Matthew Vigil’s opening sentence is a cliché, but he insisted: Matt is a Swiss Army Knife whose only request is that you bring him along on the adventure. He learned how to edit at 14 for fun, on Avid, on a computer that had 6GBs of hard drive space. That was the year The Matrix came out, and his family did not own a home computer or a cellphone. When they finally did get a computer, Matt created an AOL screen name that his older self is still too embarrassed to share with us. 

At 18, he took his Avid knowledge and started working on documentaries for PBS and IFC. “Editing is great!” an enthusiastic Matt once said, but his true passion is working in the field and solving all the many production puzzles that always arise. At 21, he was hired onto a million-dollar feature film as a cinematographer and producer. Afterwards, Matt gasped, “I think I aged 9 years during that 5 months of production,” which is to say he had gained 9 whole years of experience and learned more than he ever imagined learning. It was exhilarating. Matt was hooked.

Now, 100 years later, you can usually find Matt hiking through New Mexico with his hair down, recounting the good times to any desert dweller that will listen. No, no, what we meant to say is that you can usually find Matt running the office or shooting a commercial or gleefully editing some broadcast spot in the middle of the night, like the naïve teenager who had no idea that this is what he’d be doing for the rest of his life.

Luckily for us all, he loves it.