Our story probably doesn’t start like a lot of media companies. Quite frankly, I’d be surprised if anyone had a story anywhere near as strange as this.
Let’s go all the way back to 2015, when the word “Ruthless” meant nothing more than the book definition “having or showing no pity or compassion for others”. Honestly, that couldn’t be a more inaccurate depiction of us. The word “ruthless” was being tossed around our friend group like a hot potato. Gary Gray directed an N.W.A biographical film titled Straight Outta Compton and I went and saw it opening day. I spent months heckling my best friend Matt to see it. He was being very cold and unsupportive of my dreams and spent months putting it of. All I wanted was him to be able to quote it with me. Our 7 year old Step Brothers quotes were starting to run their course. While Matt did finally see the movie, the Step Brothers quotes still haven’t stopped 5 years later.
Matt and I started quoting Straight Outta Compton religiously. Every opportunity we could fit in a reference to the movie, we did. In one of the first opening scenes, Dr. Dre is seen mashing up 2 songs on his turntables. The vocal track keeps repeating “It’s time” so naturally, when we get ready to do something we’re not asking each other “are you ready?” Like logical adults, we’re both screaming “It’s timeeeee!”.
Fast forward to a year from that. Fall 2016 is upon is, we have a car show coming up at the Birch Run Expo Center. We registered for the show 8 months in advance, it was both of ours first indoor car show. We were very excited. The Michigan Rollerz Car Club who was hosting the show, allowed entry the day before so you could leave your car there over night. I decided that since this was going to be the show of the year, I should probably take some video.
Before I get into the car show, I’d like to give a brief history on myself. In 2012 I took 2 film classes that my high school offered and learned a lot. Far more than I ever expected. I will forever be thankful for Mike Bauer for helping me find something I genuinely enjoyed in school. I signed up because T.V Production undoubtedly sounded like a blow off class and of course, day one the first thing he says is “this definitely isn’t a blow off class”. Well damn. Guess I’m stuck here. Just kidding, I enjoyed every second of it. They didn’t even make me take the exam. I’m pretty sure my parents thought the A for the class was a legitimate case of mistaken identity. After that, I didn’t do much with video. I would shoot little skits for my job on my phone to advertise our store, but definitely nothing serious. Just some cheesy skits.
Back to Birch Run in 2016. All of my friends saw my work skits, so they thought a car show video would be a great idea. I spent the entire day filming on my iPhone 6 and put the entire video together in iMovie on my phone as well. It’s still viewable on my personal Facebook. After generating a ton of views from everyone who went to the show and their families, I got hooked. I started shooting every car show we went to just about. It was very fun.
Winter 2016 came in strong and 2017 was peaking its head around the corner. Matt and I kept bouncing the idea back and forth to each other about starting a car club. We didn’t like the word club though, it felt too official. We sort of just wanted to have a name to blanket the 10 or so of us together so people knew we were a group. Here comes the quotes.
Dr. Dre: “What would you call something like that, E?”
Eazy E: “Ruthless”
And boom. There it was. Ruthless Car Group. Ready for another one?
Eazy E: “Do you know why I asked y’all to wear all black tonight? Because we’re an all star group...”
Fine! Ruthless: The All-Star Car Group. was born.
Our first show as “Ruthless” was in May 2017. We showed up to the annual car show in Owosso, Michigan dressed in all black. Wearing matching Ruthless (in the N.W.A font) crewneck sweatshirts. Some people loved it. Some did not. Oh well! During car shows, car clubs tend to yell out their name when one of their members win an award. Since we’re all loud mouths, the word “Ruthless!” was probably yelled 40 times in a 30 minute period” but not just at this show, at every show for that entire summer.
I started gradually putting Ruthless watermarks on the videos I would put out, just to keep it in the family. Eventually that evolved into Ruthless Media, the media branch of Ruthless Car Group I guess you could say. Everyone knew us as Ruthless, so that just made it easier to be able to follow who’s putting out the content.
Fast forward to June 2018, I spent 2 years shooting and editing these videos on my phone. I was tired of it. It became a chore. Car shows started being stressful because I always wanted to get the shot. On top of that, I was constantly worried about my phone dying. My friend Ethan kept telling me, Sony has this insane camera that just came out. You need to get it. You NEED to get it! So I looked into it. $2,600. GOOD JOKE. Not a chance buddy. Just to humor him, I started watching videos on it. Then all of a sudden I was signing the title over to my 2005 Scion tC and putting the money in the bank so I could order it that night.
It took a little convincing, I wasn’t completely sold on jumping to such a drastic change. A major part of the convincing was done by my girlfriend Sydnie. A few months back, she borrowed me one of her college film textbooks and I decided it was about time that I start looking back into that hobby I basically forgot about after high school, but with actual gear instead of iPhones. She told me to just do it, I did it. She was just as excited as I was it seemed like. She went to college for film and honestly knows more than I do about it, so naturally she is head writer and camera B if and when we got something going.
I got the gear. A brand new Sony A7III and a Zhiyun Crane 2 gimbal. I was in heaven. Luckily, there was a car show coming up that weekend. Time to bust it out! People were extremely curious about the new setup, suddenly everyone was asking “where can I see the video?” Over and over again. I panicked. I quickly made a page on Facebook at the car show. I wanted people from the car shows to be able to find it since they were my audience, so it only made sense to call it Ruthless Media. Yeah, it sounds scary. But we’re actually the nicest kids ever. We’re total posers when it comes down to being ruthless about things. Savage maybe, but certainly not ruthless.
In the last 2 years we’ve grown from 1 camera and 1 gimbal to a plethora of gear. So much gear that I can no longer drive anything other than an SUV.
While Ruthless Car Group has faded away and Ruthless Media is growing into a full fledge content creation and media company, the core values of friendship will never change. We’ve grown from shooting car shows on an iPhone 6 to 4K video resolution on mirrorless cameras. We do commercials, weddings, music videos and you guessed it, car shows.
None of this could have been done without the love and support of everyone who’s ever shared one of our videos, came to one of our car shows or yelled “Ruthless!” at me in public somewhere. This company will always hold a special place for the foundation it was created on and that is the Ruthless Car Group.