We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nate Strayer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nate below.

Alright, Nate thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with inspirations and heroes. Are there any historical figures you look up to?

I look to historical figures, I think, more than most people for guidance in my personal life and business. I will make this a 3 part answer, but start with the most direct answer to the question. In my industry and with my goals, the person I look up to most is Walt Disney. Not only do I admire what he did, but I would say that in my career, he is the north star. I am the owner and CEO of a film, commercial, and TV studio that has 2 soundstages, employs creatives, and gets to make art every day. This is not something I could have achieved without a model for how to do it in Walt Disney. I believe in living my life and making decisions as if I am, in actuality, in the future reading my own biography. Having read Walt Disneys biography many times, the way he moved and went about business has influenced many of my decisions throughout my life and career. For instance, Walt moved out to LA where animation was not a fully accepted part of the film industry, in fact, there was no animation at all that was considered a full length feature “film”. Yet, he went out with the ambition to change this because he believed in an innovative way of doing things, and creating industry where there was not yet one. This lead to innovations like the multi-plane camera system, a tool to give parallax and depth to 2D animations.

I give that example because after selling my first feature film in 2021, I had the option to take a massive risk. I now had proven that I can accomplish what I set out to accomplish and had some financial backing to start my own venture. I looked to Austin Texas, more specifically, Dripping Springs. I also looked to a new, not yet adopted, technology in Virtual Production. Both of these choices, Virtual Production and the move to Texas, specifically Dripping Springs, felt validated by viewing my life as if I was reading my own Biography. Especially after spending so much time in Walt’s. You see, Walt moved to LA and specifically moved his studio to Burbank, an area much further out from where the industry had traditionally been, and he innovated with technology that made storytelling better. I view my two largest decisions in this company; the move to Dripping Springs and the adoption of Virtual Production as choices I could only make by seeing Walt make them first. Ironically, since making these decisions my life has followed a similar path to Walt’s, the good, and the bad. We have faced challenges of bringing a new industry to a city where it hadn’t existed on this scale before, we have also faced the obvious challenges of bringing a new tool to an industry, but we have kept moving forward and made it work. Not only work but thrive as of late. I can’t help but look at the main purpose of virtual production (making 2D images appear 3D) and reminisce on the multi-plane camera system Walt innovated. In a lot of my subconscious decisions, I believe the north star of my career has dictated much of my decision making.

The examples above were only touching on why I view Walt as a north star and only delve into the very beginnings of his career. With ambitions bigger than any other historical figure in our industry, Walt paved the way for experiences, architecture, design, storytelling and ultimately, at the end of his life, even designing and building cities. I will take my career one step at a time and realize I am still only in the first few chapters of my story but I promise you my ambitions are no smaller than Walt’s.

I can’t answer this question without touching on 2 other figures who massively have impacted my life. My father and Jesus Christ. While Walt has shown me how to move about my industry, my father has shown me how to be a man. Specifically in dealing with people. My father was the COO of a data server maintenance company that now employs over 1000 people. Through watching my dad help grow this company, I saw how treating people the right way and focusing on their personal needs as much as their professional needs can build a team strong enough to achieve any vision. Growing up with such a strong role model and mentor right at my side has turned me into someone with the confidence to have the dreams and ambitions I have today.

Certainly, the greatest historical figure when it comes to impact, not just on me, is Jesus Christ. While my macro goals were inspired by Walt and my day to day actions were set in place by my father, Jesus is the foundation of my life. As a believer, I know I can not only look up to and model Jesus’ life, but I can literally live through Him and his Word. Studying the word and seeing how he interacted with people, reading about His love, goodness, mercy and grace has filled me with a Spirit that has the confidence and authority to take on the large risks I take on. Placing my identity in my faith in Him is how I keep a level head even in the midst of enormous challenge. At the end of the day, if everything I’ve worked towards went away, what I’d be left with is my faith and I am confident that it is on a firm foundation.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve always been interested in film but took it seriously after graduating high school and attending Full Sail University for a bachelors degree in the art. While at Full Sail I developed a team that I still work with today, a work ethic that hasn’t stopped and motivation to become the head of a studio. After graduation, a few of my schoolmates and I moved out to LA to begin our journey in the industry. We were starting to gain a foothold in that town when Covid hit. I decided that I wanted to spend that time back in Michigan, where I grew up, rather than the small apartment I shared with 2 of my friends in LA. I headed home for the “2 week” lockdown and quickly realized that the lockdown would last longer than those 2 weeks. At this, I invited a few of my frequent collaborators to come up to Michigan where my family had some land and we could start filming a project. At the time, I wasn’t sure what kind of project we’d be filming because I didn’t know how long we had. We started writing scenes to a thriller and before the lockdowns were over, we had a rough cut of an entire feature film. I took this rough cut to some financiers and got the money to finish the post production back in Hollywood at an industry standard level. After about a year and a half of working on that film (Outlier), the rights were acquired by Tubi where you can stream it today. After the success of the film, I had the opportunity to look at new ventures. I saw a growing part of the industry that was brand new in Virtual Production and set my eyes on my life-long dream of owning a studio. I saw this as an opportunity to own the means of production and give our own projects more bang for their buck. I called some of the financial backers of Outlier, as well as formed new relationships in the Virtual Production world and wrangled up just enough money to open a Virtual Production studio that, while state of the art, was just the right price to work well, but by no means the shiniest most polished version of the tool. Luckily through the first year of proving the business I’ve had the opportunity to expand and grow not only the technology but the team behind it and I can confidently say that Stray Vista Studios is one of the best companies out there for achieving Virtual Production in the industry. We have focused on the creatives, we’ve focused on the story, we’ve focused on the results that end up on screen, and we always make sure to have a good time doing it. This has lead to a brand that speaks for itself, excellent collaboration, excellent work, and excellent results. We save productions money while showing off a new way to do things and we do this well. Our goal is to expand more into the narrative side of things, as we currently are servicing more commercials than narrative projects. Whatever the case may be, if someone walks through the doors of Stray Vista, they are taken care of personally, professionally and artistically and that is what I am most proud of in my career.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In my career I knew the end goal was to own a studio but I thought that this was much further down the line. Granted, the studio I’ve envisioned as my end goal looks a lot different than the one I own now, but nonetheless, having a studio with a great team behind it has always been the goal. In my head, the way to get there was gain notoriety by making feature films, one after the next, growing in scale each time, until I had earned enough capital from the creative side to start a business. As you can imagine, I quickly realized that if I wanted a job where I could earn capital to invest into a business, creative jobs alone were probably not going to get me there. After my first feature film was sold and did not give me the paycheck I was hoping for, I decided that a business first was the way to go. This pivot was crucial because it meant putting my creative endeavors (writing and directing) on the back burner to focus on building and scaling a business. In order to do this, I had to put my business in the right field where I wouldn’t lose interest. I saw Virtual Production as a way to stay creative, stay on top of my game creatively, while equipping myself and my team with the technology and knowledge to help those who were on the level of massively funded projects utilize this storytelling tool. This has been the most important pivot of my career and I believe, has put me in a better position as a creative. We have had some of the best filmmakers out there walk through our doors and collaborate with our studio on projects, giving me a front row seat to writers and directors to shadow and learn from. When I do decide to get in the directors chair again, I will take all the knowledge I’ve been blessed to learn from this business and apply it, hopefully with the capital and means of production to make a much bigger splash than if I had just kept on pumping out low budget movies.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Being people focused. Stray Vista has an aura around it that is focused on making sure the creatives, the crew, the agencies, the clients, are all taken care of. We are here to help and give value, not just to unlock the doors and say “you’re on your own”. We invest in the project’s that come through our doors just as much as the director does. I think the majority of the credit for this can go to my amazing team. Aaron Mouer, our studio director has helped foster this culture, while Ace Patel our virtual production supervisor has been the highlight of many of our clients interactions. One thing I love about following up with our clients after a big project is hearing them rave about my team. Whether they’re calling Ace a wizard for being able to adapt our technology and workflows to their project to make it excel, or they’re complimenting Aaron for his attentiveness, or telling me how impressed they are with Zack Stauffer’s ability to take any production from idea to excellent deliverable, I never tire of hearing my team be praised. Our reputation is based on our results, yes, but plenty of people can get good results, not everyone can make the process as enjoyable as we do at Stray Vista. I am very proud to have zero nerves answering this question, and testimonies to back my claims.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://strayvista.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natestray/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-strayer-701a5b123/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@StrayVistaStudios