Rising Stars: Meet William Stroud of RTP

Today we’d like to introduce you to William Stroud

William, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up in action sports, specifically BMX freestyle bikes. I started riding in 6th grade with my middle school friends and fell in love. During my high school years I was trying to become a professional rider and I experienced lots of injuries and broken bones which slowed me down as I watched my close friends continue progressing and learning new tricks. This was back in the 1990s and my grandmother had an old camcorder she let me borrow so I could start filming my friends ride BMX at the trails in the woods near my parents house.

A few years later some of my close friends got sponsorship deals as professional BMX riders and were competing in bigger events like the X Games and Dew Tours. Those friends needed footage to send to their sponsors for marketing material so I decided to focus more of my time on filming instead of riding and then I just became a full time filmer. By early college I broke a few more bones riding BMX and finally threw in the towel to take filmmaking in action sports to become my full time career path. Between 2000 – 2021 I was lucky enough to travel all around the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia and South America filming grown men get rad on BMX bikes and I loved every second of it. I got to work with some awesome brands like Red Bull, Nike, Vans and Cinema BMX.

In 2020 I decided to switch gears and started a new video agency with a partner called Press Record Media. My partner, Ryan Timms also came from the action sports world so our backgrounds are very similar. Press Record Media focuses on creating branded content for businesses and short documentaries. We are a team of five full time creatives and we love what we do.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There were tons of obstacles in my way from the beginning. First of all, there’s no clear career path for becoming a full time action sports filmmaker. It’s all about who you know thats in your network that can get you hired and help you connect the dots to brands that need content from their pro team riders. It was a different game back in the late 90’s before Youtube, Instagram and social media. Back then we were filming on analog cameras and the videos were packaged on VHS and DVDs for the most part. It was so much more of a niche industry than what the world of action sports looks like today where everyone with an iPhone can produce content.

I spent roughly 20 years of my career as a freelance action sports producer and was constantly bouncing from job to job, from shoot to shoot, traveling a ton. It was such a great cultural experience for me to see the world through bikes but the career path wasn’t always super clear. Once I started a family when I was 27 it was a hard adjustment to be traveling so much with young kids so I knew that I eventually needed something more routine and stable that didn’t require as much traveling.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
In 2003 I finished school at UNC-Greensboro’s Media Studies program with a concentration in Film and Video production. I was lucky to get hired by my close friend’s boutique creative agency in Dayton, OH straight out of school. My first project at my new job was to produce a full length BMX video for System Cycle Supply. System Cycles was an Ohio based BMX distributor for DK Bicycles and Fly Bikes (out of Spain) and they sponsored a powerhouse team of professional BMX riders from the USA and Europe. My job was to direct, produce, film, edit and plan everything out to make a full length System Video that would be distributed worldwide on DVD and eventually broadcast.

I spent a full year in production traveling all around the USA with the team riders and we also did my first Europe tour where we rented two big motorhomes and drove around Germany, Belgium and France for 2 weeks. It was an amazing experience getting to focus so much of my time and energy to create a BMX film with some of the world’s most talented riders. The System Cycles video premiered in November of 2004 and it’s still one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on that helped shape the rest of my career.

The video was uploaded in sections to this link: https://bmxmdb.com/films/110-System

What was your favorite childhood memory?
Favorite childhood memory was exploring in the woods. I grew up on a 40 acre farm just outside of Raleigh and enjoyed playing outside and building treehouses in the woods. I’m really glad my parents encouraged me to be so active and spend lots of time exploring.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pressrecordmedia.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pressrecordmedia
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PressRecordMediaUSA/
• Twitter: https://x.com/pressrecordnc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@pressrecordmedia