Ray Etheridge was born in Los Angeles. While in the sixth grade his
parents moved to a small rural town in Oregon, where they had purchased
an old "General Store". Ray earned money by helping neighbors with farm
chores, and at age 14 he had saved enough money to open a 16mm
mini-theatre in a room above the store, complete with a projection
booth and "real" theatre seats. His mother bought him his first movie
camera, an 8mm from Sears, and while still in high school, Ray bought a
16mm Bolex camera. He attended the University of Oregon for a year, and
later graduated from the Southern California Film Institute. Some of
his early jobs in the film industry were in sales and distribution for
such companies as Universal Pictures, Cinema National, and Filmtreat
International.
Ray quickly learned that he would rather "create" movies then sell
them, and through a twist of fate he was able to land a job cutting
news film for the ABC station in Portland Oregon, KATU. He moved up
through the ranks from editor to cameraman, a post that he held for the
next 12-years. Ray purchased camera gear and went freelance in 1985. He
followed the available work, and landed long-term assignments for
television stations in Colorado, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and
California, as well as a bureau in Honduras. In 1988 Ray was back in
Los Angeles, working extensively with the Telemundo Network and with
KWHY-TV, where he worked on dozens of programs and commercials, often
as Director of Photography. During the next three years he produced
five direct-to-video productions under his own Golden West Films
banner; The Vernonia Incident (1989); Death In Hollywood (1990); When the Applause Died (1990); FART-The Movie
(1991); and Sinatra: An Unauthorized Biography (1992). Telemundo
brought Ray to Miami in 1996 to shoot "Edicion Especial", an
entertainment program which took Ray to exotic locations throughout the
Caribbean, central, and south America. The program aired 4-years.
Telemundo then asked Ray to help start a new show called "Esta Manana"
as Chief Photographer. In recent years Ray has been freelancing,
working on music videos, commercials, industrials, and TV programs. He
has been a member of the International Cinematographers Guild since
1975, and the National Press Photographers Association since
1998.
