HS Football Highlight Videos for Critique
 

For the last two years my oldest son and I have been shooting our local football team and making highlight videos for the kids. This year we decided to create a short highlight for each game. Some of them have been very quick (35-45 seconds) others up to 4 minutes. The videos are not meant to be a complete documentation of the game, just some quick hits, big plays, humorous moments, etc. for the kids enjoyment at their Thursday night team meeting and once in a while on the school's video announcements. These are all shot from the sideline using a Sony FX-7 on a monopod and edited with Sony Vegas.

The school posted the videos on their website:

Genoa Area Local Schools - Genoa Fall Sports

Obviously the quality suffers quite a bit in this format, but you get the general idea. Any constructive criticism or other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I could not get the videos to load. But looking at the scores: Who the heck do these guys play against - girls teams?

Yeah - tough team in a weak league. Made the state semi-finals last year, they hope to take it all the way this year. That's part of the reason I'm trying to gather a lot of good footage along the way. If they should win a state title (fingers crossed) , it would be nice to be able to put together a documentary along the lines of "Go Tigers" about the Massillon football team.

Mark,

Great to find someone else in this forum doing exactly what I do for our local high school team. I couldn't get the videos to load either, but I'd love to see them. I've been doing these videos since 2007 for the same team, so it would be nice to see some fresh ideas.

You could upload them to vimeo.com for better quality. They have a free and a pay version that's pretty cheap for HD delivery.

Check out mine, too, at Aaron Yates on Vimeo . You'll have to look through the other vids to find the football, but there are a bunch there. I'd love to hear your feedback as well. EDIT: Some of the football stuff is recaps of the game for the local paper. The highlights without voiceover are much more fun to watch, IMO. You'll find both types on that page. /EDIT

Funny thing is, I was just logging in to post a question in this forum about high school football and get some ideas for music...

Looking forward to seeing the videos if you can get them working.

I'm out of town this week, but this weekend I'll check out VIMEO and see if I can upload the videos there. I'm looking forward to comparing notes and ideas.

Here are the direct links:
http://mail.genoaschools.com/staff/mwhirt/Rossford.wmv
http://mail.genoaschools.com/staff/m...Oak Harbor.wmv
http://mail.genoaschools.com/staff/m...rt Clinton.wmv
http://mail.genoaschools.com/staff/mwhirt/Woodmore.wmv
http://mail.genoaschools.com/staff/mwhirt/Northwood.wmv
http://mail.genoaschools.com/staff/mwhirt/Eastwood.wmv

Hey thanks for posting direct links - should make it a little easier to view! I will still try to get these posted to VIMEO this weekend.

hi,
only watched a couple but my initial first look I thought perhaps the edits were a little too quick. What I mean is the shots were so short I had a tough time figuring out what happened in the plays/highlight bits because they were gone so fast. I think you could leave a little on before and after each play/highlight to let the viewer see a bit more or what transpired.

Also a bit of slo-mo would be cool. Perhaps normal speed lead up and then slo-mo the key bit/hit/catch etc.

I agree. Add a little head and tail to each clip. Only watched one clip but that was my take from it. :)

Sounds like a kick ass team.

You could upload the clips to youtube or vimeo (better) and the school could embed them in their webpage. Might be a better option. Saves on school HD space as well. See if you can get the school to cough of the $60/year for vimeo and you can upload 1gb good quality videos. I think to a max of 5gb total per week?

I have to shoot Highschool football again in a week or so. Following one player for a demo real for college. We're in a press box but I hate it as camera positioning is a pain due to a permanent table in front of the window, and a low ceiling right over the table. We have to shoot with the window wide open and when it gets cold the rest of the people in there look like they want to murder us. lol Angle to the field is good though. I'm really starting to curse buildings not designed for video.

Mark,

Nice job, shooting. Football is not an easy sport to shoot. I used to shoot a lot of games for a local TV station using a big shoulder mount ENG rig. I can't imagine trying in the the smaller camera you guys used. So, great job, I know that can't be easy.

As others have already mentioned, the compression is rough. If you try Vimeo, go to their Help page for instructions on the best way to export your video for upload. That helped me a lot.

At the start of the season, I was just thinking of making very short mini-highlights, similar to the Gatorade "That's G" commercials (I even 'borrowed' their soundtrack for a couple.) While they turned out OK, they really are just too short (35-45 sec) to be of much interest. I guess making a commercial message with 2-3 second clips is different than trying to do a highlight with very short clips. The 2-3 minute highlights I have done for the last few games seem to be a lot easier to make - more time to setup the start of the play, more time to show a little celebration or sideline/crowd reaction after. These last two games of the season will probably be pretty lopsided, so I don’t anticipate spending too much time on them. After that, though, we’ll get into playoff games. There will be bigger crowds, more excitement, and a lot closer scores, so I anticipate making those highlights 4-6 minutes long to actually tell more of a story. More along the lines of this one:

http://mail.genoaschools.com/staff/mwhirt/Eastwood.wmv

I’ll try to post last year’s playoff highlight videos to VIMEO this weekend, get some feedback on those as well.

We've been making a point of trying to get a lot more 'non-game' footage like the sign on the stadium entrance, shots of the stands, stadium lights with pouring rain, band, cheerleaders, etc. We've even built up enough of a rapport with the coaches that they are allowing us in the locker room pregame and at halftime. This will come in really handy to use the audio as voice-over or just the video with the background music.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far.