From The Fringe is an idea for a film and production company (or at least some sort of mental space in my mind) I’ll use to serve the golf industry with a mix of my writer/director, creative media, and marketing skills.
For this project, I connected with Kyle Rodes who splits his time and career ambitions between being a professional golfer, coach, and sometimes a caddie. His passion and immersion in golf are thoughtfully self-guided. I had the opportunity to film him at The Bears’s Club in Jupiter during a practice round for his qualifier for the 2024 U.S. Open.
After the round, we sat down for an interview. My focus for the story was to communicate why he competes and his perspective of self-belief. Kyle pushes himself as a competitor to fuel his coaching endeavors — a way of proving himself to any nay-sayers as he builds his reputation as an elite golf coach. Kyle didn’t end up qualifying for the U.S. Open — it would have been awesome for him (and made for a better story), yet I still think we created a compelling video that speaks to his professional mission, captures his passion for coaching while highlighting him as a great player.
This was a fun exercise pushing me to practice new things along the way. It was an absolute privilege to shoot at The Bear’s Club (I was giddy to get let in the gates). Interviewing an athlete and finessing an edit like this was a new type of skill development — I didn’t get paid for any of this and I even had to rent my own car to get up to the course — I took this project on solely for the relationships and a professional reel piece. My hope was that I could capture something compelling enough to get me to the next stepping stone toward being a director. I see it as another investment in my creative career.
Along with the interview and story, Kyle and I worked to capture a couple of golf tip videos on the course later in the round. To give him as much value from the shoot as possible, I also provided him with full access to a library of the footage we captured so he could use it for his personal content in any way he pleases. All in all, fun opportunity for me and a great guy to work with.
I suppose the next step is to figure out how to earn a living doing more cool stuff like this…