Born and raised in Oklahoma, Ryan Bellgardt started his career in broadcasting in the late 90’s alongside legendary radio broadcaster Danny Williams. He discovered a passion for production and started learning every aspect from audio recording and mixing to video production and computer animation. After years of practice in production on TV commercials, corporate videos, radio jingles and the local TV show “Two Movie Guys”, Bellgardt decided he was ready to write and direct his first feature film, “Army of Frankensteins”. The film was produced entirely in Oklahoma and went on to receive world-wide distribution.
Bellgardt saw an opportunity with the sale of “Army of Frankensteins” to learn about the business aspect of small budget independent filmmaking. With the guidance of his sales agent, he and his team produced their second feature film, “Gremlin”. The film performed exceptionally well last month at the American Film Market in Los Angeles, selling to multiple territories all over the world and is slated for release in the U.S. summer 2017. Ryan is already working on his third feature film entitled “The Jurassic Games”, which has already received worldwide attention from distributors.
“People ask me often if I plan on moving to Los Angeles soon. I tell them I don’t see the need to. Oklahoma is the perfect place to make our movies. There’s a tremendous amount of talent here, great locations and the awesome incentive program is something that I plan to utilize on “The Jurassic Games,” said Bellgardt.
“I’d say I’m a very driven person. I’m constantly working to get better as a filmmaker. I’m always trying to surround myself with people that are better than me. I’ve found that doing that and then letting them truly contribute to the project’s vision always results in a better finished project. To me, there’s no more collaborative or satisfying art form,” said Bellgardt.
For more information, please visit Ryan Bellgardt’s listing in the Oklahoma Production Directory.
