Meet the Film Makers
Bill Hipsher
Producer
Bill Hipsher is a successful entrepreneur and highly-respected digital marketing executive. Bill started one of the Midwest’s first web design companies while still in college in the mid-90s. After balancing a successful commercial real estate development career in his hometown of Omaha, NE, alongside his online ventures, Bill knew he had to choose one or the other.
Growing up in Omaha meant just one professional sports team – the Omaha Royals. I grew up half a block away from the original city ballfields in La Vista, Nebraska – a working-class suburb of Omaha. The blue-collar backgrounds of our fathers probably played a bigger part in our love of sport than we realized. My brother and our friends spent hours every day of the summer playing baseball. We were never playing as ourselves – we were playing as our baseball heroes. We all called which major leaguer we wanted to be that day. George Brett was someone we fought over consistently.
In the late 2000s, Bill turned his full attention to the ever-changing digital advertising and marketing space with a desire to use his passion for storytelling as a way of helping clients differentiate themselves in a cluttered and sometimes unorganized online world. He formed B2 Interactive with partner Brandon Taylor and began managing large digital marketing initiatives for Fortune 500 clients. Eventually, Bill oversaw acquisitions of a social media agency and a video production company, giving his agency the full gambit of online marketing offerings.
Adding video production services first and foremost gave Bill a way to serve agency clients in ways other marketers could not, using high production value films meant to tell his client’s stories in meaningful, authentic ways that connected with consumers. Along the way, the video production arm of the agency reignited something in Bill—a love for films and telling stories, a vintage product of his growing up on classic ’80s Spielberg movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and his coming of age during the time of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
In 2016, Bill launched Hurrdat Films. Shortly after their first release, Bill realized he now had the opportunity to tell a story deeply personal to his experience growing up in Omaha—the story of the Omaha Storm Chasers (formerly the Omaha Royals) and Minor League Baseball from the franchise and fan perspective. Two years later, the 50 Summers documentary would be born.
Bill currently oversees the distribution and development of new properties for Hurrdat Films. In addition to his work with Hurrdat Films, Bill is the founder and managing partner of a digital marketing agency with offices in Omaha and Lincoln, NE, as well as Salt Lake City, UT.
Click here to read a letter from Bill about why we made 50 Summers.
Dan Napoli
Director
“For me- In a lot of ways, this film is kind of the culmination of the last two decades of my life.
Baseball & journalism are what brought me to Nebraska. I moved here from Denver to play baseball at Division II Kearney, and study Journalism way back in 1994.”
Fast – forward 25 years later, and Dan has ended up a filmmaker and telling the Minor league baseball story through the eyes of his adopted hometown of Omaha.
“To interview George Brett, Alex Gordon, Warren Buffett -and just to talk baseball – it’s pretty insane. I have been directing and editing niche’, action – sports documentaries for 10 -12 years. but never had the opportunity to create something that could appeal to wider audience until Bill brought me his vision for what would be 50 Summers.”