In the years before his first feature, The Black Stallion, brought him recognition as a major talent, Carroll Ballard made a number of award-winning short films, including several films for children. Drawing on Ballard's upbringing in the Lake Tahoe area, these films evidence the profound sense of nature found on a larger scale in The Black Stallion. It was his short films which gave Ballard his underground reputation and, among his colleagues, including classmate Francis Ford Coppola, “raised suspicions even then that Ballard might be the purest imagist of all of them” (Sheila Benson, New West). Ballard is presently in production on his latest film, based on Farley Mowat's “Never Cry Wolf.”
Rodeo

“In this understated, twenty-minute film, Ballard looked beneath the protective deadpan of champion bull rider Larry Mahan, closing down inexorably on the few seconds of his ride, which Ballard stretched out in slowed motion. The technique is now a convention, but Rodeo was one of the first films to use it....
“Rodeo had come directly from Ballard's childhood. When he was almost nine, he'd been taken to a rodeo in Reno. One of the bull riders was killed in front of him, and the memory survived like a brand. It was that emotion he managed to freeze, to pull out nearly 25 years later. He must have stored details away unconsciously...things a kid would notice, the sort of things that would later set The Black Stallion apart from other films.” --Sheila Benson, New West. (1969, 20 mins, 35mm, color, Print from Cinema 5)
The Perils of Priscilla

In his award-winning shorts on animals, Pigs! and The Perils of Priscilla, Ballard dispenses with commentary and clichés in filming the natural lives of domesticated non-humans. Priscilla is a cat who endures indignity after indignity as the pet of a busy family. The dangers she faces when lost in a city make for hair-raising adventure. (1969, 16-1/2 mins, color, Print from PFA Collection, courtesy of filmmaker)
Crystallization

A teaching film that stands on its own as an art film, Crystallization records the formation of crystals from common liquids; the patterns revealed by the microscope are fascinatingly beautiful. (1974, 10 mins, color, Print from filmmaker, courtesy Churchill Films)
Pigs!

“Dawn: a farm - timid sparrow discovers bulky shapes - sounds of heavy breathing. Blimplike shapes arise - pigs! Faces, tails, personalities. No commentary.” The film that inspired the Churchill catalogue of educational films to sound like the “I Ching” is Carroll Ballard's Pigs!.
“Pigs! defined precisely a pig's delight in a squishy, muddy, garbage-filled life. Seeing it with young children who scream with joy at its forbidden pleasures makes Ballard's deceptively simple strength clear.” --Sheila Benson, New West. (1965, 10 mins, color, Print from filmmaker, courtesy of Churchill Films)
Waiting for May

A film about sitting on a park bench, Waiting for May was Carroll Ballard's first short, made while he was a student at UCLA. (1964, ca. 10 mins, Print from UCLA Dept. of Theatre Arts)
Seems Like Only Yesterday

An American Film Institute grant made it possible for Ballard to start an ambitious medium-length film, Seems Like Only Yesterday, but it was stopped short of completion by its producers. A most personal work, it deals with the transformation in American life over three generations by contrasting present-day media images with portraits of ten or twelve Americans over 100 years old. (1971, 44 mins, Print from filmmaker)