Year: 2025
Role: Chief drone pilot
Studio or network: Paramount Pictures
Type: Film
Links: IMDb
A family tragedy leaves a young mother, Morgan, and her teenage daughter, Clara, with a strained relationship and a life they have to learn to navigate together. That is the story of Regretting You, Paramount Pictures' 2025 film based on Colleen Hoover's 2019 novel. Josh Boone directed from a screenplay he wrote with Susan McMartin. Allison Williams, Mckenna Grace and Dave Franco lead a cast that also includes Mason Thames and Scott Eastwood. It was filmed in Atlanta, starting in March 2025, and reached US theaters on October 24, 2025.
Michael-Ryan's credit on the film is chief drone pilot. His background is in exactly this kind of work. He has been chief UAS pilot and camera operator at Pro-Cam Rentals since 2015, a role that is as much flight operations, safety, training and FAA compliance as it is flying. On a studio feature, the chief pilot is the person answerable for all of it, and a production wants every part settled before an aircraft goes up anywhere near cast and crew.
What a drone gives a family drama is not what it gives a war film. There is nothing to chase. Instead it can show the scale of a place around small lives: a street, a neighborhood, a town carrying on while one household comes apart. It can also move slowly, with a gentle rise or drift that lets a quiet moment breathe instead of cutting away from it. None of that needs to announce itself. Used with restraint, the view from the air gives an intimate story some room, and then hands it back to the people in it.
Film