Today we’d like to introduce you to Mackenzie Thompson.
Hi Mackenzie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
As a kid I was really interested in acting and doing theater, but kind of gave it up to pursue soccer for a while. During covid, my friend introduced me to Lord of the Rings and I became really obsessed with the idea of world building and what goes into making films. After covid, I moved to Nashville with my family during high school and was able to take film as an elective. I really fell in love with spending time just creating these little projects for class. I often opted to spend hours outside of class making my projects rather than filming them in our class period hours.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life going into my senior year of high school, I was very adamant on not wanting to go to college, but my film teacher, Matthew Balzer, told me I should look into going to school for filmmaking. My parents weren’t very on board at first, film can be such an unstable career, but after they talked to my teacher, I remember they sat me down and told me that I could pursue a career in film, but I needed to work really hard for it because it wasn’t going to be easy. So I took that and ran with it.
I ended up accepting an offer to go to Belmont for motion picture production and worked my entire senior year of high school making as many film projects as I could. I even missed my senior prom to go work on my first ever real film set as a background actor. After I graduated I applied to a lot of Facebook jobs as a background actor and PA, just trying to get onto set. I worked on crew for my first short film a few weeks before starting college as props & wardrobe. I believe that first semester I worked on 15 sets as a background actor and that November I got my first PA job on a music video for Walker Hayes.
At this point in time, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do as a career, I was kind of set on directing, but I did a senior film that second semester of freshman year as a 2nd AC and fell in love with the camera department. There was just something about how technical it was and building the camera and everything that had me hooked. That DP I worked with ended up taking me under his wing and bringing me onto some independent projects as an AC which gave me a lot of experience to then begin working as an AC professionally my summer before sophomore year. I even day played that July as the B cam 1st AC on a union film in-between my summer internship at a local production company, Mac N’ Cheese Media.
My sophomore year I ended up working pretty heavily outside of school on set as an AC, doing work for the Nashville Zoo, Walker Hayes, and more. It was really fulfilling to be working more days on set than I was in class some of those months. The following summer of 2025 I ended up earning a spot as the video fellow on Dolly: A True Original Musical where I was learning and helping build a Broadway level show from the ground up. It was pretty surreal being coworkers with so many incredibly talented Broadway crew members and getting to learn what the video world looked like in theater.
During my junior year, I got to work a lot more as a cinematographer, getting to shoot my first short film and music video in the fall and another two shorts at the beginning of 2026. Now, I’m spending my summer before I graduate in December prepping a few more shorts as the DP and just trying to learn and grow as a cinematographer and AC!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road I have taken over the past few years to get where I am has definitely not been a smooth road. I am someone who struggles with self confidence so I feel like I’m not doing enough to reach my goal at times and feel like my work as a DP isn’t good enough. I feel like a lot of the time when people say my work is good, in my head I second guess it. I am also very bad at saying no and not overworking myself. There have been two times this past year where I had overbooked myself so much with shoots, my part time job, and school that I had gotten pretty sick and had to take a few days off before powering through. It’s definitely made me realize I need to take care of myself and my body and allow myself time to rest.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I work primarily as an AC in the film industry, but I have been working on a lot more on my cinematography within the past year and a half. Within the past year I have done two short films I am really proud of: “Clover” a romance drama, and “Carrier”, a dystopian thriller. While both have completely opposite needs as a film in terms of cinematography, I have discovered a lot of who I am as a cinematographer through them. I pull a lot of my key inspirations in terms of framing from a lot of fantasy films. Lord of the Rings are my favorite films and I have found that I love shooting extreme wide shots while then also having very tight close ups. I really like being really close to characters when a scene calls for it while then still having dramatic wide shots that show the world that the characters are in. I have also been really interested in lighting with natural lights. Nosferatu and Train Dreams are two films that have really stuck with me in terms of their use of practical lighting and I see a lot of that reflected in projects I shoot.
I think a lot of people say this, especially cinematographers, but my cinematography sets me apart from others because it’s how I see the world. I always feel very vulnerable when I show people my cinematography because it’s almost as if they’re seeing through my head. The way the framing is, the lighting, the random b-roll I get. My cinematography is a combination of every piece of media that I have consumed that has had a lasting impression on me and all of my life experiences.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important lesson I’ve learned along my journey has been to have a positive outlook on things. I’m not perfect and I can get pretty negative upon myself at times, but I’ve found that so many people in both the film industry, and life in general can get so negative about everything. Yes, work can suck at times. Yes, people can be rude. Yes, the hours on set are long, but I’m pursuing a career in the arts while other people dream about doing so. If I get to spend most of my time making art that makes other people happy, I think I can spend a few more hours at my part time job to pay my bills. I have found that choosing to see the world in a more positive light, and choosing to enjoy the little things makes life a lot more enjoyable than focusing on the the bad things or the things I don’t have.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @Mackenziejoy_
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mackenzie-thompson-58115928a
- Other: Tik Tok: @Mackenziejoy_
