Brian
Schulz
Company: MLB Productions
Title: Producer, cinematographer
Age: 40 (turned 40 last Tuesday)
Where born: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Education: University of Connecticut (B.A.)
Career background: CBS Sports, MLB Productions
Family: Single
Favorite app: Instagram.
Favorite way to unwind: I’m a huge consumer of art, so I like to go to art galleries; I like picking out galleries for artists I’ve never heard of.
Guilty pleasure: Chocolate chip mint ice cream.
Worst habit: Biting my nails. It’s horrible. I wish I could stop but I can’t. When I have idle time, I just find myself biting my nails.
Cause supported: Grand Street Settlement.
Person in the industry I’d most like to meet: Henry Aaron.
I have a fear of … : Underperforming.
Most adventurous thing I’ve ever done is … : Go hiking on an ice glacier on the southern tip of Argentina, in Patagonia.
2014 will be a good year if … : Of all the baseball games I shoot there are no rainouts.
BRAD MANGIN
ost college students who aspire to work in television want to be in front of the camera. But when Brian Schulz was working as a student assistant in the SID office at UConn, he saw the ESPN production trucks roll into town for a men’s basketball game and became fascinated with the process of television.
Schulz, now a producer and cinematographer for MLB Productions, got his start in the tape
{podcast}
SBJ Podcast:
Executive Editor Abraham Madkour and project editor Mark Mensheha talk about the Forty Under 40 selection process and the class of 2014.
library and research department of CBS Sports after graduating in 1997. He moved to MLB Productions in 1999 as an entry-level logger. The department had invested in some ARRI-S cameras, and Schulz after-hours would take one of the cameras to Little League and high school baseball games so he could practice shooting.
Schulz had a thirst for knowledge and was constantly picking the brains of those around him, using his down time to hone his craft. Ultimately, he moved through the ranks at MLB Productions and began filming World Series games and All-Star promos, and was entrusted as the lead cinematographer for Showtime’s 2011 series “The Franchise: A Season With The San Francisco Giants,” for which his production team won a national Emmy Award.
“I love telling the very diverse and personal stories in MLB,” Schulz said. “If I can bring an artful and cinematic aesthetic to it, that’s what I’m really proud of and that’s really what I love.”
Schulz took his storytelling to a new level in 2012, teaming with his sister and brother-in-law on a documentary titled “Brooklyn Castle,” which chronicles the lives of five members of an inner-city junior high chess team. He was able to complete the project in his free time by filming on off days and taking some strategic vacation time.
In the long term, Schulz admits he has an affinity for the 30-second world. “I’d love to dive into commercial directing and showcase all the sensibilities I’ve gathered while in baseball,” he said.
But for the immediate future, Schulz has set his sights on the 2014 MLB season — and experimenting with some new technology from ARRI.
— Jillian Fay
