RYOT

RYOT /ˈraɪət/ (or, riot) is an American immersive media company founded in 2012 by Bryn Mooser, David Darg, Molly DeWolf Swenson and Martha Rogers, based in Los Angeles. It specializes in documentary film production, commercial production, virtual reality and augmented reality.

Not to be confused with ryot.

RYOT

Founded	2012
Founders	Bryn Mooser, David Darg, Martha Rogers, Molly DeWolf Swenson
Location	United States
Origins	Los Angeles
Key people	Bryn Mooser, David Darg, Molly Swenson, Martha Rogers, Gareth Seltzer
Parent organization	AOL (2016–2017) Verizon Media (2017–present)
Subsidiaries	RYOT Studio, RYOT Films, RYOT Lab
Employees	70+
Website	http://www.ryot.org

In April 2016, RYOT was acquired by HuffPost.[1]

History

Founding and Early Years

Bryn Mooser and David Darg met in Haiti during the weeks after the earthquake of January 2010. Both were in the country doing humanitarian work, Mooser with Artists for Peace and Justice, to build a school, and Darg with Operation Blessing, to build water and sanitation systems. After working alongside each other and becoming friends, Mooser and Darg had the idea to create a baseball league for the young boys of the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.^[2][3]

Soon after, Mooser and Darg returned home to America, brought on Molly DeWolf Swenson as COO, and launched RYOT News as “the first news site linking news to action.”

Founding investors are Canadians Martha Rogers and Gareth Seltzer, and other notable funders include Todd Wagner and Jason Calacanis.

Celebrity activists Olivia Wilde, Ian Somerhalder, Ben Stiller and Sophia Bush were early supporters of RYOT and endorse their efforts worldwide. Olivia Wilde and Elon Musk are Executive Producers on numerous RYOT Films.

Founding Directors of the company alongside Mooser and Darg were Stash Slionski and Stacey Leasca while the first reporters included Benjamin Roffee, Vanessa Black, Stefan Todorovic, Tyson Sadler and Christian Stephen.

2015-present: VR and later productions

RYOT began producing 360/VR videos for other media organizations, advertisers and nonprofits in 2015. In their first produced 360/VR films for partners such as The New York Times,^[4] NPR,^[5] The Associated Press,^[6] Huffington Post^[7] and Sierra Club.^[8]

RYOT is credited as the first company to capture in 360 video,1. An active war zone (Syria), a disaster zone (Nepal), underwater with wild dolphins (Bahamas), and is the first company to produce VR news and comedy series on a major network (Hulu).

RYOT has received numerous awards for its documentary filmmaking, including two consecutive Oscar nominations for Best Documentary Short (2016 & 2017), a Peabody nomination and an Emmy nomination.

Divisions

RYOT Studio is Verizon Media's in-house branded content agency.

RYOT Films creates award-winning content in traditional & immersive formats across film, TV, digital, and VR, producing content for nonprofits and brand partners including The New York Times,[2] NPR,[3] The Associated Press,[4] Huffington Post[5] and Sierra Club.[6]

RYOT Lab is Verizon Media’s technology and innovation hub for emerging technologies, in partnership with Verizon Lab.

Awards and nominations

RYOT Films was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) for Body Team 12 in January 2016. Body Team 12 was also honored at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Mountainfilm Festival, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and the Austin Film Festival for Best Documentary Short.

Linear Filmography

Year	Film	Director	Release Date	Notes
2011	Sun City Picture House	David Darg	October 15, 2011	Production
2012	Baseball in the Time of Cholera	David Darg, Bryn Mooser	April 21, 2012	Production
2013	The Rider and the Storm	David Darg, Bryn Mooser	2013	Production
2014	Meet the Hitlers	Matthew Ogens	October 18, 2014	Co-Production (on Showtime)
2014	Mitimetallica	David Darg, Bryn Mooser	December 5, 2014	Production
2014	Positive	Linus Ignatius	2014	Production (in association with)
2015	Gardeners of Eden	Austin Peck, Anneliese Vandenberg	April 24, 2015	Co-Production (on Netflix)
2015	Body Team 12	David Darg	April 19, 2015	Co-Production (on HBO)
2015	Sailing a Sinking Sea	Olivia Wyatt	March 14, 2015	Production
2015	Sweet Micky For President	Ben Patterson	January 24, 2015	Co-Production (on Showtime)
2015	The Painter of Jalouzi	Bryn Mooser	September 25, 2015	Production
2015	Salam Neighbor	Zach Ingrasci, Chris Temple	June 20, 2015	Production
2016	El Púgil	Angel Manuel Soto	2016	Production
2016	Watani: My Homeland	Marcel Mettelsiefen	April 12, 2016	Production (in association with)
2016	Wasfia	Sean Kusanagi	May 2016	Production (on National Geographic)
2018	On Her Shoulders	Alexandria Bombach	January 2018	Production
2019	Earth	Nigel Tierney, Federico Heller	April 2019	Music video production

Mooser and Darg documented their work with the young boys in Haiti in their Tribeca award-winning film Baseball in the Time of Cholera, which follows the rise of the Tabarre Tigers and the concurrent outbreak of Cholera in Haiti. The film played at film festivals around the world and finished with a special Congressional screening in Washington, D.C.[7]

A year later, Mooser and Darg, debuted their third film at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, a documentary short titled The Rider and The Storm, which chronicles a New York surfer who lost everything in the Breezy Point fires during Hurricane Sandy.[8][9][10]

Executive-produced by Olivia Wilde and Paul Allen, RYOT's Oscar-nominated Body Team 12 profiles a young Liberian health worker who collects the bodies of the dead in Monrovia at the height of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and won Best Short Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2015.[11] It debuted on HBO in February 2016.[12] On Her Shoulders, a documentary about Nadia Murad's fight against ISIS, debuted in competition at Sundance Film Festival in January 2018, where it won a Directing award for a U.S. Documentary. [13]

The Painter of Jalouzi was the first documentary to be shot entirely on an iPhone 6S Plus.

Virtual Reality Filmography

Year	Film	Director	Notes
2015	Growing Up Girl[14]	David Darg	Production
2015	The Crossing	Tyson Sadler	Production
2016	Big Picture: News in Virtual Reality		Production
2016	Virtually Mike and Nora	Nora Kirkpatrick	Production
2016	Bashir's Dream	Angel Manuel Soto	Production
2018	Take Every Wave: Laird in VR	Tarik Benbrahim	Production
2018	Dinner Party	Angel Manuel Soto	Production
2019	Tales From The Edge	Tarik Benbrahim	Production

External links

• RYOT.org

References

1. "Verizon's AOL's Huffington Post acquires virtual reality studio RYOT for $10 to $15 million". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-09-04.
2. "NYT VR Releases New 360 Film 10 Shots Across The Border | VRFocus". VRFocus. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
3. "Wilco In 360: Behind The Scenes At NPR Music's Tiny Desk". NPR.org. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
4. "Virtual Reality Journalism Is Coming To The Associated Press". Fast Company. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
5. "Join Susan Sarandon In Greece At The Refugee Crisis Frontlines". The Crossing. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
6. "Jared Leto Tours The Arctic In A New Virtual Reality Climate Change Campaign". Co.Create. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
7. "Baseball in the Time of Cholera". Huffington Post. April 18, 2012.
8. http://tribecafilm.com/filmguide/archive/513e62abc07f5d1ef9000043-the-rider-and-the-storm
9. Bischof, Jackie (April 18, 2013). "At Tribeca, Profiling Life After Sandy". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 11, 2015.
10. Anderson, John (February 1, 2013). "Documentaries Thrive in Sandy's Ruins". New York Times. Retrieved May 11, 2015.
11. "Why You Need To See This Olivia Wilde-Produced Ebola Documentary". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
12. "'Body Team 12': HBO Documentary Films Acquires Short Doc". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
13. Hipes, Dominic Patten,Patrick (2018-01-28). "Sundance Film Festival: 'The Miseducation Of Cameron Post', 'Kailash' Land Grand Jury Prizes – The Complete Winners List". Deadline. Retrieved 2018-01-30.
14. Archer, Dan and Katharina Finger. "Walking in another’s virtual shoes: Do 360-degree video news stories generate empathy in viewers?," TOW Center for Digital Journalism (MARCH 15, 2018).