An Interview With Ryan Dunlap Creator of “Leave Me”

I’m with Ryan Dunlap of Daros Films, winner of the 2009 Christian Filmmakers 36 hour contest. We’ve also featured the film that won the contest and you can view it on this page.

Cross-Eyed Blog and Webzine: Hey Ryan, thanks for taking the time to interview with us. First question: What is the basic synopsis of the film “Leave Me?”

Ryan: Well, the story is about a man who has recently lost his wife and is dealing with it in kind of a “twilight zone” way. It’s a story about grief and love and what we would do if we were placed in a situation where we could spend time with the ones we had loved before. There have been a lot of different interpretations and I’ve actually been surprised by the ways that other people have taken it. But that is the way I take it myself as one of the co-writers.

Cross-Eyed Blog and Webzine: How long have you been working with film?

Ryan: Well, I’ve been making short films for about six years now and I’ve been progressively more serious to the point that we’re actually making a feature film.

Cross-Eyed Blog and Webzine: You did win the Christian Filmmakers contest, so I’m assuming that you are religious. How much does religion play a part in your filming?

Ryan: Everyone is going to see a story through their vantage point; we’re built up on our past experiences. Coming from a Christian background, I’m going to filter any stories in the way I experience things and the way I see things. I think having your experience push into film is important, but I think it’s good to explore Christianity or any topic through film yourself. So I see film as more of a growing ground then a necessarily a platform.

For instance, with Leave Me it wasn’t a very specific message, but I’ve seen so many people who have sent personal stories about how it helped them heal or grieve. That wasn’t something we anticipated when we wrote the story. Again I’m not saying that I have any issues with people who use film as a platform, but I don’t have it all figured it out and I don’t know if I’ll ever have it all figured out. But I want to keep being honest with myself and present things that I’m searching within myself and trying to develop spiritually through my films.

Cross-Eyed Blog and Webzine: Can you tell us a little about the team behind Daros Films

Ryan: We started putting together the movie Greyscale a little over a year and a half ago. It started out with just me, then I started getting more people that were interested in making feature length films. As I did, we started growing our little family and it became a bigger crew and a bigger crew and right before we made Leave Me, we formed what we called the “Daros Creative Staff.” There are five people on that now and the purpose of that is to basically write short stories like Leave Me while I finish up on the feature (its in post right now, I’m editing it) so that they can continue to stay sharp, keep the crew together, practice making new short films and up our craft so by the time we get to the next feature, we’re not at the same level as we were on Greyscale. We have about five core people, but then we probably have about another dozen people who’ll join in as the crew and the cast.

Cross-Eyed Blog and Webzine: What sets you apart from other filmmakers?

Ryan: I think everybody has a unique voice. Like I said, you’re the only person who has gone through what you’ve gone through to get where you are. I personally use film to develop myself. A lot of things I’ve struggled with, I will write into screenplays. There are a lot of screen plays I write that I don’t make into films, because they are just a mental exercise for me to try and figure something out – whether it’s something like grief, or something like the super heavy discussion of predestination versus freewill. I’ve written several screenplays on that {subject}just because its something I wrestle with. So I don’t know if that differentiates us, but hopefully it shows we’re putting something out there as a discussion starter. Where I don’t wrap everything up neatly or I don’t have the answers is because I’m asking the questions. Hopefully that will leave audience with more then just a “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” response. I would like them to kinda’ have to work through the film mentally like I had to.

Cross-Eyed Blog and Webzine: What do you do when you aren’t shooting film? What are some of your hobbies?

Ryan: Well, I used to do competitive shotgun shooting, like skeet and trap. When I was 18, I actually won a world title! I joke that when college rolled around. I had to give up shooting shotguns for shooting movies. I became more interested in film and didn’t have to time to do both.

I also do a database program which is what I majored in at college because I knew it would be a job that would pay for these types of things and help pay for the equipment and support a hobby.

Cross-Eyed Blog and Webzine: What is your vision for our generation?

Ryan: Another excellent question! I think our generation is one that is coming into an era of information. With everything like Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and all these social network sites, I think we now have access to more people’s lives then ever before. I also think that it’s not a necessarily deep relationship. I think its more knowledge of what is going on around us. We’re very much more aware of what people are doing. You might follow someone on facebook, when you meet up with them two weeks later you might say, “How was that concert you said went to?” 10-15 years ago that might seem like you were a stalker, but I think for our generation that we are interested in each other on a superficial level. But I also think that’s because we have so many contacts that we can’t really invest all our time to go deeper. What I would love to see is people connecting at a deeper level, rather then just know what is going on in people’s lives. I think that’s how it’s been in the past in communities. People were very much involved in each others lives. I would like to have a widespread knowledge of what’s going on, but still enmesh in community and not let is stay superficial.

A lot of people resonate with arts. With how easily accessible everything is with music and movies and TV shows, it’s a culture changer. You’ll get a group of friends and all they’ll do is quote movies or TV quotes or internet or YouTube. It’s almost a social crutch, where you get a group of friends together and they like a TV show or a YouTube video they pass around and all they’ll do is quote it. I did that in college. Half the time my friends or I were talking, it was mostly funny quotes from Monty Python or something like that. It didn’t get any deeper then that. So I would like to see art get to a point where it could foster deeper discussion where we move past the superficial in our relationships with each other.

Cross-Eyed Blog and Webzine: What are your upcoming projects?

Ryan: Well like I said, we have the Daros Creative Staff and so we have about three or four short films. When we actually did Leave Me it was part of six screenplays and when we pitched it, Leave Me it was the favorite. That left us with a bunch of screen plays that we have the option of producing, so we’re trying to make more local contacts because we’re kinda’ new to the game here, but we’re also in the beginning stages of flushing out my next feature while I’m editing on Greyscale.

Cross-Eyed: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us Ryan. We’ll be looking forward to seeing more videos from you.

Ryan: No, problem. Thanks for reaching out to people!

Visit Daros Films and watch their short film Leave Me.

Interview by Eric Novak. For more articles by Eric visit his site at ericnovak.com