We recently connected with Ryan Verrill and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The first dollar you earn in a new endeavor is always special. We’d love to hear about how you got your first client that wasn’t a friend or family.

The story of how I got my first dollar is by saying ‘yes’. Part of what I do to build a solid customer base and support the community involves regularly posting on social media (daily, usually multiple times). One day, I had just finished publishing a post. I generally scroll for just a second to see if there is anything important near the top of the feed. A company that is in my niche of cult film physical media posted that they were looking for someone to contribute to a release based on a specific topic. It was not one that I was particularly fond of, necessarily, but I had knowledge that was related to this topic. So I reached out and said that I was interested… and I was turned down. The company said they already found someone else.

Not one to be dismissed that easily, I pitched a similar idea that would still benefit their company for their release, but would also give me the exposure of my first physical media contribution. To my surprise, the company accepted this idea… and from me!— Someone that was very new! Immediately, I set to work to make this initial contribution amazing. Simply having a company say ‘yes’ when I was not a film scholar and did not have a resume to back up my proposal was a massive surprise to me. I felt intense pressure, but I knew that I could live up to the challenge.

Ryan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Ryan Verrill and I do all kinds of things surrounding film on physical media. There are still thousands of releases on DVD/blu-ray/4KUHD happening every year and it is a big passion of mine. I got started in the industry by sharing physical media announcements across physical media. There was another competitor in the space doing the same thing, but they were not giving respect to these announcements and seemed to only be doing it for social media clicks. I set out to do it in a professional way and have since become the go-to individual in the field for proper information.

Logically, I continued to expand in this space with an active YouTube channel, podcast, and by participating as much as possible in the community. I eventually started a Patreon that was immediately supported and has consistently grown to almost 80 monthly patrons. I want people to find me in my niche because they are looking for accurate information and want to be entertained along the way. My drive to help people with accurate information across many formats has further led to the creation of a monthly zine called The Physical Media Advocate and most recently, a production company called Someone’s Favorite Productions.

This production company is creating special features for physical media releases like audio commentaries, visual essays, and creative spoken word pieces. On top of that, we are starting a podcast network for like-minded film podcasts and providing consulting to physical media boutique labels. My work providing interviews with industry professionals on my YouTube channel and podcast has earned quite a bit of goodwill/trust and this has encouraged some of these companies to take a chance on us. Simply having that one on one rapport and knowing that we are entering the partnership with the best of intentions has led to most of our paid work so far.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Through all of my endeavors, my main goal is to promote film appreciation. There are many cliques in film that don’t support a variety of eras or genres. Some people don’t watch: horror movies, any film after 1999, any film before 1980, any film directed by a woman, any film with subtitles, any film that wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, any film that was made for less than $1M, etc. Personally, I don’t think there is any logical reason to feel this way and dismiss these films entirely.

My mantra is “Every single movie has been someone’s favorite movie”- hence naming my production company Someone’s Favorite Productions. Through all of my work, I want to encourage individuals to appreciate all kinds of film and to open their minds to films they would have never even considered watching. If I can get even one person to appreciate something that they did not expect, I call that a good day.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I am still baffled by how I met my collaborator. My partner is a professor of film, Dr. Will Dodson. He was at a conference for work and the two individuals he was supposed to be meeting were held up so he had an entire evening in a hotel room to himself. He was doing some research on a specific physical media company, searching on YouTube, and stumbled across an interview I did with that company. He enjoyed the interview and watched some more videos and eventually decided to reach out to me.

About a month later, we recorded a video on Tobe Hooper and I invited him to be a part of one of my live shows. Our chemistry was astounding and people reacted very well to it so I invited him to be a regular guest. Eventually, we just started pitching ideas to each other. Now we rarely go a day without speaking, he has flown halfway across the country to collaborate in person, and we have completed several projects together… far more than we had ever imagined we would have the opportunity to contribute towards.

And yet if his work colleagues had not been late to the conference, it is quite possible that we would have never met.

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