For each day in the month of February, the African American Steering Committee will be highlighting Local 700’s African American members, both past and present, and their accomplishments. We look forward to showing the contributions and influences African Americans have had on the industry.
Name: Lyric “Black Unicorn” Ramsey
What’s your job? Television Editor
List the credits you’re most proud of. I’ve been blessed to be apart of some really amazing projects, especially in the last few years. The list of shows are as followed: “Dahmer – Monster : The Jeffery Dahmer Story,” “You People” – Starring Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy, directed by Kenya Barris, “A Black Lady Sketch Show” Season 3, “Sweet Life: LA, Masterchef,” “Project. Runway,” “Real Housewives of Atlanta,” “Below Deck,” “BET Hip Hop Awards,” “On My Block” S4, and the Legendary “I Love New York.”
What are you working on right now? I just finished up a movie, and a pilot, and working on a HULU series featuring Swizz Beats.
Who and what are your influences and/or mentors? When I started my career, I was desperately seeking other mentors, I was definitely “Me Fi Me” for a huge portion of my career. So, I set my intention to seek peers and mentors and became more active in the editor community. I joined the LGBTQ Steering committee, and met other member like Mary DeChambres, Jamie Nelsen, and Nena Erb, which introduced me to mentors like Shannon Baker Davis, Daysha Broadway. Daysha, introduced me to my sister, and amazingly talented Stephanie Filo, who I still work with today. All of these women, have turned the volume up on my career, and have inspired me from near and afar, and I’m eternally grateful for the conversations, time, laughter, and memories I have because of them.
What books are you reading, shows are you watching and/or movies you’re excited about? Some of the books I am reading are: Anatomy of the Spirit, Many Lives, Many Masters, and re-reading “The Alchemist.” I watch SOOOOO much television, shows I’m excited about are – “Your Honor,” the “Last of Us,” “Interview with the Vampire” was fire!
What would be your superhero name? Great question, I intensively want to say BLACK UNICORN, but as a superhero “unicorn” sounds soft, and I like to feel and think of myself as a bad ass. Django, is a superhero! My name would be something like MAXLOR THE CREATOR, lol I made that out off the top of my head.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given? I’ve had some great gems over the years, earlier on in my career, when I had zero network, right out of college, in a career I wasn’t entirely sure I had a place in, a post supervisor told me to “Learn a skill in this business, that no one can deny from you.” This advice led me to editing, and I’ve never looked back. I internalized that advice and learned something, that no matter who you know, how you look, your work and talent will speak for itself. Another gem was “Always work!” Keep working, keep exercising this gift, and this talent, big job, small jobs, short or long, WORK! And the great philosopher Issa Rae once said “ Stop trying to work up, instead work across.” Game changers.
If you could time travel, when would you go and why? If I could travel to any time, I would go to two periods for sure. One, the beginning, and two, the future. I would go to the beginning, to answer some of my internal esoteric feelings and thoughts about ones existence and purpose. I would also try to bring back some evidence of what I saw as the “beginning,” without creating a rip or ripple in the space time continuum. The other time period I would go to is maybe 2000 years to the future. I watch a ton of sci-fi/horror, so I would be curious if humanity and or the soul still existed, or did we as humans completely integrate with AI. Did the zombie or ANY sort of apocalypse happen on the planet, and does EARTH still exist. That got dark! Haha
What’s a little known fact about you? What are your hidden (or not so hidden) talents? I’m a writer and a story teller. I have journals and journals of thoughts, and ideas, or dreams from throughout my life. I’m always thinking in picture.
What’s your favorite (Black) television/movie moment? FAVORITE: that is so hard. I’ll say some the stand outs for me, that left an impression on me as a kid are the following movies: “The Color Purple” – I saw myself in Celie, “Imitation of Life (1959) – growing up with family who “passed” for white, “Women of Brewsters Place” – beautiful black queer female stories, Alex Haley’s “Queen,” “Tales from the Crypts Demon Night” – first lead black female horror “final girl’ and I’ll round it out with “Set It Off” – I just related with all of them, and seeing those stories on the celluloid as a kid, left such an impact on me.
Was there a television show/movie that inspired you to pursue your career? Again, so many great shows made me want to pursue this career, I think shows like “A Different World,” “The Cosby Show,” HBO’s “Dream On,” and almost everything on Nick at Night, Mickey Mouse Club, lit the internal flame work in the TV/Film Industry.
Films, that inspired me to edit, “Pulp Fiction,” “Sin City,” “Memento,” “Psycho,” “Requiem for a Dream,” “1917,” “American History X,” “Higher Learning,” “The Watermelon Woman,” “Bound, “Love Jones,” and “True Grit.”
What’s your personal/professional mantra? This is very revealing, but I tell myself, “I’m talented, I’m deserving, I’m capable, I am more than enough.”
What’s the last show/movie that left you speechless? The last movies I saw that left me speechless were “The Woman King,” “Top Gun Maverick,” “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
What would be your dream project to work on? At this point in my career, the dream projects are the ones I’ve created, by either writing, producing and directing. The dream is plucking these amazing stories out of my journals, and seeing them on the big screens or small boxes of people all over the world. It would be an added bonus if I could do that, with some of the amazing and talented people I know.
