Matt Payne has worked for fifteen years in the entertainment business as both a television and a feature film writer. Payne’s career began shortly after graduating the University of Oklahoma’s Film and Video Studies program in 2001 when he moved to Los Angeles and quickly began working as a set production assistant on the hit FOX show “24”. After two years at “24”, Payne moved to Endeavor (now William Morris Endeavor) where he worked as an assistant and began to hone his writing craft.
In 2007, Payne moved to CBS where he began working first as a showrunner’s assistant on the television show “Without A Trace” before ultimately writing his own episodes of “The Defenders”, starring Jim Belushi and Jerry O’Connell, “Memphis Beat”, starring Jason Lee, and “Vegas” starring Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis.
In addition to his writing on screen, Payne has worked as a freelance travel writer and photographer since 2011, where assignments came to him from Iceland to Fiji, Rwanda to Haiti and everything in between.
Payne recently moved back to Oklahoma to begin The Point Writers Workshop. These interactive workshops feature classes in both creative writing and screen writing and Payne plans to add a teleplay writing class where students can learn the art of crafting both pilots and entire seasons of television.
“Every time I’d come home to visit from Los Angeles, I was blown away by how much Oklahoma was growing, particularly in the area of film. With the success of deadCENTER (Film Festival), the outstanding programs at OCCC, OCU and OU and a growing pool of crew and talent, I felt that I could be truer to my craft as a writer by bringing my work here. My goal is to inspire others to grow as writers so that the film industry in Oklahoma can tell better and better stories that will ultimately allow us to grow into the thriving film community I believe we are destined to become.”
For more information, please visit Matt’s listing in the Oklahoma Production Directory.