MSSM Alum Behind the Lens
MSSM Alum Behind the Lens
![Alumnus Ryan Shepheard 1998 films a documentary for MSSM]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1755803252/mssm/ub0afkvagzjbtlplutds/Ryan-Shepheard.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1755803252/mssm/ub0afkvagzjbtlplutds/Ryan-Shepheard.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_3/v1755803252/mssm/ub0afkvagzjbtlplutds/Ryan-Shepheard.jpg","width":800},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_4/v1755803252/mssm/ub0afkvagzjbtlplutds/Ryan-Shepheard.jpg","width":1200},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_5/v1755803252/mssm/ub0afkvagzjbtlplutds/Ryan-Shepheard.jpg","width":1600},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1755803252/mssm/ub0afkvagzjbtlplutds/Ryan-Shepheard.jpg","width":2133}])
When Ryan Shepheard, a member of MSSM’s Class of 1998, looks back at his time on campus, he remembers a school still finding its identity. “We weren’t the Penguins yet,” he recalls. “There wasn’t even a mascot at that time.”
Today, he is a Boston-based documentary filmmaker whose work has reached national audiences. One of his most notable projects was editing Decoding COVID-19, a 2020 episode of PBS’s NOVA. Produced at the height of the pandemic, the film earned the prestigious Columbia DuPont Award, one of journalism’s highest honors.
The path to filmmaking started at MSSM itself. During his senior year, a casual conversation with a friend about making a short film grew into something much bigger. “We ended up founding the MSSM Film Club, not just to watch movies, but to make them,” he says. The project turned into a 45-minute science fiction film, complete with sets built in the auditorium and scenes shot around campus.
That experience changed the course of his life. Initially interested in computers, he studied New Media at the University of Maine, a new program at the time that later introduced a film component. “The timing was perfect,” he explains. “It was like one opportunity cascaded into another.”
For Shepheard, the decision to attend MSSM came down to a challenge. At his sending school, he had already exhausted many of the available AP courses. MSSM offered something more. “I needed that next step,” he says. The presence of a music program sealed the decision, as he had just started teaching himself piano—a passion he still carries today.
Now, he’s turning his lens back on the place where it all started. He is currently filming a documentary about MSSM, with the intention of raising awareness and support for the school. He feels that the documentary is a way to thank MSSM for being so flexible with his senior video, which he created during May Term in 1998 (now called J-Term). The plan is to submit the project to festivals and eventually see it broadcast on PBS. But first, he wants to bring it home.
“I’d definitely want to hold a screening here,” he says. A preview could be ready for the 30th reunion, with the full documentary expected by late 2026.
Decoding Covid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3VU91CflXc
Just a Game - 1998