Early Innings
TV show pitch
Created by David Targan
Cinematography & Editing by Rod Blackhurst
Creative Statement
Since the early days of baseball, Americans have developed a special relationship with the game. During good times, the sport has the ability to connect people through shared human experience, and when times are tough, baseball is leaned on to capture imaginations, provide memories of better times, and restore a sense of identity.
Americans are brought up speaking the language of the sport, and in turn the game provides life-lessons and metaphors that go far beyond the action on the field. This project aims to find out where this love for the game comes from and what it is about the spirit of the game that encourages children to play catch after dark, and brings families together around the television, in the same way that it impels the major leaguer to a game winning hit. This is the search for the grassroots of baseball and a place where sport and life are one and the same. This place is baseball’s minor leagues, and the small town of Burlington, Iowa may house the game’s best-kept secret.
In Early Innings we’ll experience the ride of a minor league baseball season with the people whose lives are inextricably bound by America’s Pastime. The project will focus on the purer brand of the game found in the minor leagues where young men play in pursuit of a dream. The drama of watching a season unfold will capture the spirit and imagination of baseball fans, and we’ll journey along with the players to small towns across America to meet the people who are continually inspired by a kid’s game.
In year one we’ll follow the Burlington Bees at the lowest level of the minor leagues – Lo-A. This is where most major league careers begin and in following the Bees, it is my hope to document all the life-lessons and that come from being young and pursuing a dream in a place where the individuals on the team and in the town are fueled by the sanctity of baseball. Every year, 1500 (or so) players leave the comforts of home -- a lot of them for the first time -- and enter the lowest level of the minor leagues. They come from all over the world and put their lives on hold to pursue their dreams of playing professional baseball. They start in Single-A where they'll play 140 games in 150 days, travel over 10,000 miles on a chartered bus, encounter groupies, host families, and rabid fan-bases, and will encounter numerous successes, and even more failures along the way. They do so in spite of the odds, knowing full well that only one-in-fifty who begin the journey, will ever put on a big league uniform. Even so, players scramble to make ends meet, support their habit with menial off-season jobs, while during the season, only make $1,350 a month, five months a year (although every team has a few "Bonus Babies" that are resting on millions in the bank). It's very much a survival of the fittest, and though the life is hardly glamorous, there's something about baseball that brings in a new crop of fresh-faced players every year, ready to take on the rigors of minor league life. Early Innings will "follow" the Bees for an entire season, as 50 or so players chase the ultimate American Dream.
The Only Band In Town
OFFICIAL SELECTION 2010 Woods Hole Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION 2010 Sidewalk Moving Picture
Director | Rod Blackhurst
DP | Gareth Paul Cox
Editor | Rod Blackhurst & David Ebeltoft
Producer | Rod Blackhurst & Kyrie Cox
Original Music | Jeremy McCoy, Nathan Stengrevics & Lowell Stringer
The Only Band In Town is a straightforward portrait of four casual bluegrass musicians in rural upstate New York. North Creek, NY has a population of 1,837 and only one band, the Don't Quit Your Day Job Band, whose members include an old hippie, Melody, who moved to NYC during the Vietnam War with nothing but a bag of records and a guitar on her back, a small town old timer, Buckshot, who has spent his entire life in the same tiny community, Larry, a family man who seems to have forgotten about his family, and Stephanie, who is the band leader and transgendered father of three girls.
Fair Fight
Director & DP | Rod Blackhurst
Editor | Kelly Magelky
'Fair Fight', the feature length documentary debut from director and cinematographer Rod Blackhurst, offers a telling and intimate snapshot of the rock band The Fray as they struggle to create a follow up to their multi-platinum debut 'How To Save A Life'.
Taking its name from a line in one of the act's newer songs, 'Fair Fight' opens with a stylized time-lapse sequence of a quiet stretch of road with blankets of luminous clouds cascading overhead while front-man Isaac Slade plucks out the sparse, arpeggiated intro to the band's new track 'Happiness.' As Slade muses in his husky baritone about the futility of chasing happiness, fittingly we find the members at the tail end of an exhaustive three-year tour supporting the blockbuster release that essentially swallowed their lives.
From the confines of the famed recording studio the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, to a hometown studio in Denver, Colorado, ‘Fair Fight’, shot entirely by Blackhurst, captures Slade and his band-mates, David Welsh, Joe King, and Ben Wysocki, during the outfit's most delicate, vulnerable moments as they attempt to recreate their initial success. Personal and creative relationships seemingly teeter on the brink of disaster and failure seems inevitable, or at least a temporary solution. As the band struggles to maintain an artistic and creative integrity the pressure is on to deliver.
2010 Grammy Nominees
Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals
Best Pop Vocal Album
TV show pitch
Created by David Targan
Cinematography & Editing by Rod Blackhurst
Creative Statement
Since the early days of baseball, Americans have developed a special relationship with the game. During good times, the sport has the ability to connect people through shared human experience, and when times are tough, baseball is leaned on to capture imaginations, provide memories of better times, and restore a sense of identity.
Americans are brought up speaking the language of the sport, and in turn the game provides life-lessons and metaphors that go far beyond the action on the field. This project aims to find out where this love for the game comes from and what it is about the spirit of the game that encourages children to play catch after dark, and brings families together around the television, in the same way that it impels the major leaguer to a game winning hit. This is the search for the grassroots of baseball and a place where sport and life are one and the same. This place is baseball’s minor leagues, and the small town of Burlington, Iowa may house the game’s best-kept secret.
In Early Innings we’ll experience the ride of a minor league baseball season with the people whose lives are inextricably bound by America’s Pastime. The project will focus on the purer brand of the game found in the minor leagues where young men play in pursuit of a dream. The drama of watching a season unfold will capture the spirit and imagination of baseball fans, and we’ll journey along with the players to small towns across America to meet the people who are continually inspired by a kid’s game.
In year one we’ll follow the Burlington Bees at the lowest level of the minor leagues – Lo-A. This is where most major league careers begin and in following the Bees, it is my hope to document all the life-lessons and that come from being young and pursuing a dream in a place where the individuals on the team and in the town are fueled by the sanctity of baseball. Every year, 1500 (or so) players leave the comforts of home -- a lot of them for the first time -- and enter the lowest level of the minor leagues. They come from all over the world and put their lives on hold to pursue their dreams of playing professional baseball. They start in Single-A where they'll play 140 games in 150 days, travel over 10,000 miles on a chartered bus, encounter groupies, host families, and rabid fan-bases, and will encounter numerous successes, and even more failures along the way. They do so in spite of the odds, knowing full well that only one-in-fifty who begin the journey, will ever put on a big league uniform. Even so, players scramble to make ends meet, support their habit with menial off-season jobs, while during the season, only make $1,350 a month, five months a year (although every team has a few "Bonus Babies" that are resting on millions in the bank). It's very much a survival of the fittest, and though the life is hardly glamorous, there's something about baseball that brings in a new crop of fresh-faced players every year, ready to take on the rigors of minor league life. Early Innings will "follow" the Bees for an entire season, as 50 or so players chase the ultimate American Dream.
The Only Band In Town
OFFICIAL SELECTION 2010 Woods Hole Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION 2010 Sidewalk Moving Picture
Director | Rod Blackhurst
DP | Gareth Paul Cox
Editor | Rod Blackhurst & David Ebeltoft
Producer | Rod Blackhurst & Kyrie Cox
Original Music | Jeremy McCoy, Nathan Stengrevics & Lowell Stringer
The Only Band In Town is a straightforward portrait of four casual bluegrass musicians in rural upstate New York. North Creek, NY has a population of 1,837 and only one band, the Don't Quit Your Day Job Band, whose members include an old hippie, Melody, who moved to NYC during the Vietnam War with nothing but a bag of records and a guitar on her back, a small town old timer, Buckshot, who has spent his entire life in the same tiny community, Larry, a family man who seems to have forgotten about his family, and Stephanie, who is the band leader and transgendered father of three girls.
Fair Fight
Director & DP | Rod Blackhurst
Editor | Kelly Magelky
'Fair Fight', the feature length documentary debut from director and cinematographer Rod Blackhurst, offers a telling and intimate snapshot of the rock band The Fray as they struggle to create a follow up to their multi-platinum debut 'How To Save A Life'.
Taking its name from a line in one of the act's newer songs, 'Fair Fight' opens with a stylized time-lapse sequence of a quiet stretch of road with blankets of luminous clouds cascading overhead while front-man Isaac Slade plucks out the sparse, arpeggiated intro to the band's new track 'Happiness.' As Slade muses in his husky baritone about the futility of chasing happiness, fittingly we find the members at the tail end of an exhaustive three-year tour supporting the blockbuster release that essentially swallowed their lives.
From the confines of the famed recording studio the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, to a hometown studio in Denver, Colorado, ‘Fair Fight’, shot entirely by Blackhurst, captures Slade and his band-mates, David Welsh, Joe King, and Ben Wysocki, during the outfit's most delicate, vulnerable moments as they attempt to recreate their initial success. Personal and creative relationships seemingly teeter on the brink of disaster and failure seems inevitable, or at least a temporary solution. As the band struggles to maintain an artistic and creative integrity the pressure is on to deliver.
2010 Grammy Nominees
Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals
Best Pop Vocal Album