Richard Cranor

Richard Cranor was born in rural Alabama but spent most of his childhood growing up on the west coast. He eventually moved to Seattle where he spent some time homeless, attempting to earn enough money doing odd-jobs to pay for tuition into the Art Institute of Seattle. Eventually, he came up with the money and began attending classes. After completing the multimedia program, Richard went on to direct several feature and short films that played in film festivals worldwide and secured national DVD distribution deals. "Katana", a web series about a retired ninja who must complete one last kill to save his daughter's life, was his Hollywood debut. It premiered on Strike.TV's Internet television network in the summer of 2008. It is the first martial arts based Internet television series to ever debut on the world wide web. It was produced and co-written by his friend and mentor, Yuji Okumoto, who also starred in the web pilot. Yuji Okumoto played the villain in "Karate Kid 2" and has starred in hundreds of film and TV episodes since. The two collaborated on the show while hanging out a Yuji's restaurant in Seattle, the Kona Kitchen. Richard has also worked for a number of years with Martin Design LLC, an advertising and marketing execution firm in the Pacific Northwest, shooting viral video campaigns for Microsoft and other clients and helping pioneer the "Viral Ecosystem", a concept that involves internet videos being seeded in a number of different blog and social media outlets to help sustain its presence and life cycle on the internet. He continues to write and direct feature films as well as develop new technologies and marketing strategies that combine Hollywood movie-making with the internet's interactive capability and potential.