Feature film · Screenplay complete · Approx. 80 minutes · Written and directed by Ryan Chang
Born from Ryan Chang’s military experience, the film sets institutional programming against a more private danger: institutions turn men into instruments, while Leo’s own projection turns women into prizes, roles and utility until desire becomes a trap of his own making. Both fracture the self.
The Queen is the film’s still point; Leo is the one under pressure. Tense and seductive, the story carries its critique through disappearances, erotic danger and ritual violence inside a constantly constricting bottle thriller that tightens its grip through the final frame.
PISCES RISING
Inside a brutal military conditioning program built around obedience to the Star, recruits are disappearing and the Sergeant is losing control. With 96 hours until a solar eclipse, Leo is drawn into the orbit of the Pisces Queen and her ritual feminine order—then discovers he may be the final sacrifice. As both worlds close around him, Leo must survive their competing gauntlets, reclaim the will to choose, and escape before the old world is destroyed.
Four locations. Compact ensemble. Screenplay and producer package ready.
THE STAR DEMANDS COMPLIANCE. THE QUEEN TESTS WHAT’S LEFT.
COMPLETED WORK / EXTERNAL PROOF
The groundwork we’re building on.
Pisces Rising expands territory Ryan has already made his own. Moon in Scorpio and THOTH confront pornography, projection, institutions and the violence they feed in American culture; the feature carries that fracture into military programming and imposed roles, asking what it takes to unprogram, recover self-understanding and find the gold beyond the damage.
Moon in Scorpio · Bold Voices winnerTHOTH · Best Experimental Short + Best Visual Effects
“A very well done Lynchian fever dream that explores the violence and self-destruction at the heart of American culture.”
Moon in Scorpio · Black Box Film Festival jury
“Ambitious and unsettling… evocative and disturbing and self-assured in its odd tone.”
Moon in Scorpio · Black Box Film Festival jury
“The result is a coherent, confident work… original and technically very proficient.”
Moon in Scorpio · Black Box Film Festival jury
“A fun and mesmerizingly trippy film to watch!”
THOTH · Jerry Toth · International Avant-Garde Film Awards
Ryan Chang is an internationally award-winning experimental filmmaker and visual-effects artist, and an internationally nominated director, cinematographer and colorist.
PISCES RISING / MATERIAL ALREADY BUILT
Visual development.
Already photographed / practical image-making
Dragonframe opening
This is the first shot of the film. Match-cut Playboy cover faces pull back to reveal idealized bodies multiplying, overlapping, crumpling and collapsing into a physical mass before the image drains to black-and-white and gives way to the moon.
The Playboy material is not decoration; its physical destruction is the film’s first expression of how projection fractures women into consumable parts. The sequence then moves toward reclamation through the moon before the Pisces Queen is introduced. It already exists and will be refined for final production while preserving its tactile form.
Script-mapped / camera + spatial previsualization
Opening club sequence
The previs introduces the feminine order as they move together through the club and prepare for a ritual sacrifice. Fluid camera movement follows their alignment, coordination and shared purpose, establishing a form of collective freedom that will later be set against the imposed compliance and restricted movement of the soldiers inside the Star.
The previs was built to understand geography, lensing, blocking, lighting transitions and timing, but especially to test how camera and body movement can convey this fluid form of teamwork before the film enters the Star Unit’s rigid world.
Why the placeholdersThe nude digital models are functional previs bodies—not final casting, costume or character design. They isolate projection, desire, power, group movement and the relationship between camera and body. The final film contains no sex or performed nudity.
THE FEATURE / THE PLAN
Behind the images.
FOUR LOCATIONS. COMMAND OUTSIDE. PROJECTION WITHIN. 96 HOURS UNTIL THE ECLIPSE.A bottle thriller engineered to tighten through the final frame—with screenplay, schedule, location strategy, character and performance plan, visual development and budget architecture ready.OPEN THE PRODUCTION PLAN +
01
The pressure engine
Disappearances, collapsing command and erotic danger tighten around a 96-hour eclipse countdown. The Sergeant answers disorder with greater control; the Pisces Queen draws Leo through a parallel gauntlet toward the role of final sacrifice.
Confined spaces and restricted movement turn every scene into a narrowing choice. The Sergeant commands. The Queen tests. Leo must survive the institution closing around him, confront the trap created by his own projection, and escape before the old world is destroyed.
02
Contained by design
Four location footprints carry the film. The Club and Lair can share one property; the Star’s barracks, office and washdown chamber can occupy another controlled footprint; the beach and minimal black-stage material complete the plan.
A compact, dialogue-light ensemble shifts scale into blocking, performance, movement, light, sound, selective 16mm, practical effects and post. The footprint stays lean; the film does not feel small.
03
Working budget architecture
$250K lean / $350K target / $500K expanded. The target model assumes approximately 13 principal-unit days plus three specialty or insert days, pending formal line budget, schedule and producer validation.
Money stays visible on screen: performance and rehearsal, movement and safety, the controlled club solution, decisive art anchors, practical effects, prosthetics, blood and liquid work, specialty photography and targeted post.
04
The method is already working
Dragonframe establishes the film’s fracture-and-reclamation image system in camera. Unreal resolves geography, lensing, light, blocking and camera-body choreography before the shoot. Moon in Scorpio and THOTH prove Ryan can finish dense psychological work under constraint.
This is not a mood board. It is a repeatable production method: formal ambition translated into practical decisions before principal photography.
Across Moon in Scorpio and THOTH, Ryan directs psychological pressure through performance, camera, editing, color, sound and VFX—building complete cinematic worlds under constraint.
Pisces Rising brings that command into a tense, seductive and propulsive feature thriller.
Moon in Scorpio
Narrative short / directing + production method
One primary location. Three performers. Roughly five hours of principal photography. Intensive preplanning turns those constraints into an escalating psychological encounter.
TESTED: performance-driven pressure, projection, minimal exposition, precise coverage and execution inside a five-hour shoot.
Recognition Won Bold Voices at the 2023 Black Box Film Festival.
THOTH
Experimental short / formal language + finishing
Ryan made THOTH with one actor. Built at 60fps from thousands of individually captured photographs, it creates a larger psychological world through montage, color, sound, VFX and single-frame control.
TESTED: sustained narrative and emotion through nonverbal performance, strobe, editing rhythm and complex finishing.
Recognition Won Best Experimental Short and Best Visual Effects at the 2025 International Avant-Garde Film Awards, with additional international nominations for directing, cinematography and color grading.
COLLABORATORS / IN THEIR WORDS
Vision, fully realized.
“His editing work transformed raw footage into something mythic and magnetic.”
Chris Dixon · Riverbed Lecture Series
“He delivered everything from the web edit to the theatrical DCP on schedule—patient, responsive, and technically skilled.”
Vinay Chandra · Director, Natural Causes
“The video Ryan created was a masterpiece. This piece of art was so compelling, so beautiful and personalized to me.”