Ryan Lampe

Growing up in Melbourne, Australia, I was obsessed with movies. Though I wanted to be a film critic as a teenager, the more conservative side of my personality temporarily won out during college and I pursued economics and computer science before moving to the United States to complete a Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University. Nonetheless, as a much-needed respite from the drudgery of writing a dissertation, I was able to review movies for The Stanford Daily newspaper. (Sadly, one of the editors took all the high profile releases so I was left to cover “gems” like Rush Hour 3, 16 Blocks, and Lucky Number Slevin.)

Fortunately, my passion for dissecting a film’s story, figuring out why it does or doesn’t work, endured after graduation. While employed as a professor of economics, I dipped my toes into filmmaking as a part-time student at Academy Art University…and LOVED it. Several years later, struggling to summon the enthusiasm to teach the importance omitted variable bias to skeptical students, I made the difficult decision to leave my tenured position at California State University, East Bay to finish my degree full time and pursue my dream of writing and directing movies.

But the one shining light about the job I left is that it provided me inspiration for the narrative short film that has garnered me a nomination for Best Screenplay at the NXTUP Film Festival. I also received a nomination for a four-minute short film, The Clairvoyant, in the Best Short Film Challenge category. I can’t wait to get into post-production on my aforementioned narrative short film and, if all goes to plan, pre-production on a feature film version.