Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Isun Ris. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Isun, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
If I had to pick a project, it’d be the current one I have under development. It’s a vigilante series that I’d been sitting on for years now and I finally decided to move it in to production. I’ve always been a fan of superheroes and more specifically the complexities that go with the title. Who determines what a hero is? If a person with positive intentions blows up a school in their quest for justice, are they more the villian than the politician using funds from private investors to look the other way while they buy an election?
Comic books make the distinction easy, root for the guys in the bright colors or with their name on the book but if you take a Superman from the pages and put him in the real world, would he be seen as a hero or someone with a fleeting allegiance?
My project takes a well meaning individual who suffered a life altering encounter and used that to propel him into vigilantism but, along the way, his intentions get him involved with the same characters he aimed to bring to justice. As the saying goes, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My passion for film started rather innocuously. My dad and I would go to this dollar movie theater when I was young. Every Saturday, we’d go to the mall but only AFTER our weekly trip to the movie theater. When the theater shut down, we’d take a trip to “Blockbuster”, get a stack of vhs tapes, and we’d watch them well into the night and multiple times until we had to return them.
I never made the connection that movies were made by people until I was somewhere between 5-9. It was actually Micheal Keaton who brought about the realization. Before the days of streaming and even cable, if I wasn’t able to go to “Blockbuster”, I’d try and catch whatever Sunday afternoon movie they were showing on television. Knowing Micheal Keaton as “Batman”, imagine my excitement when I saw his face show up on one of my after church movie marathons. I watched this film for what felt like hours waiting for him to suit up and then…
He turned into a Snowman…
It was not Batman. It was Jack Frost. So after a brief discussion about what “actors” were with my dad, I knew I wanted to be an actor. Because that meant I could be a power ranger! I signed up for school and church plays and did whatever I could to be on stage then in third grade, my music teacher, Ms. Farris took us on a field trip to see a stage play. “Madam Butterfly”. It changed me. Seeing these people do this directly in front of me. Showcasing an ability I thought was only relegated to screens and doing just as good a job without the safety net of a closed set or the director yelling cut. The stage became the second leg of my foundation.
The elementary school I went to didn’t offer much in the way of performance arts outside of music class, I didn’t have much interest in playing an instrument or singing so my passion didn’t really get developed much until 7th grade. I signed up for media tech class which focused more on presentation than performing so we were practiced in a more formal style, think news reporter. I took that class all throughout middle school. Once I made it to high school, I found out that they actually offered theater arts classes! Much to my mother’s dismay, I signed up immediately and learned about the history of theater, the shows we always learned about in English class, but we never actually did any performances. My first onstage performance wasn’t until my junior year of high school. I was a table. The best damn table there ever was but a table nonetheless. This was also the year I transferred schools. The new school had way more opportunity to cultivate my ability as an artist and while I missed the friends from the old school, I was engrossed in all the activities that came about in this new environment.
In addition to the on-stage experience of theater, I was fortunate enough to be be apart of the technical side. Running lights, sounds, set design; it truly showed just how much goes into a production. While I felt a continued sense of accomplishment and pride in all of our productions, I would always go back to that kid in third grade watching “Madam Butterfly”. Remembering the simplicity showcased and now being more fascinated by the hard work I’m sure that went into making that performance as beautifully done as it was. This is the third leg. Understanding the work that goes into producing something. Movie, television, stage. It’s not just turning on the camera and seeing what happens. Even the most simplistic project had hundreds of hours of preparation that went into what we see as a finished product.
In this new school, with all the artistic endeavors made available to the students, I always seemed to find myself surrounded by musically inclined individuals especially at lunch. After all the food was gone, it wouldn’t take long for someone to start making beats with pens, lunch trays, bare hands and once that beat started, it was anybody’s game. If you heard “Man hol up!” Or “I dun came down!” It was a requirement that you came with the heat or…
Find somewhere new to sit.
While I wasn’t the most vocally gifted individual, I could string some rhymes together pretty quickly, “free styling” as the kids call it. Just enough to keep the people entertained until the next “man, hol up!” Which meant it was the next performers turn. The experience prompted me to put more rhymes in my book. After a while, it became less about free styling and more about the relationships I was developing. I started writing poetry. One day during math class, the teacher got ahold of some of my work and asked me to read it in front of the class. Being the theater kid I am, an impromptu performance wasn’t anything new to me. I actually performed a poem I’d written about a classmate and…
Well…
The feeling was not reciprocal…
But it did earn me an invitation to the school’s poetry club and because it was run predominantly by theater kids, we were able to put on a poetry slam for a bunch of the students. By the night of the performance, I had more than three composition notebooks filled with poems. Some romantic others more ranting, but all of them begging to be performed. After the slam, my theater teacher announced that the next performance was going to be a student produced script. I found out that the teacher was accepting scripts from the students and that is where my foundation became complete.
I started writing.
None of my scripts were put on stage but that was due to my own apprehension and if I could go back in time, I would’ve at least asked my teacher to read it for consideration but I wasn’t as confident in my ability then but that didn’t stop me from putting pen to paper and too much of my time has been spent hanging up on what I should’ve done, now the focus is on what I can do with what I have at my disposal.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
To put it simply, consume. Watch everything, read everything, listen to everything. The arts are nothing exclusive to anyone so they should, in retrospect, be enjoyed by everyone! More explicitly, accessible to everyone! Museums should be put in inner cities, spaces should be made available for burgeoning artists who don’t have access to the equipment needed to express themselves in their field of creativity.
A much better understanding of just how Integral the arts have been in the fruition of society would help immensely. It’s rather disheartening to be told that my passion is just a hobby by someone who’ll shell out hundreds of dollars for overpriced movie experiences and I say that as a huge movie buff. The hypocrisy in that sentiment is that the thing keeping artists from being the next big name in entertainment is the severe lack of support shown along the way. People pour their hearts into their arts just for it to be seen by 15 close friends, shared by 8 of them and promoted by 3 of them; the three potentially being people involved with the project itself.
With as much drivel that goes viral, it can be draining watching so many unappreciative individuals ride the lightning they caught in a bottle. They turn into trends while artists whose ability waste away in some customer service space because their talent can’t be properly encapsulated in a short form medium.
Go to the theatre! Not a movie theater, live theatre. Local theatre. Community theatre. There are thousands of talented individuals whose ability is being overlooked because the idea of community theatre has been bastardized by society because of stereotypical tropes and a severe lack of support. The arts grow as the support grows.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
Tiktok. I wish I would’ve taken more advantage of the medium if, for no other reason, to off more encouragement in supporting the arts. Watching how fast lives have been changed because of the introduction of this medium was truly amazing until I realized just how little of that was being passed on to the arts community. How much of a benefit it would be to starving artist who should only be artist. It’s beautiful how many musicians have grown thanks to the sounds function on the app, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit jealous of “content creators” being involved in film and television and even being invited to awards ceremonies JUST because of their following count.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_isun_ris_?igsh=MWp0NmdxcG05Y2I4ag%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donovan.taylor.186?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Twitter: https://x.com/master_broshi90?s=11&t=iJCQ4FbT_A0oUuAH2rzDNg
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@fingergunfilms530?si=skDX6aPi2cllPmx6
- Other: https://www.wattpad.com/user/IsunRis?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=sms&utm_content=share_profile&utm_campaign=invitefriends&wp_page=home&wp_uname=IsunRishttps://www.tiktok.com/@red_eye_reviews?_t=8npRcpO9wh4&_r=1
@two_shots_prods https://www.tiktok.com/@isun_ris?_t=8npRc8Y9zDv&_r=1
