Sports Film Writer / Producer
He loved to write but knew nothing about film production; eventually he created the description of the NFL’s “America’s Team” and won 19 Emmys.
BR was born and raised in suburban Philadelphia, the youngest of two children. His father was a tax assessor, and his mother was a homemaker. Neither parent had gone to college.
A college degree is not a requirement to be a constant reader, as was BR’s father, who seemed to always be engrossed in fictional detective stories. BR shared his father’s love of books though BR’s reading interests were more about history and sports.
Early on, BR knew that he wanted to somehow work in the field of sports, perhaps as a radio or tv announcer so he paid close attention to the different styles of the adults describing the plays on the field.
In high school, BR had no interest in math or science courses but was an enthusiastic student of history and writing, which guided his eventual decision to pursue a double major at Gettysburg College for both History and English.
WRITING INTEREST AND TALENT CONFIRMED
After college graduation, BR was not yet ready to focus on a specific career path within his passions for history and writing. So, BR enrolled in graduate school at The Annenberg School of Communications within the University of Pennsylvania, where he confirmed his passion for writing.
BECOMING A WRITER
How does one become an excellent writer? BR notes there are academic courses in writing, but Eric Clapton never took a guitar lesson and consider his amazing talent. So, studying the art of writing can be useful but BR most highly recommends becoming a voracious reader to absorb different ways to describe characters and the flow of a great story.
BEFORE HAVING RESPONSIBILITY TO FINANCIALLY SUPPORT OTHERS, ONE CAN RISK FOLLOWING A CAREER PASSION ABOVE MONEY
Upon obtaining his Masters in Communication degree, BR assumed that his best employment prospects would be open within the field of advertising. But before his job search process had progressed to accepting an advertising position, a family friend who had just started a film production business, offered BR a job within his fledgling business, as the fourth employee to be hired; fifty years later, BR retired from the same company after a long, successful career involving writing, film production and eventual participation in management of the business.
The job offer from this new company combined several of BR’s interests: (1) writing – after training, he would have solo responsibility for drafting film scripts; and (2) sports – the company’s sole focus was producing sports related films. Plus, no need to embark on interviews with large advertising agencies, then to commence an extended training process with less opportunity to pursue his individual, creative writing style.
AIMING FOR AN “A” LEADS TO JOB SECURITY AND JOB SATISFACTION
BR entered the world of film production just as any other newcomer to a business: first learn the fundamentals from one or several mentors, which may take a year. The novice must maintain a balance between (a) pride in one’s work (ego) and (b) willingness to accept constructive criticism. The initial goal is to complete each task with the belief that the end-product is hopefully an A, which might subjectively be a B but never a C or worse.
SOLO EFFORTS MAY STILL NEED A TEAM
Films need story lines so making films requires the skills of a writer, who will need to work well with other skill sets toward production of the film, often on a very tight, highly pressurized schedule.
Writing is basically a lonely business, even within the context of working with others to produce a film. The writer is assigned or selects the topic and then must draft the story, self-edit it, then select which parts of the available film to use to demonstrate the story line and finally collaborate with the music editor and the sound editor to weave in background such as crowd noise or foreground such as people speaking.
During BR’s later service as a manager of the film production teams, he had to terminate the employment of those who were individually very competent but unable to work within a team concept. “The inability of one to work cooperatively with others caused too much wasted team distraction to justify retaining even a highly talented individual.”
RISKING A NEW CAREER DIRECTION MAY DISCOVER A HIDDEN TALENT
Looking back, BR realizes that he had a talent for making films that he didn’t know he had. He was confident in his writing skills but had zero experience selecting film, music, and sound to illustrate his story. He didn’t know he could make those selections until he tried to do it, though he did it well and learned from what others occasionally thought was a good but could be better. Gradually, BR’s efforts were all highly rated by his peers outside the literal walls of his business: the Academy of Television Arts and Science, which awarded him 19 Emmys over the course of his film production career!
JOB PROMOTION MAY BE A MIXED BLESSING
BR’s first love remained writing, mixed with an eye for matching film, music, and sound. But an employer often sees the need to elevate an excellent employee to manage others toward achieving that same level of success on a broader scale for the company. To entice the employee to step away from performing the daily hands-on work, which was so personally enjoyable, management offers additional compensation and a more prestigious job title. So it was that BR moved to managing other film producers and eventually serving as a Vice President of the entire company’s operations. On the way up the (proverbial) corporate ladder, BR traveled frequently around the world with a company sales representative to pitch the company’s film production internationally.
ASSESS NEW OPPORTUNITIES FROM BUSINESS AND PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES – DIFFERENT NOT ALWAYS BETTER
During the course of his career, with so much industry recognition of his talents (BR created the phrase “America’s Team” to describe the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL for a brief video, not realizing that the Dallas publicity dept would adopt and promote it so widely), BR had several opportunities to depart his employer’s independent film production company for better compensation as an employee of one of several major, national television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN) but each time decided to remain “a bigger fish within a smaller pond.” He reasoned that his compensation was very good so why strain his personal life by uprooting his family to New York City or Los Angeles to work even harder with an increased time commitment beyond what was already more than a 9-5 job. He has not regretted those decisions.
