It’s easy to describe Ryan Humble’s work ethic in one word – initiative. Each step along the way, the New Mexico State University alum’s can-do attitude spring-boarded him from one career level to the next with various roles in media including film/video, editing and live sports broadcasting.
Today he is the eye in the sky managing drone operations for ESPN. Humble has developed and refined the use of the company’s 22-camera-equipped drones to create dazzling video fly-overs for sporting events and other programs across Disney platforms.
But it didn’t happen overnight.
“I have worked with ESPN and Disney for 11 years now,” Humble said. “I was an intern 12 years ago and I worked in the studio and control room there. I worked on all of our studio shows and games and events in a lot of different roles throughout the studio operations group there.”
Humble graduated in 2011 from NMSU with a degree in film from the Creative Media Institute. His internship with ESPN grew out of his work with AggieVision, which produces NMSU sports programming under the management of KRWG-TV and radio, the local public broadcasting station.
“I started with AggieVision when I was a sophomore at NMSU,” said Humble. “I started as a camera operator and then eventually was their technical director. I was the technical director for basketball, football, baseball, softball, all the sports that AggieVision broadcast.”
In his senior year at NMSU, Humble participated in an internship at ESPN. “It was not like a ‘get the coffee’ type of internship,” he said. “I mean, you're making live TV for millions of people to see so they want people with experience, who've gotten that experience throughout college.”
ESPN hired Humble shortly after graduation. He was among several hires from NMSU. Humble credits Glen Cerny, retired KRWG general manager, with forging those connections with ESPN.
“AggieVision and KRWG are proven degree-to-work pipelines,” said Adrian Velarde, current KRWG general manager. “Students regularly find jobs at local, regional and even national media organizations like ESPN and NBC News. The skills they acquire with us help open those doors.”
After working with ESPN for several years, Humble started experimenting with drone video on the weekends, acquiring the expertise to receive a commercial license. Soon he would be sharing that expertise.
“I convinced ESPN and Disney to let me start doing it there,” said Humble. “I worked with a lot of different departments to establish a process and eventually started doing drone work with ESPN for different sports shows like SportCenter. That slowly grew into doing more location events and it got to the point where it warranted a whole department just shooting drone video.
“I was able to get a couple more pilots on board from within the company and so I was able to create a team of three of us that supports different games on ESPN, events and other broadcasts at Walt Disney World and other properties of Disney around the country. We provide all the drone support.”
Humble can see a future where his unit might welcome college interns to learn the complex process of drone video operations, which are becoming increasingly more integral to many media companies.
“It would be great to have interns involved because 90% of the work that we do is the prep, clearance and post work,” Humble said. “Flying the drone is the easy part. Getting all the permits and permissions is really involved. If they can learn that during an internship, it would be invaluable.”
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