I am Colt Rylee. I am a writer, filmmaker, and creator. Spending the entirety of my youth growing up in the isolation of rural Pennslyvania, I found interest in many forms of creation and art: from making stick figure action comic books in middle school, simple animations and exstensive worldbuilding in highschool, to a Film Prodction Major in college at Rochester Institute of Technology. I spend most of my time learning new skills to create new things. At my core I am a writer, and I work to express narrative, theme, and emotion in the form that best suits the story.
In film school, I have developed the crafts of screenwriting, sound design, directing, production design, practical SFX, and virtual production. I have been able to use the Rochester Institute of Technology facilities to learn state of the art equipment, such as an LED virtual production wall, Mixing 7.1 (and everything under) surround sound, industry standard color correction, and Unreal Engine for virtual prodution and previsualization.
Short Films
I have written and directed the following three films. Each is a unique example of how I push myself to learn skills and techniques out of my comfort zone to make myself a more well-rounded creator.
Blood & Books is a neon noir film where I experimented with multiple character storytelling, action sequences, split screens, a mixture of spoken English and ASL, and directing a steadicam.
You Are A Fly is a small project which showcases my thought processes handling every creative aspect of a project by myself.
Break in the Clouds: I am working on my capstone film to finish my undergraduate at the Rochester Institute of Technology. This is a romance drama inspired by the Shinto tale of Amateratsu and the Heavenly Rock Cave. it follows a girl as she discovers herself and love when she has an unpleasent encounter with her enstranged brother. The principle photography is done for this film; I am in the process of shooting pickups and then I will be working with an editor and colorist. I myself am doing the sound design for the film as well as being the writer and director. I am also working with a Japanese band/composer to make the score for the film.
There are more videos on my youtube of some of my older or less notable work:
Photography
Here are my favroite works of photography and modeling that I have done in the last couple of years.
All of these have been shot on Fuji X series cameras and edited on Adobe Lightroom.
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Modeling: All of my modeling work can be found on my Instagram. I have done modeling for photo students at The Rochester Institute of Technolgy and for photo studetns at Nagoya University in Japan.
Writing
This section will probably evolve the most overtime, but for the moment I will just talk about the longform or in progress works that I have been wroking on and their structure.
Zigil: My fantasy world, based upon a desire to run a Dungeon and Dragons game, has been my longest project running for six years. Most of the structure of this world is waht you would expect from a traditional fantasy world. This includes different species, timelines, calaneders, cities, politics, relgion, and magic. It is a slow paced wander through horror and fantastical sides of the world ranging from highly magical cities in the sky and peace to dark gothic cities with more horrors lurking in the shadows. I like to focus the flaws of people no mater how far from mundane they seem. Pulling from flaws of gods much like the Greek dieties, the fears of mortals that manifest in much of what we see in fear-mongering Christianity, and the desire for revenge or a simple life; understanding that most things in life are selfish intent, no mater how "virtuous".
This is a purpetual project that will continue to expand.
Starry-Eyed Wretch: A teen with no name who grew up in the first generation after the modern world "faded away" finds a satalite phone that connects to a similar aged girl on the other side. She tells them to "follow passion to the stars that never sleep". The teen navigates the stars following the planet Venus to the east. The world they inhabit is a near futrue that does not fall to nuclear annihlation, but a war that leads to famine and collapse with increasing climate change as the planet rids itself of us before we can destroy it. A slow takeover of nature and an eerie silence of societal collapse as just enough of the modern world moves to a slow, renewable state. The teen experiences very little luxary of a modern world and even less interaction with other people, without ever knowing any different. The story explores my own feelings of fatalism in our world and desire for some divine power. It starts meditative and slow, ramping up as the lingering modern world peirces the teen's mind, the more they move into the broken world to an almsot elvated maddness.
This is currently a short screenplay that I wish to expand into a feature length script.
Monty's Monsters: Monty's Monsters is a full length musical stageplay that takes place in the 70s. The story follows a group of monster hunters, a found family that find themselves in a bar every night recounting their stories and having interpersonal relationships and conflicts. The muscial starts with Sam, a doctor who is now disgraced and removed from practive after a supernatural event that kills a patient. Down on their luck, they offer aid to this group of monster hunters, becoming a part of their family. This evolves into a love story between the group's roughish type and brusier type, while the group's father figure and leader has a dangerous past resurface that threatens the family. This is romanance and tragedy in a one-set muscial; a 70s modern world where cryptids and folklore haunt the human realm.
The first act is written a first draft. This is a mixed genre muscial which would ideally lead me to collaborate with a wide variety of artists to give these characters voices.
Production Design & SFX
A lot of my focus in film school outside of directing and writing is spent in production design. Not having a set of classes or workshops to guide me, everything about production design I have learned through experimentation and failure. I have also created many practical effects from scratch, inluding a rain machine and a compressed blood squib, both seen in Blood & Books.
My largest undertaking so far has been Rosie Sirk's capstone film Lamkin, which was the Faculty Choice of RIT's Graduating Class of 2023. I worked with a professional's private costume collection that we rented for the film to curate all the outfits for this midieval period piece. I spent several days before shooting to build a bar from scratch, and worked to maintain continuity as we moved through the shooting days. Additionally, I handled the SFX makeup during this five day shoot.
Artwork & Creations
These are two cute little character sprite loops I have made.
While studying a summer semester in Japan I took a class on Ikibana as well as other Jaapanese arts. Here are some of the flower arragnments.
For a long while I have been interested in cosplay and Rennaissance Faire costumes, mainly utilizing my experience with sewing and wood work.
I have been learning Unreal Engine and its sequencer function, using already cosntructed assets to learn the new previsualization process.
Final note: This website is the product of my new foray into learning HTML and Java Script.
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