Tanya Ryno

While attending college in Florida, Ryno began her career as a photographer and editor for a small publication in South Beach, Miami called Talent Times Magazine. When she transferred to the School of Visual Arts, in NYC, she continued as a photographer's assistant for several high profile fashion photographers.

In the early 1990's, Tanya started working at Saturday Night Live. And in addition to the commercial parodies, Tanya was a producer for Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse series, including the award-winning Ambiguously Gay Duo, which was voiced by Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert, The X-Presidents, and Fun with Real Audio. She even produced the GoLords (Stop Motion) Puppet series written by Andrew Steele, which was short lived, but had a cult-like following. Tanya was also a producer for several prime time specials including The Best of Chris Farley compilation and The Best of Phil Hartman. The commercial parodies, she's best known for include: AM Ale, featuring David Koechner, Big Brawn Feminine Napkins, featuring Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon, Caribbean Essence Bath Oil, featuring Tracy Morgan and Cheri Oteri, Cookie Dough Sport, featuring Will Ferrell, and Martha Stewart's Topless Christmas Special.,[2] featuring Ana Gasteyer.

Tanya's most controversial segments were: One TV Funhouse segment, written by Robert Smigel that's claim to fame is that it only aired once. On the March 14, 1998 episode, featuring Julianne Moore and The Backstreet Boys. The segment titled "Conspiracy Theory Rock" was banned by Lorne Michaels immediately after it aired.[3][4] The other controversial segment Tanya was a producer on involved the Heaven's Gate Cult and mass suicide, where all the members were found wearing the same pair of Nike sneakers. Within days of the event, Saturday Night Live aired a satirical commercial parody that incorporated some of the actual news footage of the dead members, from their legs down, wearing Nike shoes. The tagline was: "Keds. Worn by level-headed Christians."[5][6]

Ryno was a producer on New York at the Movies for A&E. A documentary hosted by Meryl Streep that included over 14 film legends (including: Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Spike Lee, Nora Ephron, Edward Burns, and John Turturro) giving their real-life experiences of making movies in New York City. With the tagline of "You can't fake New York".

Ryno also produced Coney Island Baby,[7] an award-winning romantic comedy that takes place in Sligo, Ireland and made its premiere television broadcast on the Sundance Channel. It was direct by Amy Hobby who won best first time director[8] for the film.

Throughout those years, she also worked freelance with the ESPY's, the American Music Awards, and several commercial productions including Levi Strauss & Co., American Express, Toys R Us, microsoft, and Lincoln. She produced and directed a segment of a behind-the-music piece for a collaboration[9][10] between Xbox 360 and 343 Industries featuring Soulja Boy, Xzibit, DJ Skee, Prodigy from Mobb Deep, and T-Boz aka Tionne Watkins all discussing the special relationship between music and video games while featuring the newest Halo franchise to be released that year, Halo4.

For Funny or Die Tanya, produced, co-wrote and co-directed with Motion Family the comedy film short "Big Tweet" featuring, Brandon T Jackson, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, DJ Skee and Jason Beghe.

She produced a couple music videos worth noting, in 2011 Tanya produced and directed a raw indie style music video [11] for blues dynamo Gina Sicilia's hit "Addicted" and in 2012 she produced "Rap'n'Rolla" for the popular Russian Rap Artist, Alexander Stepanov, aka ST, directed by Motion Family.[12][13]

Ryno also ventured into publishing and created the New Jersey Production Guide, claiming to be the first comprehensive resource for film production, commercial productions, and television production in the state of New Jersey. She published this 200 page guide in both 1998 and 2000.[14]