Macy Armstrong is a 2020 Glendale High School graduate, and she was a member of the GHS Cinematography program for 4 years. Although she graduated from our school just over 4 months ago, Macy recently started working on the Emmy Award-winning TV show called Robot Chicken. She loves working with cameras and on movie sets, and that is how she got her job on this series.
Macy’s experience in the GHS Cinematography department was “great and it was fun.” She said that the cinematography class was “very professional once you got into the upper levels.” That professionalism gave her an insight into what it was going to be like working on a real production set. 
After her graduation, Macy worked with Mr. Kirkwood, Glendale High’s Cinematography teacher, as a camera operator. In the process, Macy met some of Mr. Kirkwood’s contacts. Macy said that “one person that he has worked with before worked at the studio called Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, and that is the stop-motion animation studio that I work at now.”
Earlier this year, Macy and Mr. Kirkwood both attended “a cinematography and stop-motion animation workshop that was hosted by the studio,” and they “both went and got to learn about how to light stop-motion animation studio sets and from there and then they hired a couple of people at that workshop to go work on Robot Chicken.”
Macy said that working on Robot Chicken is a great experience. She basically helps with the lighting of stop-motion animation sets. “So I’m helping light puppets and miniatures,” Macy said, “and it’s like a professional film set but it’s a lot more advanced in terms of lighting, because you have to light the entire world, and you have full control of every single little light.” Macy also said that there are times when they use twenty different light sources to light a four-by-four-foot set. Macy is also the camera coordinator, so she places “orders for any kind of equipment that we need.”
If Macy was not working in cinematography, she would like to be a National Geographic photographer. “I’d say that the difference between cinematography and photography is [that] cinematography is a lot more collaborative,” she said, “because you are working with sometimes 80 different people all on one set for months at a time and then photography is just you and the camera.”
Some of Macy’s other hobbies include hiking, archery and playing the guitar. She has also volunteered on a farm where she worked with horses.
As far as her future goes, Macy eventually wants to be a live-action cinematographer. She wants to work on feature films, especially Marvel movies. Macy thinks that the cinematography industry needs more female cinematographers, and she is glad to be a part of this community.
