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Ryan Patrick: A Few Of My Favourite Things
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The Picture North talks through the gremlins, grandfather's lamps and glass-half-full mantra that keep him creatively inspired.
We'll give it to you straight - if one of your Favourite Things is a Gremlins puppet from a homage short you created, you're straight into the shots' good books.
Picture North director Ryan Patrick has had work screened everywhere from Cannes Lions and SXSW to the Berlin Music Video Awards, yet it's his tribute to the 80s classic that pushed him into the spotlight, gaining fans online and being picked up by Short of the Week, Slash Film, CNET, Vice, Bloody Disgusting, and Booooooom, among others.
Currently a 2026 protégé in the DGA’s TV Director Development Initiative, here he shares the delightful doodads that keep him inspired.
The Gremlin
Gremlins was always a movie I loved growing up, and I never understood why it still never got a proper remake.
At some point, I stopped waiting and just decided to do it myself.
Right before the pandemic, I made a short film called Gremlins: Recall.
Working with a creature designer, we built our own puppets, sculpting them in clay and casting them in latex.
This is one of the actual puppets we made for that film.
That project gained a lot of traction online, and it was the first time things really shifted for me.
I got an agent and a manager out of it.
So this little guy always reminds me of what can happen when you just go for it.
The Mirror
This is a mirror I had painted by a sign painter here in Los Angeles.
It says, “What if it turns out better than you could have ever imagined?”
I got it because, for me, something you create rarely turns out exactly as you picture it in your head.
Sometimes I hold back ideas because I think they’re not original enough, or I don’t have the resources.
This reminds me to drop that and just go for it.
Most of the work I’m proud of didn’t turn out how I expected, but it often turned out better than I expected.
Little surprises that strengthened the piece.
The Original iPhone
This is my original 2007 Apple iPhone that I bought at the Apple Store when I worked there.
I was a freshman in college then and spent that summer working in the store during the iPhone’s launch.
I saved up and bought one of the very first ones.
I keep it because it marks a shift.
Not just for phones, but also for filmmaking and advertising.
This little device changed, and continues to change, how we shoot, watch and think about content.
Sometimes I turn it on just to see how far things have come.
It reminds me of that moment when everything started to move in a completely new direction.
The Bolex
This is a 16mm Bolex camera my mum found for me about 10 years ago at a shop back in my hometown in Florida.
I keep it for projects, but I also use it to shoot friends’ weddings.
Instead of a traditional wedding gift, I’ll shoot a roll or two on 16mm for them.
It also takes me back to how I got started.
For extra cash while in high school, I shot weddings around town with my Canon GL2.
So this camera connects a lot of dots for me.
It’s tied to home, and to the first time I realised I could actually do this filmmaking thing for a living.
The Mining Lamps
These are antique carbide lamps that belonged to my great-grandfather.
He was born in 1895 in Slovakia and spent most of his life working as a coal miner.
He used these in the mines of Landfair, Pennsylvania, from around 1915 all the way into the 1950s.
They would have clipped right to his helmet as he went down into the dark with these burning on his head.
These are probably the oldest objects I own that have actually been in my family's hands.
There's something in that connection I keep coming back to.
They remind me of where my family started and how lucky I am that I get to do what I do.
