Matti McLean CCS

Matti McLean is a writer and director living in Toronto, Ontario. Matti has spent his adult life pursuing film on and off camera. He has performed onstage throughout Ontario and onscreen both nationally and internationally.

In 2011, Matti wrote, directed and produced North Bay’s first web based series, Butterfly which was produced for Blip.tv. The series which ran for 14 twenty-minute episodes was hailed for its sharp dialogue and memorable characters and was later spun off into several shows including Out of this World, Just Another Zombie Apocalypse and Everyday Shakespeare. Following the show,  Matti focused his attention on creating for the stage with his theatre company North.Light Productions. First presenting The Last Five Years in 2008,  he then  produced musicals: Love*Fool, Alice, Woman and Oh God, and original stage plays such as Massacre, Killer Diction, Gods Car Leaves, Danny Kills the Dog and Flashes. Currently he is also producing a scripted project each month as a part of the monthly script challenge initiative. 

As a novelist his first novel, Catalyst, was published in 2011 by Brighter Books. The young-adult novel performed well and inspired the sequels Ignition and Combustion. Since then he has gone on to publish multiple articles and has several new books set to be published in 2018. 

In 2015 Matti produced and shot his first feature film, DISTANCE, which went on to tour the film festival circuit in America, Canada and Europe throughout 2016-2017. The story of a man who falls in love with a woman who exists solely in his dreams featured the music of Cole Fournier and earned a series of awards. In 2016, the music video “Cage” which was a part of the movie went on to play additional festivals throughout Canada and America. He is also responsible for several screenplays including “A Very Weeber Christmas” which was written for the Dark Rising television show, The Savage Tales of Summer Vale, and Homocide: Blood in the Village, which is set to begin filming in by Proud2Be Pictures. Other screenplays that are currently in development include “Killer Diction”, “From Long Sleep”, “Prodigal Sons”, "Big Shiny Town" and his upcoming online show, “Olde News”. 

As an artist, Matti has received international attention for his work with body paint and his Human Canvas Initiative which has served as the inspiration for his television show, “Canvas” which is currently airing on the Disability Channel. The project seeks to explore how people relate to their bodies by painting their personalities on them. He has painted over a thousand unique people and has been pursuing the project since 2012. The project has since spun off into live shows and events, interactive art exhibits and a pair of colouring books, “Taking Initiative” and “Fill Me In” which were published in 2016. 

In 2015, Matti and his partner received international attention when they opened the world's first mystery room and table flippery entitled “Ye Olde Dandy’s”. The venue which housed an interactive escape game space also featured a stall where guests could come in and flip over a table. The unique concept proved to be a big hit and was shared through news outlets including Metro, CBC, CTV, City News, Toronto Star, Now Magazine and more. 

In 2019, Matti McLean began producing his series "20/20" in which every other month he would gather 20 actors and write them each a custom monologue to be presented as a part of the ensemble. Since then the collective has gone on to spawn "Hindsight", "Action", "Questions", "Vision" and "Golden Standard". 

Due to COVID-19, the most recent production of "20/20 Science Fiction" was shelved and in a weekend Matti created the online-streamable event "Quarantine Dream". Since then he has also released the plays "A Business of Ferrets" and "Killer Diction" as streamable shows online, with the goal to share a new original show every week through their Youtube platform. 

Matti is currently the owner of Can’t Stand Sitting Productions which seeks to be a Canadian based production company that creates commercially viable Canadian projects with messages of positivity and hope.