Meet Ryan Noufer | Filmmaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ryan Noufer and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ryan, what role has risk played in your life or career?
Risk is essential to creative success. As a filmmaker, I’m continuously trying to push the boundary of risk further and further. To go after that taboo idea or awkward conversation is hard enough to do with yourself or even with a friend in a private setting — but when you decide to make a film about one of these topics, and involve a crew, cast, all this money, you start to feel the gravitational force of risk wanting to pull you away from the dangerous idea.

But you just have to make something that feels incredibly honest to your creative impulses and sort of disregard the peanut gallery at a certain point. I think that’s when art becomes irresistible.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I would like to say it’s been a long road, but I just feel like I am getting on the road now. I think filmmaking maybe takes your 10,000 hours before you can actually make something halfway decent (rather than reaching that proverbial milestone and becoming a “master”).

It took many years of filming my friends growing up on the island of Maui in weird movies our parents hated; to about 12 bad student films in college; 3 or 4 shorts post-graduation, until I’m now just getting a hold of the craft.

It’s a tricky art and a lot has to go right, but the more I’ve learned to trust others (performers, crew, etc) the better I’ve become. Humility is essential to the equation. I’m most proud of my last short, “The Hereafter” (a short film about Selfie Caskets – a product that allows the dead to keep posting to their social medias in the afterlife) and we had great festival success, but… I’m just getting started.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
You gotta go to Runyon when you wakeup and do a walk at sunrise and run into Kevin Smith and some ex-member of the Vlog Squad.

Then you have to go to Hollywood Blvd, be sort of repulsed by it all, but then come around to the fact that maybe there’s a beauty to that. Do the double-decker tour-bus for sure. For lunch, you are going to eat at La Numero Uno in Hollywood — one of the most underrated restaurants on the East side.

Then you make your way to the West side and borrow my paddle boards, and becomes friends with me. You talk about how you tracked me down through that Shoutout LA interview series. You said how my pictures weren’t great, but there was just something about me…

We fall in love, realize LA isn’t even where we want to spend the rest of our lives — we give up on our hopes and dreams and just become comfortable setting down in Montana and raising cattle and children.

Once that day-dream snaps, you go out to Good Times at Davey Wayne’s at night and have 6 old fashioned’s.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My cinematographer: Patrick Elmore. I met him my first day in college, and we went to a Kid Cudi concert the night we met. I remember having a hard time deciding whether or not I liked him once he made us stay after the concert was done to try and find loose money on the concert floor that might have fallen out of people’s pockets while they were dancing.

He’s the hardest worker I know and metaphorically never lets a dollar go unfound on the floor of the sets we work on together. That’s a complicated metaphor to parse out, but I think there’s something there.

He always finds the money in any given frame. A real genius.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryannoufer

Other: My last short film, The Hereafter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfigdgTpGc4&t=460s