Born and raised in Astoria, Queens, NY, James Ryan aka J. Samuel Ryan developed his love for filmmaking throughout the course of his college experience. But to him, he feels the journey originated from his childhood when he was always constantly watching various shows and movies on tv. It not only became a source of entertainment for him, but would also become a source of realization for him that there might be something to this constant watching of programs. However, his struggle for handling schoolwork during his grade school years got the best of him where he didn't believe college was for him. Because of this, Ryan didn't enroll after graduating high school and just worked retail jobs while finding himself.
After six years of working in retail and feeling miserable and unchallenged from them, he enrolled into LaGuardia Community College in Fall 2008. During his three years at LaGuardia, Ryan majored in the school's then-newest major, Liberal Arts- Writing & Literature. It was during the courses of this major that he realized he's very good at storytelling, and so he decided to take this discovered skill and convert it into screenwriting.
By Fall 2011, Ryan graduated from LaGuardia, and transferred to Queens College when he learned about their Media Studies program during LaGuardia's college fair in 2010. He took a Screenwriting course in Spring 2012, and it was during that course, which he also aced with an A, that he should take the next step into his storytelling skill: filmmaking. This was decided because if he's envisioning what he's writing, then that same vision should be seen by others through his direction, for he feels that a director who's not the writer of a script could interpret a completely different perspective to the script, and it can potentially end up as not matching the same synopsis of what the script entailed. Therefore, the only way to keep his exact vision alive is to make the movie himself. Starting in Fall 2012, he enrolled into a Studio Production class where he made a hilarious student commercial on Dentyne Ice, then in Spring 2013 in his Film Production class, he made a mini-Documentary about his friend Andy being in his 50s and being capable of various, unique forms of exercise.
After graduating Queens in Spring 2014, he went into development of his career by making business cards and attending networking events to meet like-minded actors/filmmakers for potential collaboration. After about half a year of this, he met so many nice people who, just like him, were hungry for a career in the entertainment industry. Unfortunately though, no work was coming in and this started to frustrate Ryan. Therefore, he concluded that the ONLY way to develop this career is to create a project from scratch.
By early 2015, he went off to write a script called "An Inconvenient Ruth." During the next couple of months, he completed writing it, he produced it all the way from casting actors to scouting appropriate locations, etc., and by the end of May 2015, filming had been completed. During Summer 2015, Ryan edited the entire film into a half-hour comedy, and since then, it's won the "Sir Edmund Hilary Award" at the Mountain Film Festival, the "Gold Award" at the California Film Awards, and the "Best Narrative Short Award" at the Alaska Film Awards, which beat out 96 other short films at that venue.
Ryan's 2nd film, "Tylonoxicateroid," shot in October 2015, has since gone off to be successful too. It's received some official selections, and in November 2016, won a "Merit Award" at the Canada Shorts Film Festival. The film also has a shot at winning more awards at the upcoming 2nd Annual Cineplay Film Awards in March 2018, where Ryan hopes to gather up enough votes to win some.
Ryan's 3rd film, "Candy," is currently in post-production. It stars one live-action actress, and 25 voice actors, and he hopes once it's released will become an award-winning film too.
Photo credit- Tony Cammarata