Dr. Bryan Pinkall, who grew up in Great Bend, recently drove home from Manhattan and broke the news to his parents, Michelle and Gary, with a short video that he had a special vacation planned in August.  
They will walk the red carpet in Los Angeles with Bryan  because he and crew members received a prime time Emmy nomination in Art Direction Special Class with four nominations for work at the Sochi Olympics.
“They (parents) were pretty shocked,” he said.
Pinkall was the manager of performance operations and directions for the protocol segment of the magical Olympics opening ceremony, one of just two Americans on the 250 member team producing the ceremony, with a cast of 5,000.
He spoke of that memorable event where he worked very long days for five weeks in preparation. Although he frequently works in dramatic productions, the Olympics were on a scale he had never done before.
 “The Olympic atmosphere exciting,” said Bryan. “People were there from enemy countries that are not friendly towards each other. But, everyone was happy to be there.”
Pinkall has had an avid interest in the Olympics since he was a child and applied several years in advance for the position.
To get that job, Pinkall went through a lot of interviews and did language and cultural testing. He speaks some Russian, and is something of an Olympic historian.
“It’s something I’ve always loved. It’s something I’m really nerdy about. I wanted to learn everything about the Olympics,” said Pinkall. “It’s an exciting thing to experience.”
The opera singer is an assistant professor of music at K-State, a 2013 graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance. He has been named as a faculty member for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which produces the Emmys, among many other accomplishments.
Pinkall attributes his success to hard work. “From the beginning, I lived in a mantra that if you worked hard enough and smart enough, you can do whatever. It’s not really a universal idea,” one that he found especially true while working in Russia.
Plus, he stayed true to what he was passionate about.
He has always had many unusual interests. “I was always the weird kid,” he said. His parents let him pursue many unusual interests, including those that benefitted him in his work at the Olympics.
“I’m very thankful for them,” he said.
Although he already has experienced great success, “I fail at things all of the time,” he said. “But I’m not afraid to.”
His appreciation for his own country grew during his time in Russia. “I missed America,” Pinkall said. There were several reasons for this.

Sochi, Russia
Describing his adventure at bryanpinkall.blogspot.com, the time involved long days and some serious bumps in the road, long commutes to work and  unusual food. Pinkall kept the blog culturally entertaining, but paid a price in an eerie reminder of the years of the Soviet Union. He was detained at the police station and faced possible deportation.
In early February, Bryan was informed he was put on list by his supervisor. He writes, “In this initial conversation, I was told that due to my speaking to the media and due to my blog, I was releasing information that was dangerous or perhaps illegal  I was completely unaware of this. My interpreter stayed with me and there commenced a very long interrogation. I was scared to death, shaking even.
“The conversation immediately began with talk of my deportation - the day before the ceremony. Why  He told me that I am not allowed to talk to anyone: about Russia, about what I’m doing in Russia, about what I feel like, and I am not allowed to even say that I am not allowed to say anything. He didn’t quote anything specifically, but he just wanted to know if I understood as if I should know better.  
“The week before I heard rumors that others were signing documents of a sort, but those never reached me. I felt as if I was being tricked into confessing something.  So, I told him that although I understood the question, I did not understand why I couldn’t speak to anyone.
“The interrogation continued. They wanted to know every question I was asked in interviews alluding to the western media’s fixation on the gay rights issue, security presence, preparation of the venues, eradication of stray dogs, and my response to it. I of course did not comment on such topics to the media as I valued my safety. They were trying to read from a screen that had translated my blog and the media articles into Russian, so many of the comments were not translated correctly, especially jokes. I pretended not to understand their cursing and their “stupid American” comments. I played it as innocently as possible.
“By the end of the interrogation, I was instructed to cancel my last interviews - one of which that evening would be aired live on national TV in Russia - and to delete my blog posts about Russia.  Now, I had no problem deleting my blog as I know that Google cache’s every web page, so I could easily retrieve everything again.”
“From then on, my goal was to do my job and then get the heck out of Dodge. When I returned to my room that night, I immediately packed everything in case I needed to leave in a hurry.  The Opening Ceremony went spectacularly, and the day following, I went to the airport six hours in advance of my flight to Moscow.