Rory Kramer, a Professional Life Liver

Self-made and driven by his passion for adventure seeking and video producing, Rory Kramer is the freelance filmmaker of our generation. He has created music videos for Justin Bieber, The Chainsmokers and Avicii, as well as toured with a few of these artists and created some impactful content on his journeys world-wide. Once a 15 year old kid, inspired by MTV’s Jackass, filming his friends skateboarding in Indiana, would turn his passion for videography into a career 15 years later.  Although an exciting thought, this dream never seemed possible, and the road to get there would not be easy.

At 25 years old, Kramer was living in his parents’ basement with a college degree that meant nothing to him, and lacked a sense of purpose and drive.  His father told him it was time to find some motivation and to go get what he wanted. For a while, Rory believed he wanted to be an actor.  His father drove him 3,000 miles from Indiana to California with minimal money to his name, in hopes of an acting career.  This path and acting career vision seemed to disappear quickly, and so did his money.  He then got an unfulfilling job working for Netflix and Hulu as a content quality control manager, and got into the habit of filling up a water bottle with vodka every day for work.  A girlfriend he had at the time encouraged him to get back into his creative mind-set and film anything and everything.  Nearing the age of 30, Rory became inspired to fall back on his passion of filmmaking and create montages of trips and vacations he would take.  One of his good friends just so happened to be the up and coming DJ, 3LAU’s, manager, and told Rory he would pay him $250 a day to go on tour with them.  This initial connection to this industry opened up opportunity after opportunity, soon after, leading him to creating a music video for Avicii.  Three years later, he would be touring the world with some of the biggest names in the music industry, like, Justin Bieber and The Chainsmokers.  He had not known it at the time, but all of the dreams, that once seemed unattainable, were coming to life.

In 2017, Kramer launched his very own TV show with MTV called Dare To Live, which challenges his artist friends (Justin Bieber, Steve Aoki, Iggy Azalea, The Chainsmokers and More) to step beyond their comfort zone on a worldwide hunt to face discomfort and fear. Rory Kramer considers himself a “professional life liver,” capturing the good the bad and the challenges he has faced through social media and YouTube, and was given the opportunity to display his passions on MTV; the platform that inspired him as a 15-year-old kid.

The short film/video I chose to highlight,  Fear Is Only Skin Deep (Iceland, depicts who Rory Kramer is as a “professional life liver” and filmmaker.  It was very hard to choose a video of his because of the variety of films he has created: music videos, trips, tours etc. This video really encapsulates who Rory Kramer is and how he is visually inspiring other young filmmakers around the world.