I grew up in Grand Prairie, Texas. My high school love for theatre and performing steered my eventual career paths. First in acting, and later in design, I attended three colleges (Lon Morris, Michigan, and Texas) during a four-year drama scholarship.  Along the way, I took film classes (my true love) whenever I could. With my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, I spent a little time designing professionally for the theatre, which, as it turned out, made for a simple segue into television.

     I started as a production designer (props, costumes, sets, graphics, animation, etc.) on a children’s series for PBS.  I followed this as an art director and later producer on the same series, Carrascolendas.  In between funding for the children's series, I went to New York and worked for Time, Inc. as a suit (formally, the Director of Operations -- Northeast) in the broadcast division. At twenty-three years old they put me in charge of a staff of twenty-seven hard working people -- go figure -- however, we were successful and largely responsible for creating the "pay-per-view" entertainment industry. Our very first event was the live pay-per-view boxing match between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman from Zaire, Africa. I was just a kid but I knew what we were doing was going to be big.

     I moved to the Washington, D.C. area to work on television projects funded by the Office of Education for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. At the Educational Film Center I worked as an Art Director for twenty-eight, half-hour film episodes. All in all, I ended up working on over eighty thirty-minute shows for PBS.

     While I was in Washington, D.C., I met a director who persuaded me to come to Denver, CO and work with his new company shooting commercials. So, I helped build one of the first regional teleproduction/post-production facilities in the country, Telemation Productions. We shot film and tape and had the newest cameras, a great stage, a location truck, grip and electric, a scenery shop and several edit rooms. My overwhelming desire to take over every aspect of production led me to beg them to let me start directing spots. They gave in and made me a Producer/Director -- so, I eventually figured out how to put it all together as I not only produced and directed but supervised the edits as well. It was a crazy place -- Telemation billed production by the hour and sometimes we would walk around with folders in our hands containing scripts for several different shoots we would do in one day. Looking back, it gave me a great chance to work on every kind of shoot imaginable -- valuable experience I still use to this day. I worked there six years, and seriously, I must have directed three or four hundred spots a year -- and I may be under estimating!

     After getting a chance to direct productions, I felt I needed to shoot them myself, also. So, eventually, when I thought I was ready, I proclaimed myself a Director of Photography. To facilitate that transition I quit Telemation and started my own production company, Brent Ramsey Productions (which had no trouble in hiring a beginner DP with so much promise), which I ran for fourteen years. 

     Now, independent, I work as a Director or Director of Photography or as a Director/DP combination. Besides working in practically every state in the US, I have shot film in Asia, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Canada and many spots in between. 

     My proudest moment was winning a Clio and an IBA on a micro budget ("Waterworld/Jake") -- check it out. I shot it in my house on just 800' of 35mm film -- then edited it myself using tape-to-tape 3/4" decks that were in the ad agency's screening room. I think we gave Jake like only 150 dollars. Hey, Jake, thanks! I owe you one, man.

"Jake" from Brent Ramsey on Vimeo.