About

MIKE RYAN, STUNT DRIVER & STUNT DRIVING COORDINATOR, RACE CAR & BIG RIG TRUCK DRIVER, AND HEAVY EQUIPMENT SPECIALIST

 

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MIke Ryan Founder

When it comes to working with vehicle stunts for the camera, you don’t get there by guessing. As a professional stunt driver and stunt coordinator with over 30 years experience, Mike has a formula and an approach for each and every movement in a sequence. Mike spends a lot of time crafting vehicle stunts so that when he is on the set, he can address the project from every conceivable angle. Mike reads the treatment, spends time with the director, UPM and Special Effects team to get the comprehensive scope of the stunt and the budget and then he begins his process. From the location to the characters, Mike works to make the scene amazing, maximize the set up and make it safe for the talent and the crew. He considers the set and the environment it is in, to minimize damage. Not only to ensure more takes for the director, but also to protect production from liability. He often works with studio safety personnel as well as production’s insurance carriers to describe how he will run the stunts and handle safety. In Mike’s 35 years in the business, he has worked primarily as a stunt driver and a driving coordinator. He is a founding member of Driver’s, Inc and a member of LA Motorsports Driving Team. Additionally, he has worked in special effects, accident reconstructions, for the state and several law firms. He has produced live stunt shows and he started Picture Vehicles Unlimited in 1982, which he owned until 2015. Mike’s background in racing includes desert and vintage dirt track motorcycles, offshore race boats, local short track stock cars, SCCA events and racing Hill Climbs and the Bonneville Salt Flats in Semi Trucks. Mike has set speed records at Pikes Peak, Mt. Washington, Queenstown, NZ and at the Bonneville Salt Flats, running 225.675 MPH in a 23,000 pound Freightliner semi truck. Mike is the first driver in the US to ever drift a semi truck and in six months time in 2011, he gained over 1.5 million views on his various You Tube videos.

Mike has spent the majority of his career in TV Commercials. Print, TV, live shows and features come second. Commercials are the most difficult driving in the business. Demonstrating a vehicles performance without wrecking it, while running it near it’s limits through, smoke, on wet roads with the sun in your eyes if often much harder than rolling a car over. But if that is what you want, Mike has rolled plenty of cars and semi trucks as well. If it has wheels, Mike will jump, roll, pipe, T-bone, side-wind, slide, spin, ramp to ramp jump, cannon roll, jack-knife a semi or just wreck the hell out of it and he has hundreds of jobs on his resume to prove it.

 

Sizes:

Member-Affiliation:

  • Height: 6′
  • Weight: 215 lbs
  • Shirt: 17-35
  • Pant: 32-36
  • Coat: 44R
  • Helmet: 7 3/4
  • Shoe: 10
  • Glove: Large
  • AMA
  • NASCAR
  • SCORE
  • SAG
  • AFTRA
  • Class A License Includes HAZMAT Bus, & Doubles
  • Bonneville Land Speed Racers
  • Pikes Peak Hill Climb Racers
  • LA Motorsports

For a full printable resume, please download here.

How We Work:

When it comes to working with vehicle stunts for the camera, you don’t get there by guessing.  With over 30 years experience as a stunt man and stunt coordinator, Mike has a formula and an approach for each and every movement in a sequence.  From reality shows to feature films, celebrity talent often needs to perform some level of stunt driving. We have the space and experience to train them to safely in any vehicle wether it be a motorcycle, boat, race car, off-road racer,semi-truck or bulldozer.
Right from the start, we take the burden from you and work out the details in a safe, efficient and cost-considerate way. With 37 years in the stunt industry and even more in many forms of racing, we have the experience and knowledge to do it right the first time, whether it is providing talent, fabrication, vehicle effects or sourcing vehicles through Picture Vehicles Unlimited.

From reality shows to feature films, celebrity talent often needs to perform some level of stunt driving. We have the space and experience to train them to safely perform in any vehicle whether it be a motorcycle, boat, race car, off-road racer,semi-truck or bulldozer.

We often reach out to Special Effects Coordinator’s and technicians for their expertise. Collaboration is key to successful projects. We have relationships with design, mechanical, aeronautical, military, marine and accident reconstruction engineers and their combined expertise allows us to understand the physics involved in measurable ways. The days of guesswork left when litigation arrived and we need to know the math if we plan to protect the stunt performers in high action sequences.

When projects demand special shapes or materials, being able to reach out to the designers and engineers at some of our racing sponsors has been a major benefit. Knowing that I can make a call to Freightliner’s staff or Michelin’s, or any of the others, gives us the confidence and the competence to tackle some really wild projects.

We specialize in the impossible!

Our in-house fabrication shop can handle most projects and just across the street from us is a full steel and wood working fabrication shop with several 5 axis mills, various lathes, tubing benders, machine tools , computer controlled water jet and plasma cutting and complete Cad-Cam design capabilities.

We have a variety of trucks and trailers that are capable of delivering anything that we build and a full staff of car prep technicians, mechanics and fabricators that can operate anywhere your set is. They understand your goals, time constraints and budget and they are there to get the job done.