"I'm Ryan from Junior Films! We're a local Wellington content creation agency, currently making cool stuff with the likes of The Hurricanes, WCC, Te Papa, Flamingo Scooters & Fortune Favours. I run the business with my best mate from High School, Jamie Morgan -Ward and we're based out of Post Office Square right in the CBD, but we're originally just a couple of kids from Palmerston North."
Advertisement for Southern Fresh Group. Shot by Junior Films
How did you get into the creative field/filmmaking? What is your background?
Making videos for us started pretty early on, all through high school I'd make YouTube videos with my mates, and in year 12 I met Jamie. He was already making videos in his spare time too and he had a fancy Canon 550D, so together we started making a range of videos together from more YouTube videos, a bunch of content for our school and senior leadership groups, and even the odd wedding (although they didn't go very well!). Literally, since those days, we haven't stopped. We still make those silly YouTube videos when we get a chance, but we've both used every opportunity and many late nights juggling other jobs in the early days to create content for brands and businesses, and we were lucky enough to have built a reputation and client base strong enough to fully commit our time to the business in 2019, and we've been full-time Junior Films since then.
What kind of area of filmmaking do you practice/enjoy the most?
There's plenty of work that goes into filmmaking, and creating commercial content for brands - and we're lucky enough to do it with some pretty cool people, so luckily most of the time the process is pretty fun! I really enjoy the initial discovery process with clients. They often have an idea of what they're wanting to achieve, or at least an issue they're trying t solve, so in these early stages, we get to just think a bit crazy and workshop up the craziest / funniest ideas that would look great on camera. The contents of course usually go through a series of treatments to make them align with the brands they are representing, but those early discussions are fun because you just get to think as broadly as possible and joke around thinking of cool concepts.
Shooting is always fun too, I've had the opportunity to shoot in some pretty cool places and meet some wild people, I'm always surprised at the places I end up and the things we've managed to shoot. Having a camera in hand and chasing the afternoon sun is always a great way to end a day.
Māori Kai Sovereignty Short shot by Junior Films
What gear do you use? What sort of gear do you usually rent from us?
For any content creator or video business, gear is always a tough liability to manage. Buying gear costs a lot of money, but often to create cool things you need more gear than what's in your possession - so we often rent gear from Rubber Monkey to scale up our production and get to a higher production level, without having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on gear ourselves. Almost every shoot you'll see us using cinema class from Andrew and the rentals team. Those DZO primes are such great kit! If it's not lenses we'd probably scale up our lighting capabilities, and grab a sturdy tripod - things that cost a lot of money to invest in your own agency.
Any other interests or hobbies?
I just love creating content! I have a personal interest in car photography and have been lucky enough to shoot Ferraris, Rolls Royce, Porches, and plenty of Mercedes around Wellington.
When Jamie and I were in high school we actually won the Fair Go Ad Awards for 2013, that was our first big break and something I think that really gave us insight into how cool this industry could be, and was surely something that has kept us going this whole time to chase the dream. We also got to create content for 7 Days that same year as Jon Bridges (The Producer, and also a past Freyberg High School student ) heard about our award and reached out. Since then, really our greatest achievements have come in the opportunity we've managed to get creating content full-time for our clients and mates around Wellington. We hope to create work that inspires and gets to work with a bunch more businesses around the area. We love Wellington and look forward to making a positive impact with the content we can create.
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