CREATING COMEDY Ryan Cunningham 02 FAV
it’s important to work on shows you enjoy watching,” says TV and film producer Ryan Cunningham 02 FAV. “Between rough cuts, dailies, sound design and everything else, I’ll end up watching stuff 30 times before it actually airs, which would be incredibly painful if I didn’t like the show.” These days Ryan spends most of her time producing for comedians Louis CK (Louie on FX), Amy Schumer (Inside Amy Schumer on Comedy Central) and Jon Glaser (Delocated on Adult Swim). “Amy is absolutely awesome,” she says — “humble, smart…. She invites collaboration and has zero ego, which is not always the case.” Ryan co-owns her NYC production studio, Running Man, with her husband Troy Thompson, and does everything from consulting on scripts during preproduction to working on set during shooting and overseeing “pretty much everything that happens from the moment the camera stops rolling to the point when a show airs”— from editing, visual effects and sound design to music, color correction and mastering. But it took decade of hard work to break into the film and television industries, Ryan says. “No one is going to walk up and offer you a million “IN THIS BUSINESS,
dollars to direct a film right after graduation. First you need to work on a crew and learn how to collaborate.” Ryan began interning when she was still an undergrad, working with Geoff Adams 83 FAV on the live-action segments on the WGBH show Arthur, the hugely successful animated series for kids. “I worked as a boom operator, an assistant editor…. I did archival research, whatever was needed,” she recalls. “I ended up getting my first full producer position with WGBH’s The Electric Company and winning an Emmy.” As her reputation grew, the job offers came in more steadily. Now, in addition to working on Inside Amy Schumer and Louie, she recently completed a Schumer special for HBO and produced a full-length feature film called 3rd Street Blackout, a romantic comedy about a couple struggling to communicate after Hurricane Sandy left NYC without power for days on end. Ryan says that at RISD she “was exposed to every element of film production and post-production,” which still helps her today. And since she knows the importance of interning, she hires a RISD student at Running Man every summer. “Our interns are here to learn,” she notes, “not to get coffee,” as Selene Means 17 FAV, last summer’s intern, can attest. One of Ryan’s favorite moments as a producer is getting to see that first rough cut. “Sometimes it’s exactly what you imagined, sometimes it’s a total surprise and sometimes it’s a disaster,” she says. “But when it’s beyond what you expected, it’s thrilling. That happens a lot on Inside Amy Schumer. The sketches are just brilliant, and it’s incredibly refreshing to see things from a woman’s perspective.”
2002 continued In May Krista Ninivaggi BArch (NYC) and her firm K&Co collaborated with yarn bomb artist Hot Tea and Pilskin Architecture on a project that transformed a swimming pool on NYC’s Roosevelt Island into a joyfully vibrant color field (search for ‘swimming pool’ on brooklynstreetart.com). Nature Anatomy, the latest enticement from Brooklynbased artist Julia Rothman IL (juliarothman.com), is a follow-up to her book Farm Anatomy (subtitled The Curious Parts & Pieces of Country Life). The book allowed her to satisfy her own “hunger for more ‘green’ knowledge” by investigating and then visually translating the endless marvels of the natural world—from land formations to atmospheric layers and water bugs.
2003 Jane Kim PR (inkdwell.com) recently completed illustrations for The Living Seashore, a new permanent exhibit at the Baltimore [MD] National Aquarium. She’s also working Find more on Ryan’s work at runningmanpost.com.
Jacqui Alexander 05 IL It poured at Jacqui’s June 27 wedding at Baldpate Mountain in Titusville, NJ, but she and her new husband Dave Hance took it in stride and danced in the rain, joined by family and friends, including several from RISD. She works as a freelance social media consultant in Princeton, while he works in the facilities department at The College of New Jersey. The newlyweds live in Pennington, NJ.
on a colossal Wall of Birds mural at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that will showcase the 375-million-year evolution of birds. A profile of Jane appeared in the June issue of Juxtapoz magazine. Chandler O’Leary IL and apparel designer Sonja Silver recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the initial production run of a women’s rain jacket that features Chandler’s handpainted illustrations printed on the lining. The coat is being produced by Bratwear in Tacoma, WA, where Chandler lives.