Cue the spotlight: both reward and risk rise when a Charlotte filmmaker strikes out on his own.

• Author: Campbell, Spencer
• Position: PROFILE

After five years at NFL Films Inc. and eight more with NASCAR Media Group LLC, Rory Karpf became a full-time independent filmmaker in 2012. Going solo was made possible by two projects Karpf was set to direct and produce for ESPN: a documentary on the Manning football dynasty and one on the 1972 U.S. men's basketball team, which lost the Olympic championship game to the Russians on a controversial call and refused to accept the silver medal. Then, on Mother's Day weekend, Archie Manning, former New Orleans Saints quarterback and sire to Super Bowl signal callers Peyton and Eli, dropped out. "I talked to him on Saturday," Rory says, "and he was just like, 'I'm sorry'--he would always call me Cory, he thought my name was Cory instead of Rory--'I'm sorry, Cory, I just can't do it right now.'" That same weekend, Kenny Davis, captain of the 1972 national team, backed out, too. Karpf, 37, asked what the chances were he'd change his mind: less than zero. "I was devastated. I was almost in the fetal position."

His wife, Lauren, a former teacher and now chief financial officer of Charlotte-based First Row Films Inc., laughs. "He was. Crying and vomiting." Later, she adds, "Part of the process of doing this on our own was taking risk and believing that no matter what happens, you know you're good at what you do and you're going to persevere. The highs are really high, and the lows are really low. I freaked out a little bit because seeing him worried made me think this isn't going to work--we've got two kids, what are we going to do, we're going to be on the streets. You panic. But then I just thought about how far Rory had come."

Karpf grew up in Philadelphia and studied film and television production at Boston University before joining Mount Laurel, N.J.-based NFL Films as a producer in 1999. Fie followed its head of production to NASCAR Media in Charlotte in 2004, directing Dale, a documentary on racing legend Dale Earnhardt that became the top-selling sports DVD in history. Three years later, he directed Tim Richmond: To The Limit, about the NASCAR driver who died of AIDS in 1989, for ESPN. Though directing for ESPN, Karpf was still a salaried employee of NASCAR Media. He explored going out on his own about seven or eight years ago, but a camera cost about $150,000, with editing equipment and software $60,000 more. "Now you can edit on a laptop and get Adobe Premiere [editing software] for $50 a month," Karpf says. A camera runs about $5,000...