- Michael Ray is known as a visually innovative filmmaker and provocative storyteller across multiple genres. Ray was born and raised in New York City on May 4, 1984. He began his career by directing music videos and TV commercials and made his feature film directorial debut in 2013 with the interracial romantic drama 'Black & White'.
Ray was born in the Bronx, New York to Jamaican born immigrant parents who both worked as real estate agents. After becoming quite successful in real estate, his parents moved the family, which included Michael and his two older brothers, from the Bronx to the affluent suburbs of Westchester County, one of the wealthiest areas of New York. Being one of the few African Americans in mostly affluent white surroundings, Ray was not always accepted into social circles and experienced much bullying and racism at a young age. Feeling like a shy outcast, he retreated to watching movies & television as an escape. Ray attended high school in the Bronx and it was there during a senior year media class project he was assigned by his teacher Mr. John DiPalermo, to direct a music video re-creating a popular video of their choice. Ray and his classmate chose to re-create the music video for Dave Matthews Band song 'Everyday'. Ray loved the feeling he got when he watched the class laugh at all the right moments while watching this video. Ray credits that as the moment he decided he wanted to become a filmmaker.
Ray started watching movies daily and began studying his favorite filmmakers. The directors who Ray considers to be his biggest influences include David Fincher, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Denis Villenueve, Michael Bay, M. Night Shyamalan, Danny Boyle, Spike Lee, and music video legend Hype Williams. In 2010 Ray began directing music videos professionally for Miami based music video production company BeeMac Films and in 2011 he began working in the world of television commercials starting out as a P.A. (production assistant) for Radical Media. During that time he read several books about how to break into directing TV commercials including Thomas Richter's 'The 30 Second Storyteller'. While directing a music video in Miami of April 2012, Ray had a life changing phone conversation with Kenny Snyder, director of Belly 2 (and cousin of Will Smith) in which Snyder encouraged Ray to make his first movie by funding it himself instead of waiting for investors. Later that year in the fall of 2012 Ray saved up $5,000 and wrote & directed his first feature film 'Black & White', a drama about a black man with an unhealthy obsession with white women. The film was shot in only 8 days and was released at film festivals in 2013 to great reviews.
In 2014 Ray wrote a horror script titled 'The Unwanted' about abortion that came very close to getting financed, but investors backed out at the last second. Ray had traveled the U.S. to location scout for the film and even hired crew and the entire cast, which included Oscar nominated actor Eric Roberts in a large supporting role. In 2014 Ray also formed Tree House Film Studios, his feature film production company.
After the heartbreaking setback with 'The Unwanted', Ray moved to Los Angeles briefly in 2015 to pursue an opportunity to direct music videos for Riveting Entertainment, singer Chris Brown's production company. In 2017 he returned to the Big Apple when he was hired by a New Jersey based producer to direct the 'Trump For the People' documentary short about the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. The project would go on to be nominated for Best Short Documentary at the 2018 Black and Latino Film Awards Festival and later that year it premiered on Amazon Prime. 2019 led to Ray moving back to Los Angeles, California permanently where he was mentored by veteran TV Commercial director Jordan Brady and in 2020 Ray signed with Rodeo Show Productions to direct television commercials.
Ray continues to write his own feature film scripts to direct and shoots TV commercials in between directing feature films. According to Ray 'Visual storytelling is visual storytelling. Whether it's a 30 second commercial or a 2 hour movie. But movie making is my passion. I want to change the visual language of cinema. Movies have looked the same for a long, long time. I want to change the way movies look and tell different types of stories across different types of genres. Genres you wouldn't necessarily expect from an African American filmmaker'.- IMDb Mini Biography By: THFS LLC.
- Often places one layer of footage inside the silhouette of another character, similar to the Kanye West and Chris Martin "Homecoming" music video directed by Hype Williams. Often uses this effect to transition between scenes.
- Often ends his films with open ended conclusions in the final scene, usually involving the main character (or someone else) having to make a choice between two things, but the screen cuts to black and the movie ends before you see what choice they made.
- Characters who hate their lives and take drastic measures to improve things but only make matters worse
- Rising Smoke logo which says "A Michael Ray Film" at the start and end of his films/music videos
- Protagonists with traumatic memories from their past they are running from
- One of the filmmakers he admires most is Tony Scott. He used a clip from The Hunger, Scott's directorial debut from 1982, in his debut feature film Black & White. Often wears a red hat, an homage to Tony's red hat he often wore.
- Often seen wearing a red Budweiser baseball cap.
- The film that had the biggest influence on him is Tony Scott's 'Domino' (2005) starring Keira Knightley and Mickey Rourke. Was greatly influenced by the visual style of that film and watched it obsessively on a daily basis while in college, studying it, and shooting countless short films trying to emulate the look of the film achieved by Scott and cinematographer Dan Mindel.
- Was born Michael Raymond Foster but chose the director name of Michael Ray since it rhymes with Michael Bay, a director he admires greatly and was very inspired by growing up, particularly the way he shoots action scenes.
- Suffers from a very minor case of the skin disease vitiligo.
- My biggest fear is death. I think that's part of why I love being a filmmaker. Even after you die, your films live on forever and are talked about forever. So in a way, you become immortal.
- The director has one job. Take that vision, that movie he saw in his head when he first read or wrote that initial script, and hire the cast and crew and get the right amount of money to make that vision, that movie in his head, become a reality on the big screen. 99.9% of the time what ends up on that screen isn't what you wanted, but the .1% of the time that it is, is pure bliss.
- To me life is all about the choices you make. You make good choices you will have a good life. You make bad choices you will have a bad life. It's really that simple to me. People always complain about how they hate their life, hate their job, hate their relationship, or hate the fact that they don't have a relationship. Hate the fact their dreams didn't come true. If you're lazy and don't spend time with people who have the career you want, how will your career get better? If you date losers and people who don't respect you, how do you expect to find love & happiness? We blame the universe, destiny, society, others, when the blame belongs with ourselves. If we made better choices, everything we want our life to be would happen. That's why my movies end the way they do. A character having to make a choice between two things. That choice will shape their future. But we never actually see that choice they make though, it cuts to black. Because I don't want the audience to worry about where the character's life went. I want them to think about their own life. The choices they've made.
- I think Hollywood doesn't like to take a lot of risk. Transformers, Spider Man, that has a built in audience. They'll come anyway. What is a risk is the $30 million to $70 million dollar movies. The super low budget horror films are the most financially successful.
- Obsession beats hard work every time. Be obsessed.
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