dog community as people who tell the truth and really give people a view inside the culture of service dogs. For the good, the bad, and the ugly too.
(UM): What else do you do for the service dog community outside of making films?
(MC): We helped launch the Mobility Service Dogs West Coast Project in Pasadena and they are still growing. I served on the board with Brigadoon Service Dogs in Bellingham, Washington for three years; they are doing pretty good now. The trauma of the founder losing her husband was rough, but Denise has turned a corner and they are helping lots of veterans with PTSD on the West Coast now. Our last litter of pups were donated to Cascade Service Dogs, Phoenix Assistance Dogs, and Custom Canines Service Dog Academy. So there is a synergy with the filmmaking and operational program plans outside of filming for Growing Up Guide Pup.
(UM): What kind of services do guide dogs provide for those in need?
(MC): Well guide dogs are technically a type of service dog so let me answer it that way to encompass the entire culture. Service dogs tasks include catch and break a falling handler, counterbalance for walking (balance/walking harness), retrieve dropped items such as keys, retrieve your phone or any items needed to make life easier, help with transitioning from sitting to standing, from bed to wheelchair, etc…carry items in a specialty harness backpack, open doors in the home and in public, press buttons for elevators and doors, grocery shop (off shelves or fruit stand into the bag, etc.), pull the door open and remove clothes from the dryer, support for standing to floor and floor to standing, alert a diabetic before blood sugar levels become life-threatening, identity and alert handler to impending seizure event, nudge and alert hearing impaired individuals to doorbells, emergency alarms, and telephone calls, and be the eyes to those suffering from vision loss as guide dogs which you mentioned in the question.
(UM): Will there be future seasons to continue the web series?
(MC): Yes. There are five operational programs we have planned in our long term scope and the web series will be part of it. All kinds of cutting edge things could be done with our web series programming as we serve the community at the same time.
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