About
Ryan Soonin Jenq was born on September 9th 1991 in the conservative pits of Paris, Tennessee. Fortunately, he was relocated to New Jersey before his brain was developed enough to recall any of these early childhood memories.
He first discovered the possibilities of filmmaking with Lego and Steven Spielberg’s Moviemaker set. But this interest died off after a year. His father, in an attempt to free disk space on a clunky Compaq desktop computer, attempted to burn all of his stop animation films on a blank CD. This CD was still blank, and all ten sequels of the Cyber T-Rex series went missing.
A 5th grade Ryan Jenq didn’t see the point anymore.
Years later, after an unfortunately obsession with japcrap, came a fascination with Asian cinema: starting with Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale. Several films later came Infernal Affairs II. The opening sequence, starring Edison Chen walking down the streets of Hong Kong, with radically pitch blue overtone and a singing Hungarian choir instantly appealed to him. Perhaps it was the feeling that was given off by the combination of narrative context, editing, sound, and motion picture.
Afterwards, Ryan a bought a video camera because he thought it would be fucking hilarious to make a lip-synching music video spoof on emo kids on YouTube. You know, that shit was really popular back then.
He moved on to another concept that dominated his life for that year Rap Battle 2000. A satirical, yet serious drama that focuses on a future when rap battling is banned. I know, what the hell was he thinking right? It ended up being 20 minutes long, and not bad for a first film: but not good.
Ryan spent the next couple of years attempting to create something of value. He knocked himself into shape, viewing the essential works of classical cinema, and reading on many of the great auteur’s of the century. His mind was constantly preoccupied with thought, this obsession with moving pictures, the capabilities and the boundaries of the medium. Everybody else thought he was a joke, they wanted him to make shit.
Thanks to the fact that Timothy Christian School, had several redneck conservative (unknowingly) racist lecturers that said stupid shit like “if you commit suicide you’re automatically going to hell”, even though the rest of the book clearly points otherwise. Great education right? Garbage grades in the first half of high school. The classes got easier in the second half and his grade point average made a significant jump.
With no support from the school (no arts program), nor his peers, Ryan did not have anything to show for his passion. That, plus the lack of organization among constantly hired and fired lecturers in Timothy Christian School, left him fucked for college.
He was rejected from New York University‘s film program. He applied to Rochester Institute of Technology’s film program for kicks, but was rejected. He was accepted to Temple University for film, but decided not to attend their mediocre program.
With the influence of his parents, and the dumbass private counselor (who told him to change “filmography” on his resume to “filmography participation”, which makes no sense), he decided to attend Rochester Institute of Technology for computer science. Boy, was that a big mistake.
One day, he was waiting for my mother to wrap it up at her art studio, the parents of one of the students asked his father;
“Where is your son going to college?”
“Rochester Institute of Technology,” he replied.
“Oh, what is he majoring in?”
“Film”.
After taking a quarter of computer science classes, Ryan had enough. This was not for him, the kids yelling 4chan.org memes down the halls, hearing “Epic Fail!” everywhere, fuck it.
“Hm, maybe I should switch to the film program here. Oh, I can’t switch until next year. Oh, I need to write a fucking essay and the chairman is a fucking asshole who has no email etiquette.”
He took the “film language” course with Skip Battaglia in case he would switch, but was stunned by what he saw. No wonder, all of the skilled young folks who actually care about the medium and art are in NYU, UCLA, USC, Columbia, etc.
“Look at these kids, during the screenings their all playing games on their phones, the conversations they have, and the stupid ass fight movies these kids want to make. There’s no passion here. There’s not a single care in the fucking world, and they took these kids instead of me.”
“I swear, I heard a girl ask the professor after he screened a portion of Battle of Algiers that day, something like, ‘was that movie filmed in Italian? Because I noticed that the dialogue didn’t much up with the words.’”
No shit, anyone who has ever seen an Italian beyond the last fifteen years or so is bound to notice the fact that nearly all Italian films had full ADR work done. If you’ve ever seen a single Fellini film, a single one, you would definitely notice that they were dubbed.
“Stupid fucking kids.”
He decided not to apply for this program change.
Ryan was considering applying for transfer to NYU, the chances of actually getting accepted however, were slim to none.
He bought his first SLR, and a two and a half weeks later scheduled an appointment with the photojournalism chairman regarding a program chance.
Ryan Soonin Jenq is now a photojournalism major attending the Rochester Institute of Technology.
And not a very good one at that.
Nobody wants him to be a filmmaker anyway.
