Biography
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'.
