We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ryan Jaeger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ryan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
When I was going into high school my dad got me and a friend jobs pouring concrete with a company in town. It was the most miserable summer of my entire life, but it gave me perspective and taught me the value of work ethic.
My mom incessantly preached the value of gratitude. She instilled kindness and empathy, she formed my moral compass.
I am forever grateful for those two lessons.
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.
I grew up in a small mountain town in Colorado. I was a product of hippy dropouts looking to get their ski fix and due to the size of the town I was raised in a community that was fairly isolated from “normal” society. We had the rare privilege of skiing almost every day the mountain was open and naturally the dream at the time was to become a professional skier. As I got older we started making ski movies and eventually I decided to create my own. We shot on miniDV tapes and I cut my first filmed project in a very early version of Adobe Premiere Pro. By then I could tell I’d be dealing in a visual medium for the rest of my life.
A few days after I graduated college I packed my car and drove to LA. I didn’t have a job lined up and only had a friend’s floor to sleep on. Eventually I found a place of my own, but as I soon as I was paying rent I quickly started running out of money. I did some odd jobs, even visited a cash for gold shop with the intent of selling a gold piece my grandmother had given me for rent. But fortunately, the next day I got my first job as an assistant to the owner of a production company. They did reality TV and I ended up working on a number of shows for a few years in production. I learned how to manage productions that were running on insanely tight schedules with limited resources. The logistical side of things seemed very innate and developed quickly, but I knew that wasn’t the end all be all. As fate would have it, I happened to visit home one fall and learned that The Hateful Eight would be shooting in my hometown. I jumped at the opportunity and restarted my career as an office PA.
Since then I’ve worked on a number of film projects in various roles, most of which with Shannon McIntosh who I met on TH8 and her McIntosh Films banner. I’ve approached every job with the idea of learning for growth with the mindset of trying to become less dependent on others. During the last few years I was fortunate enough to put together some very talented crews and complete two short films. I’ve been working on some projects that I am super excited about as well, but I’m finally feeling like all the different experiences I’ve had are culminating to a certain point in my career. As that growth has continued, I’ve found that being honest, understanding and listening to the talent you surround yourself with can make or break you.
My hope is to foster an engaging and exciting environment to work in and for those who I’m working with to feel as excited as I am about our project. If you can maintain and develop enough of these relationships you won’t have a hard time finding future projects and, more importantly, the projects you are lucky enough to create will be better if you’re able to nourish that kind of supportive environment. At the end of the day my goal is to establish a high standard that is met with enthusiasm and pushes everyone to take pride in and produce our best work. A large part of that for me has been being able to convince those that are more experienced than me that I’ll work my hardest to keep up. Even though that statement in itself may seem a bit arbitrary, I hope the people I have had the opportunity to work with understand what I mean. If I’m able to create a brand that encompasses doing your best work and having fun doing so, then that’s all I could hope for.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
We live in a very interesting time in the world. As technology has continued to develop we’ve seen a number of new outlets emerge that allow for creative expression to be shared on a larger scale. Visual mediums of all kinds are now much more accessible and I think overall there’s been a larger democratization of creative expression – broadly speaking. That said, it still feels a bit like there is an underlying cultural resistance clinging onto some of the old ways, or tropes, of doing things and to me it seems like the zeitgeist of creative development has always been a few steps ahead of what society is ready to accept. In an odd twist of fate that seems to be why our business (film) remains reactionary as opposed to proactive. And with so many corporations trying to capitalize on what drives a financially successful project, the newer successes eventual become tired failures. So I think the largest support would be to be open minded and rather than oppose change embrace the innovation and remain excited about pushing the boundaries. Go see a film you wouldn’t normally see, ask questions and try to engage with a community at large. I think being more receptive to other people’s experience as human is a good rule of thumb for supporting any artist. Be open, be receptive and challenge yourself to try new things.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I had sought out advice from the filmmakers I looked up to earlier on in my career. And I don’t mean that in a personal way, more so I wish I had been more perceptive to resources like behind the scenes – or added bonus material talking about the making-of. I’ve found myself doing deep dives with older movies I grew up with and watching the behind the scenes videos, which are obviously much more accessible with YouTube nowadays. But there is a wealth of advice for filmmaking and the process, things to do and what not to do and why. With an art form that is inherently derivative there are many great artists to learn from and to study ahead of you. Youtube is an incredible platform for that sort of thing and I see a lot of really interesting new content being created by younger filmmakers who are equally geeked out about the process as I am.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @el_jaeger
Image Credits
Andrew M. Casey Layton Hebert