Commerce native Ryan Walsh makes it big in L.A. filmmaking
Ryan Walsh grew up in Commerce, and from an early age, he knew that he wanted to get into filmmaking.
“As a kid, I always gravitated towards the one doing the filming,” he said. “Like, with friends making snowboarding videos or whatnot, I would always find the camera in my hands and be filming my buddies. When the camera was passed off to them, which was almost never, they could never keep me in the shot. So, I realized at a younger age that I could film. I always enjoyed it and took that to high school and made videos for the morning announcements and stuff like that.”
After earning a degree in broadcasting from Central Michigan University, Walsh decided to move to California to see what could happen.
It proved to be a great move. Today, Walsh’s day job involves helping to film and create a bevy of shows. He’s currently working on “Life Below Zero” for National Geographic.
“Since living in (Los Angeles), I’ve shot and produced several television shows and documentaries for National Geographic, Discovery and History Channel, to name a few,” he said. “I’ve worked with directors James Cameron and Eli Roth on projects, as well as Mike Rowe on the Discovery Channel show, “Dirty Jobs.”
Working on TV shows pays the bill, and then Walsh uses his free time to work on other film projects.
The 39-year-old recently released his first feature film, a documentary called “The Stan Project.” The documentary features Stan Zuray, the star of the Discovery Channel show, “Yukon Men.” It follows Zuray who had a troubled youth in Boston in the 1970s and found a better life in the wild, remote interior of Alaska.
“In order to escape a life of crime and drug abuse … this documentary follows the life he’s built for the last 40+ years while processing the trauma that brought him to homestead in the middle of nowhere,” the film’s promotional material reads. “We follow Stan through his day-to-day activities, showcasing a beautiful yet brutal relationship with nature. In doing so, we come to grasp the effort and sacrifices required to live a life in harmony with the land.”
Walsh said his own childhood interests played a role in his landing in Alaska.
“Growing up, I was the ‘nature kid,’” he said. “I spent my weekends roaming around the woods of my Michigan backyard studying animal tracks. After school I’d wait for hours up in the trees, hoping to sneak a peak of an animal searching for their next meal or a place to rest. The fact that we coexisted with these creatures was fascinating to me, and I was happy just to catch a glimpse of them going about their daily life.
“I moved to Los Angeles to become a filmmaker but a big part of me missed the connection to nature I had back home. So I started working on nature documentaries and found a niche for myself filming all over remote Alaska.”
The 68-minute film debuted last year and will be part of the Central Michigan International Film Festival in April. After that, the film’s creators are looking at ways to release it so people can stream it at home.
While there were many challenges to creating “The Stan Project,” Walsh said it was definitely worth it.
“We raised some money through a Kickstarter campaign to help reduce costs,” he says. “We did it all on our own. We didn’t have funding by any means, so it took a while to make. I shot it and then had someone who was going to edit it, and that fell through, so I did all the editing with some help from my wife, who is a producer. It was a daunting thing to take on. It took five years for an hour-long movie. It’s a lot of trips back and forth to Alaska to tell the proper story and allow time for things to develop as you’re following different stories.”
Walsh’s favorite genres to work on are documentaries and doc realities.
“I like finding good, real-life stories with people and learning about people,” he says. “I like stories people can relate to. It doesn’t matter what the content is, it has to have those human elements that people can relate to, like love, loss, sacrifice and going through hardships.”