Athlete is promising performer

Bjorn Ryning acts in a short film. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Bjorn Ryning hones his crafts whether it be hoops, content creation or acting.

The budding thespian is focusing his YouTube channel on the numerous short films at a California university in which he’s cast.

“So far, I've acted in 20 films here on Chapman,” he said. “I'm definitely focused on putting short films out since I've been making so many here. I'm basically posting all the ones that I feel like my best performance are in or I play a big role in. My criteria is act as best as possible in the films.”

Bjorn’s education coincides with his content.

“I'm continuing to learn acting as well,” he said. “I'm taking an acting class right now here at Chapman and I'm looking to take more acting classes in the future. As I learn it, I want to track my progression on YouTube by continuously posting films I make and hopefully they get better and better.”

Bjorn, 18, has ample opportunity to work with a variety of directors on campus.

“I've worked on 20 short films, so with around 20 student directors,” he said. “After today, it will be 22 because I'm shooting two films after this. Chapman is a huge film school. There's film students everywhere, and a lot of them are directors. There's definitely not as many actors as directors. It's definitely great for me because I love acting, and there's a lot of directors that need actors.”

Consequently, Bjorn gets experience working under various directing syles.

“I've definitely seen the whole spectrum of student directors here,” he said. “There's definitely some that are very beginner level. There's some that are going here just because they don't know what else to do, but they're just so far ahead of everybody. I just worked on a film with this guy Kaden Socrates. Excellent, excellent filmmaker. He was far and beyond one of the best directors I worked with. He did stuff with NBC. He knew exactly what he wanted.”

Bjorn rather have a director take numerous takes for a scene than not do enough to get the scene right.

“I'm sort of a little bit of a perfectionist myself, so I love it when the director wants to get it exactly how they want it,” he said.”I find it way better when the director knows exactly what they want and can convey it to the actor. I'd much rather have a director with way more takes than a director that says, all right, this will work”

Bjorn also worked with an instructor who has professional experience.

“I participated in a class with a professor, Gil Bettman, who produced a TV series with David Hasselhoff, which was pretty cool,” he said. “I just helped him with this exercise. I worked with him and his whole class. I was getting paid to just help out.”

Bjorn also wants to be behind the camera.

“My main interest is in acting, but I've always liked making my own short films,” he said. “Definitely have an interest in directing as well.”

To that end, college freshman Bjorn and fellow student Grayson Nygren are collaborating. 

“We're making our own film as well right now,” he said. “Definitely trying to be as creative as possible.”

Bjorn and Grayson devised a plan to participate in as many student films as possible.

“I go to Chapman University, so there's a ton of film students,” he said. “We had this plan that we're going to do everything we can to get in as many films here as possible and help out with as many films as possible.”

How Far? depicts what lengths a pet owner may go after losing his dog.

Bjorn and Grayson put the word out.

“We created these flyers,” he said. “We put them all around campus. We made 100. Put them on every single door on campus. That was our first step to try to act in every single film that we can here. Our next step was we found out that majors are separated by dorm floors, so there's different floors in major buildings. One floor would be all film, so there'd be floors of just all film students.”

Bjorn’s work experience aided him in this endeavor.

“Back home, we are both door-to-door salesmen,” he said. “I do window washing door-to-door back home. He has his own landscaping business, so he does door to door. So we're super confident coming up to every single film door knocking on their door, saying if you ever need actors, we're the people to act in your film.”

Bjorn recalled his channel’s original content.

“What I started out doing is I did challenges with my buddies,” he said. “We wanted to make it outdoors, so we did this one thing where we dug a pool in our backyard. We just wanted to record it, see if we could do it. We ended up doing it, and it turns out it was not that great of a pool, but it was pretty fun to do. Recently, I've been moving more into short films.”

Bjorn never tried doing YouTube until a year ago.

“I always had a knack for video editing,” he said. “Last year, I did two film internships with two different companies. While I was creating the channel I was learning a lot of editing, especially on this new program called DaVinci Resolve. I learned a lot about storyboarding. I learned a lot about filming, directing, audio editing and that just all fed my wanting to make more videos.”

Bjorn was inspired by watching YouTubers.

“I loved watching Dude Perfect growing up,” he said. “Mister Beast as well. I remember watching him early days, and I always wanted to make videos that could reach a large audience, could make people laugh or can inspire emotion in people. I also watched, the inspiration for the pool video was these guys that make these huge pool structures just out in the forest. I always thought it was so cool, so that was the inspiration for the pool video.”

Bjorn plays a grieving boyfriend in the award-winning Replay..

Doing Youtube led Bjorn to want to become an actor.

“It was always just going out, performing social experiments, doing cool stuff in the backyard,” he said. “It was all acting in some form. Even though it was natural, it was all trying to make it funny, trying to make it entertaining. That's definitely what encouraged me to want to act more seriously.”

Bjorn already had a stage background.

“I was in this fourth grade play, Beauty and the Beast, and I played the Beast and I remember I just had a blast and it was super fun,” he said. “That's where it all kicked off. Ever since then, I just love being in front of the camera and I love making movies.”

Bjorn prefers acting in front of the camera than being on stage.

“I definitely love screen acting way more than theater acting,” he said. “Theater acting is more of a sport. It's more of you're preparing for like the big game day or the big event. That's a whole different art form. Screen acting is you're trying to get everything as perfect as possible to where the final product will look as good as it can. I'm a big believer in final products. I really love seeing something that's polished and well done.”

Bjorn said film permits artists to refine their work.

“That's definitely why I like screen acting more,” he said. “You can work on it for longer. You can tweak everything to where it's just how you like it. Whereas with theater acting, it's a little more it's a little more natural, but it's just one take. The final product is how you perform on the one day, it's not how you perform in the best take out of 10 takes. I really like seeing the finished result and for that reason, I like screen acting more.”

Bjorn serves as boom operator for a film.

Bjorn is willing to go as far as he can with acting as long as he continues to enjoy it.

“That's not really in my mind right now,” he said. “In my mind right now is I've so much fun working on these sets with all these film producers here. My thing has always been just go where I find the most joy and happiness. Right now I find the most joy and happiness in making films with other students. If I take it far and one day become a celebrity doing that and I'm still having fun, that'll be an easy thing to handle.”

Bjorn is a wing on the college basketball team.

“Division 3 basketball,” he said. “We set our first practice yesterday. It's going really well. It's super fun.”

Bjorn prefers the tight unit a player is part of on a court.

“I've played so many sports,” he said. “I've played rugby, I've played baseball, I've done track, I've done cross-country, I played soccer before. The one thing about basketball is that all five people are always working together at the same time. You have to have the right people out there. I love that it's a vertical game.”

Along with teamwork and strategy, Bjorn likes basketball the most for another reason.

“You can play a million different games within the game, but I probably love the culture most of all,” he said. “I'll automatically have a connection with anybody that plays basketball seriously. I can automatically talk to them about basketball for hours. The culture and the ability to play it wherever. All you need are basketball shoes and a basketball in a court.”

For acting, Bjorn developed a method to learn lines.

“I highlight my part and what works for me really well is I'll read out the script,” he said. “I'll read through it 15, 20 times, and then I'll just go from there. If I mess up, I'll be like, oh, what did I mess up on? I'll read it before I go to bed. I'll read it right in the morning. That's how I do it.”

Bjorn said it’s hardest for him to keep a poker face while performing.

“I'm good at performing sadness really well, and I'm good at performing anger really well,” he said. “One emotion that I want to work on is keeping a straight face in awkward situations. You've learned to try and get out of the situation because it might lead to a conflict. Everything that you do in acting, you want to give into the conflict. You want to embrace it.”

Bjorn can’t conceive of something within reason he wouldn’t do if needed to secure an acting role.

“If I don't die doing it or have to get seriously injured, then I'd probably do it,” he said.

Bjorn would not follow the leads of actors who took such drastic measures as becoming anorexic for a role — at least not yet.

“I take a lot of pride in my fitness,” he said. “I'm playing college basketball as well as acting. If I had to become anorexic for a role, I can say that I would not do it just because that would definitely jeopardize basketball. But I'm going to drop the ball someday. if I drop the ball and somebody says you got to play an anorexic dude, you got to lose all this weight and I think it would help me play the role better, yeah.”

Bjorn sees advantages of both television and film.

“I've always been a movie buff,” he said. “If I could be in movies, I would prefer that. But speaking consistency wise, it would be nice to be in a television series just knowing that I could play the same role and I could really get in depth with that role. There's pros and cons to both. Television, I feel like you can dive deeper into a role, and you can learn by each performance you do with that television how you can become the character. Movies, it's definitely more becoming the character for the climax, the drop and the resolution.”

Bjorn and buddy Kian Davani dig to create a pool in a nonfiction video.

Bjorn is open to doing commercials as well.

“I definitely do commercials,” he said. “That's what I'm actually working on doing right now. I'm applying for some right now.”

Bjorn also works on raising mental health awareness.

“I'm selling bracelets that I ordered from another company,” he said. “They just have the words be bored on them. It's just a daily reminder to basically get off your phone, get off social media. I'm raising awareness for mental challenges and depression that teens are having right now because of social media addiction. I'm trying to spread awareness for that. I donate a portion to charity for each bracelet.”

Bjorn would like to be remembered someday for his craft.

“I want to be remembered as someone who takes pride in his performance,’ he said. “If I could be remembered for a movie that I made, just like Matt Damon made Good Will Hunting, that would definitely be my dream, to make a movie and act in it. That's one of the hardest things to do because it's your idea. You created it. How do you convey that to others? If I could do that and have one movie like that, that I can show my children, my grandchildren and explain the whole process, that would be amazing.”

Bjorn stays motivated to create content and seek acting opportunities.

“I'm a huge Christian,” he said. “I am very into my faith. God has a purpose for everybody. God gives everybody specific DNA, specific talents to have a purpose on this earth. That purpose is motivated by joy.  just follow the joy, follow what I'm having fun in right now. I'm having fun in acting. I'm having fun in experimenting. What keeps me motivated is knowing that if I ever have a hard time acting, I know there'll be a brighter side because God will always lead me on the correct path.”

Bjorn plays hoops in college.

Bjorn isn’t intimidated by online hate toward Christianity.

“Not at all,” he said. “I was raised Christian. Faith will always be there no matter what. It's something you can always rely on, and I've always believed that. The times that I've stuck with faith and the times that I've been grateful and repent of my sins each night, it's always helped me stay in one with myself and stay confident, know that stuff takes time and that God's got a plan.”

Bjorn dispensed advice to aspiring YouTubers.

“Go for it,” he said. “Just start. Don't worry about getting a camera. Don't worry about getting anything. Use your phone to start off. But have a plan in mind with a niche that you want to go into. Just be creative. Don't worry about any of the statistics. Don't worry about any of the views or anything. Make something that you can be proud of and have fun with it. If you're not having fun with it, don't do it.”

Bjorn said anyone wanting to become an actor should take advantage of every opportunity to learn.

“Right now, I am the aspiring actor,” he said. “I'm taking advice. I'm getting on calls with people right now that are successful in the industry and I'm asking for advice. You can't be scared to put yourself out there. There's a lot of people that want to act and the way you can make yourself different is being the actor that everybody wants to work with. I always try to have a smile on my face. I always try to shake everybody's hands, look them in the eyes.”

Bjorn’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@bjornryning/