MEMBER SPOTLIGHT – THOMAS TORREY
We are incredibly proud of all of our LOOM Coworking members and love seeing their growth, personally and professionally. Learn more about Thomas Torrey.
Who is Thomas Torrey? I was born and raised outside Hartford, Connecticut and pursued the arts all my life. I was an actor all throughout elementary and high school, and shifted my focus to filmmaking by the time I graduated. I have a Liberal Arts degree, with a concentration in Filmmaking, from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. I married my wife Amanda halfway through college, and we moved back to her native land of Charlotte shortly after graduating. Amanda utilized her education degrees from App State (bachelors) and Mercy College (masters) while I worked freelance as a filmmaker for commercial organizations and nonprofits. Shortly after moving to Charlotte, I started work full-time for a corporation that needed an in-house video producer. That wonderful job led to another wonderful job with a cable TV network, where I was a VP of Short Form Programming, making short films for a worldwide audience. In 2015, I went back on my own, producing both independent feature films under my company Bad Theology, which is still going strong, as well as commercial freelance work.
What is your company and who are your customers? Protagonist is a film company that helps small businesses tell their stories through short form marketing documentaries. We humanize your business owners and your product through cinematic films that connect with customers and employees on an authentic and emotional level.
How did your company get started? After eight years of freelance filmmaking, which was how I provided for my family while I was also pursuing my feature film passion projects, I found myself at a crossroads. I was craving professional happiness while I was pursuing my dream, knowing that success in movies required much more patience and resilience than I had realized. Instead of scraping by doing freelance work for whatever gig I could find, I had a new vision to start something new — a company that brought together my skills as a filmmaker with what I loved most about the commercial side of the art form. As a professional storyteller, I love capturing people’s stories and creating an emotional film of their journeys. Protagonist was born in 2023 to serve this vision, and help small businesses not only tell their stories, but create subversive and forward-thinking marketing content for the new landscape of digital advertising and social media.
Other than your work, what ar 
e you most passionate about? My feature film passion projects are still a big part of my life. In fact, my third independent film is premiering October 6 at the Heartland Film Festival. It’s a musical drama called LONG DECEMBER, about a musician chasing the dream. The film will tour festivals and hopefully sell to a good distributor, who will eventually release it to the public on a TBD digital platform. My previous two films, FARE (2017) and MINOR PREMISE (2020) can be rented or viewed on various digital platforms. Other than my artistic pursuits, I love being a husband to Amanda, who’s a full-time homemaker, and our three kids — my daughter Skylar, 16, an aspiring filmmaker, and my two sons Lysander, 13, and Rylan, 11, both aspiring Fortnite Professional Gamers (lol!).
Where can we find out more about you on social media and online? My company website is www.protagonist.company and my instagram is @protagonist.company. I’m also on LinkedIn.
Email: Thomas@protagonist.company