Football Film Mogul Ryan Always Ready to Roll ‘Em

And you thought Steven Spielberg had been churning out the films lately.

Forget it, Dan Ryan, 58, of Sports Film Processing of Whittier produces 80,000 feet of film during an average weekend.

That’s 15 miles of film, enough to stretch from LeBard Stadium in Costa Mesa up Harbor Boulevard, past Disneyland to Glover Stadium in Anaheim.

We’re talking volume here.

Every Thursday through Saturday night in the fall, the Cecil B. De Mille of California football films turns out the equivalent of nine feature-length movies.

Of course, Ryan’s audience is rather select and demanding. It’s comprised entirely of football coaches and players, and they’re all bent on winning every week.

Fifty of Orange County’s high school football teams depend on Ryan’s films as the basis of their game preparations and strategies. That includes many of the area’s most successful programs--Capistrano Valley, Newport Harbor, Esperanza, Mission Viejo, Valencia, Loara and Marina high schools.

Ryan also develops films for Cal State Fullerton, Fullerton College and Saddleback College, as well as training films for USC. In all, he handles films for 125 Southern California schools, an empire that extends from Claremont to San Clemente.

In his spare time--usually meaning January to July--Ryan has filmed everything from the family habits of gray whales in Baja California to the U.S. swim team’s historic 1973 trip to the People’s Republic of China to 1984 Olympic swimming and tennis.

Ryan looks like a cross between Yul Brynner and Joe Garagiola.

“He’s an atom bomb of energy, who doesn’t know the words slow down,” said Bob Schlatter, a counselor at Downey High School who co-authored a 1981 book for Eastman Kodak with Ryan on filming sports.

“He’s never had a quiet moment since I’ve known him,” said Schlatter, who met Ryan in 1955. “They threw away the mold on a person like Dan.”

Ryan’s sports credentials were bred in his blood. His father, Patrick Ryan, who died when Dan was 9, was the 1920 Olympic gold medal winner in the hammer throw, setting a world record that lasted 25 years.

Dan Ryan’s work space--down the street from a mushroom farm and behind an upholstery shop--is the laboratory of a modern-day Merlin.

Its shelves and benches are cluttered with reel upon reel of film, its rafters laden with 250-gallon vats of stored chemicals. Editing and developing machines press into the aisles from every side.

The lab appears as cramped as a maze, but Ryans’ clients, the coaches, say the results are phenomenally efficient.

The system glides into motion at sunset on every game night.

Ryan’s 50 trained cameramen work as independent subcontractors in shooting the games. Afterward, they drop off their film at police departments around the county.

After an employee picks it up, Ryan and his five workers process it, a team of ABC sports editors “cut” it next door. The completed films are waiting for the coaches at local pick-up points before sunrise.

“He’s a giant in the football filming field in Southern California,” Schlatter said. “The reason he is so highly regarded is the service he provides--immediate. He’s quick and precise, and his word is his bond.”

Ryan, who retired in 1970 after 24 years of junior high and high school teaching, began toting movie cameras to football games 30 years ago, when the art of sports motion photography was still a curiosity.

Beginning in 1954, he accompanied Anaheim High School’s legendary Coach Clare VanHoorebeke, a pioneer of football filming, on his midnight post-game drives to Hollywood, the only place to get the film developed at the time.

Ryan remembers VanHoorebeke’s impatience at having to wait for film from the television show “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” to be completed before the lab got to the important stuff, Anaheim football.

“I couldn’t stand his cigar, but I got by,” Ryan said. He and VanHoorebeke were friends for 30 years.

“Dan knows everyone in the world,” Schlatter said. “He’s never met a stranger.” One of Ryan’s personal heroes was Alabama football Coach Bear Bryant, whom he met while making underwater films of swimmer Tracy Caulkins in Tuscaloosa, Ala., after the 1976 Olympics.

Today, Ryan owns one of the few surviving businesses of its kind in Southern California. The others are Yale Labs in Hollywood and Stupy Films in Anaheim.

His clients say Ryan’s character is the factor that has allowed him to succeed in one of the most specialized, seasonal and pressure-filled of professions.

“It’s because of his reputation,” said Schlatter, who has worked as an editor in Ryan’s lab for 12 years. “If he says he’ll get you the film, he’ll get you the film. He’s so ethical, too. He won’t cheat for you, and there’s a lot of cheating that goes on in films.”

To listen to Ryan, you might think the underpinnings of Western Civilization rest upon the filming of high school games.

“The morale of a high school is built on the success of that football team,” Ryan said. “If they don’t have success, the morale goes down and discipline and narcotics problems go up in the first three months of the year. Then you can get the dope addicts taking over the school.”

It follows in Ryan’s philosophy that if a winning football team is so vital to a school’s fate, then the films on which coaches base their strategy for winning must be equally crucial.

That is why Ryan grows passionate on the subject of using video tape rather than game film. Many administrators prefer to avoid the expense of film and simply use school videotape equipment.

Filming costs $200 a game including camera operators and processing, but a videotape costs just $8, plus perhaps $50 for the camera technican, if a teacher or parent won’t do it voluntarily.

About 60% of Southern California’s 535 high schools use film, but tape is making inroads. Of the film, about 90% is color because the cost is no longer significantly greater than black and white.

Ryan, as well as most coaches, detest videotape because it is difficult to see the details of plays, putting them at a strategic disadvantage in meeting opponents.

“Dan gets really passionate about it because the coaches--with whom he has almost a love affair--are being asked to produce a superior product with inferior materials,” Schlatter said. “Film is so superior to tape, that’s the reason he gets so upset.”

The other thing that gets Ryan riled is the rare occasion when a technical error causes the lab to ruin a reel of film. It happens three or four times a season, he says. It happened last week and he was still mourning the film four days later, although a tape was salvaged as insurance.

“He goes berserk when that happens,” Schlatter said. “He goes out of his mind because he’s so dedicated to his profession. If he doesn’t live up to his standards, he’s mortified.”

Even those in the videotape camp tip their hats to Ryan. Moses Chavez, president of the CIF Southern Section executive board, is leading the San Gabriel Valley League to switch to videotape. Chavez is principal at Downey High.

But he says of Ryan, “As far as the field of photography, he’s No. 1. He’s top notch. Everyone feels that if anyone could do the job, Dan can.”