Mint Farm Films

08/09/2023

We had the opportunity to create a PSA for the upcoming Nancy Lieberman Charities Celebrity Golf Classic. We share it now because there are only a couple foursomes left - hurry and get yours now at NancyLiebermanCharities.org so you can join us a week from Monday!

02/09/2023

FC Dallas celebrates their history with Retro Burn Night Saturday. The franchie’s history is intertwined with that soccer in this area, this state, and this country, as we learned when producing their club profile for Apple TV earlier this year.

28/08/2023

As we did the interviews for a series of player profiles for FC Dallas, we tried to gain insight into these men's play on the pitch while also providing a glimpse of their personalities. A favorite question for the latter purpose was asking them about what they do that makes people laugh. For center back José Martínez, it was truly the simplest thing - one that sets a positive tone no matter what language you speak or what you do for a living - a smile. Check out his - it’s a good one.

05/07/2023

Is the superstation era back? Streaming technology has created options for TV stations to send their programming beyond local markets. This time it seems to be more about news than sports, although who knows what the future holds. And what do headache relief products have to do with it? Read this blog post from Mint Farm Films’ Rush Olson to find out more.

One of my duties in my first paying TV job involved processing contest entries for the Goody's Home Run Jackpot. I worked for the KTVT television station at the time and Goody’s Headache Powder sponsored our Texas Rangers Baseball Club game broadcasts.

21/06/2023

Yesterday provided some good examples of why we think the world of sport, and in this case women’s sport, will provide growth opportunities for content creators willing to embrace multi-platform monetization. Mint Farm’s Rush Olson explains in this blog post.

Women’s sports had a lot going on Tuesday. The activity on the playing surfaces was actually a bit limited.

31/05/2023

Mint Farm Films is focused on the growth of women’s sports, and our Rush Olson took a look at how a WNBA team must manage its roster.

Tuesday night at the College Park Center at UT Arlington, the Dallas Wings played their third game in five days. The contest against the Minnesota Lynx followed road games Friday (win at Seattle) and Sunday (loss at Chicago).

26/04/2023

We talked about a family business with Ed, Dayn, and Reaghan Belfour from Belfour Spirits yesterday. Notice we didn’t say “celebrity-driven” business. That’s because their model revolves around being totally involved in the process of creating quality spirits - not just attaching the name of a former hockey player to someone else’s product. It’s a fascinating aspect of Ed’s story, not least because it’s super fun to listen to the three of them explain the intricacies of, for instance, creating the whiskey for the single barrel program they’re launching. It’s a great time for hockey right now with the playoffs ongoing, and for whiskey, too, as it turns out.

21/04/2023

Nancy Lieberman Charities added former pro basketball player Del’vin Dickerson to their basketball camps staff. We think he’s a great guy who knows his basketball, too. And we discovered while shooting this PSA that he knows his way around some TV as well! Check out the video and sign your kids up for camp this summer.

01/04/2023

As the Women’s Final Four plays out in Dallas, Nancy Lieberman Charities and the Dallas Wings helped ensure girls and boys would continue to have the opportunity to develop into the next stars of March Madness. Of particular interest are Greg Bibb’s comments about preventing young people from abandoning sports - that’s exactly the sort of problem a Dream Court like the one they and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame dedicated this week hopes to remedy.

25/03/2023

The Sports Business Journal named Dallas its top city for sports business - Mint Farm’s Rush Olson blogged about why he thinks this might not be the last time the area receives the honor.

This week’s Sports Business Journal ranked Dallas, Texas as the best city in the United States in which to conduct sports business. As someone who conducts sports business in the region (and who hopes people will conduct it with me here), this came as excellent news.

08/03/2023

As spring training ramps up and we start to see the impact of baseball’s new rules changes, here’s Kevin Mench talking about how his former teammate, Pudge Rodríguez would have tackled the modern defensive shifts addressed by the new changes. He also relates it to golf (and, it just so happens, Pudge loves golf). We wonder - if hitting coaches just taught their charges to use all fields like Pudge did, would it eliminate the need to legislate shifts away?

This is an excerpt from an interview we conducted for a documentary about Texas Rangers and MLB icon Iván Rodríguez. He's a Baseball Hall of Famer and one of top catchers to ever play. Rush Olson from Mint Farm Films can be seen at the beginning of the video posing the question to Kevin.

23/02/2023

As a defensive back, Mel Renfro had a unique perspective on the way fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Bob Lilly worked with his colleagues on the Dallas Cowboys defensive line. Hear about it in this excerpt from an interview for our Bob Lilly documentary.

Mel Renfro had a great view of the disruption Bob Lilly could cause from his defensive tackle position and how he worked with his defensive line teammates. B...

02/02/2023

Mint Farm Films had a short film go live on Apple TV+ today. It’s a soccer project, one that goes far beyond one club and touches on the history of the sport in the U.S. You’ll find it on the MLS Season Pass platform. Director Rush Olson of MFF wrote a blog post with the story of how we did it.

If you grew up in Fort Worth-Dallas, Texas during the 1970s, you might have learned about the sport of association football right after watching the Three Stooges. The Slam Bang Theatre morning kids’ programming on local broadcast television station KTVT | CBS DFW featured the likes of Moe, Larry,...

11/12/2022

Here's another video from our journey with Nancy Lieberman Charities and police officers from several North Texas cities to an Under Armour store to help kids get outfitted for school and the holidays. In this piece, Nancy Lieberman and Angela Shaw from the DPD explain how the event works and why it's meaningful.

08/11/2022

Working with the Dallas Stars on their Hall of Fame induction ceremony, we had to dig down into the true meaning of it - the legacy it represents on and off the ice. This is the video we crafted to celebrate it.

06/11/2022

Yesterday, we watched Old Dominion University Athletics unveil a statue of one of their greatest athletes and the City of Norfolk change the name of a street in her honor. Both the sculpture and the thoroughfare paid homage to her skill at making other players on the court better by passing the basketball. The previous day, she had also dedicated a basketball court created by her eponymous charity in conjunction with the city, the university, and Pepsi. The facility resides in one of Norfolk’s underserved communities and is one of more than 100 her nonprofit has constructed. There’s a certain symmetry in how a woman commemorated for flashy assists as a player has dedicated much of her life in more recent years to assisting young people in need of a more direct path to success. It’s something we keep in mind as we’re telling her story and something for everyone who traverses Nancy Lieberman Pass or admires her statue to know.

29/10/2022

The Dallas Stars will induct Derian Hatcher into their Hall of Fame this weekend, and it got us thinking about the team’s impact. As we’ve worked on our documentary about Ed Belfour, we’ve examined his accomplishments with an eye to the big picture. When Ed and the Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999, it had a ripple effect on the region, the state, and even the country. In this video, the first American-born captain to skate the Cup explains how what he, Ed, and their teammates did made a lasting impact.

This interview excerpt came as part of a longer session conducted for the documentary on which Mint Farm Films is working on Ed Belfour’s life and career.

23/10/2022

One of our Mint Farm Films projects is a documentary about Nancy Lieberman and how she broke barriers in her sport. A key part of her hoops development was her time spent at Rucker Park. There she learned about more than basketball - the quotes in this article from MFF’s Rush Olson came from our shoot with her there.

10/10/2022

At Mint Farm Films, we look to create documentaries about individuals that also provide insight into the world at large. In this blog post, MFF’s Rush Olson writes about the impact of the 50-year-old Title IX statute on some exceptional young people of today.

When planning the 2022 Nancy Lieberman Charities Dream Ball Gala, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the vital Title IX legislation seemed a logical priority. A key part of the plan included a roundtable with some of the best female athletes ever.

25/09/2022

MFF's Rush Olson wrote about a couple of our documentary subjects and the leadership they show in the space - Nancy Lieberman & Sidney Moncrief

I share a unique perspective with a former NBA player on the power of basketball to do good things beyond the court. The player is Harvey Catchings, and he and I both attended the same pair of charity events last week.

08/08/2022

We worked on our about Nancy Lieberman this weekend at the BIG3 games in Frisco, Texas. Her team ended up with a hard-earned win and we ended up with cool images.

26/07/2022

We put microphones on former NBA players Jimmy King and Derek Harper at a recent clinic held by The National Basketball Retired Players Association - Dallas Chapter. They dispensed wisdom about succeeding on and off the court (and had some fun, too).

15/07/2022

We’re in postproduction on our film about the 2022 College Gridiron Showcase. It tells the stories of long shot pro football hopefuls and also relates it to big-picture issues in the sport, like women in football, international expansion of the game, and new leagues.

14/07/2022

We shot this week with former NBA and Michigan player Jimmy King as he worked with kids at a Boys and Girls Club in Fort Worth. Thanks to the The National Basketball Retired Players Association - Dallas Chapter for having us out.

05/07/2022

In the course of making a documentary, sometimes we find good stories we didn’t know existed, and sometimes they actually get added to during the process - even if their beginnings lie some 60 years ago. This is one of those stories - about Bob Lilly.

You can bid on the piece July 16 at the Lakewood Country Club during the Exchange Club’s Ticket To Ride, An Evening With The Morning Musers event. George Dunham, Craig Miller, and Gordon Keith from Sportsradio 96.7 & 1310 The Ticket will supply the evening’s entertainment. The auction also features a similar piece Brad did with Lee Roy Jordan, Bob’s former Cowboys teammate. The evening’s raffle will fund an endowment for the club’s James T. “Brad” Bradley Scholarship Fund.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ongoing-story-iconic-bob-lilly-photo-rush-olson/