Helen RY Sun's Creative Journey

Helen RY Sun, a versatile writer-producer from Los Angeles, whose journey intertwines music, marketing, and film production. From acclaimed music videos honored by industry elites to her current strides in crafting captivating narratives for screens big and small, Helen’s trajectory brims with creativity and ingenuity.

Today, she is sharing the highlights of her career with our readers.

IMAGE: HELEN RY SUN

Q: You’ve seen quite a bit of success across the entertainment industry. There’s quite a debate about whether or not a degree is crucial to advance in this career. What’s your take on this, based on your own experiences?

Helen: I am now two degrees into my entertainment career: a bachelor’s in Music Industry from USC and an MFA in Film Producing and both have been invaluable in meeting people and getting that holistic understanding to be able to approach my day-to-day work.

Of course, you learn the most by doing the job but now, as a full-time writer-producer, I couldn’t have advanced as fast in my career if I didn’t get that peek into the big picture. And then met some great people and long-time collaborators.

Back at USC was when I was able to start making some music videos for school, which got a lot of traction and were noticed by Rolling Stone and Country Music TV.

Q: Speaking of long-term collaborations, you’ve had a successful partnership with Laura Malatos for over 5 years now. What sparked this collaboration, and how do you keep the creative fires burning?

Helen: Laura and I just understand each other’s creative visions. We met in USC dorms and quickly realized we shared a passion for excellence in storytelling. Which is how we made some of our initial music videos together.

Then we started honing in our voice, which landed us in this high-concept dark comedy stories that we tell today.

I think in terms of what keeps us going creatively, we just have so many projects cooking all at once that it’s hard to be bored and that is sort of a self-fueling fire.

Q: Your career path has shifted quite a bit from music to film. What prompted that transition, and how have your previous experiences enriched your current work?

Helen: The transition felt so natural. While I loved working in music, particularly at Vans Warped Tour with Kevin Lyman, I think what I could offer to the music business wasn’t of big enough scale creatively.

And so film producing and writing gave me the opportunity to make projects beyond our wildest ambitions. it also felt like a smooth transition in terms of skill.

I think what I’ve learned in festival production and marketing enhanced my producing and storytelling so much because I was so in tune with what the audiences were after.

More recently, I’ve gotten to be a marketing executive at a production company, which eventually led to even bigger film production opportunities, which I would’ve never gotten without the experience I had in music.

Q: You’re juggling quite a few exciting projects right now. Can you share more about what’s currently in the pipeline?

Helen: Definitely. We’re really excited about our pilot “DOOMED,” which has gained some traction on UK TV, thanks to the creative input from Marvel’s Peter Cameron. We’re also developing a feature film with a co-creator of Workaholics.

And we are just wrapping up an edit on a short film with Lulu Wilson (Haunting of Hill House, Ouija, Fall of the House of Usher). It’s a busy but exciting time.

Q: Outside of the traditional media, you also have some experience working with the new media outlets. How do you think social media plays a role in storytelling today?

Helen: I’ve been working with social media since I first started working, and it has and will continue to completely transform storytelling for everyone. I think the people that were unreachable and unserviced in the past are just a phone click away now.

I used to do quite a bit of creating on TikTok with a film data analytics channel ‘The Quorum’, which felt like such a niche topic but it’s completely baffling how quickly you can find specific audiences online.

Seeing a video describing movie theater attendance hit over half a million views was completely mind-blowing. We’ve also been working on a scripted queer fantasy series that has hit a total of over 300k views.

I think hitting those types of numbers in these incredibly niche communities would’ve been unheard of in traditional media and that just makes me really hopeful for the types of stories that are gonna be more visible in the future.