Football Highlights for critique

mystico

mystico

Well-known member
The following link is for the highlights reel from a middle school football video I did this past Fall. The discs have already been distributed to those who ordered, and I've only gotten positive feedback from the kids (none from parents). However, I wanted some professional (you guys) advice and tips before posting it to my website. In looking back at my previous demo clips, I keep finding things I don't like--especially poor overall colour and a bit of shakiness.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


www.cloud9videoproductions.com/videos/footballHL.html
 
Well, parents and kids should appreciate what you did. I do football for my kid's high school, and put in tons of hours. I'll have to host one section of what I do somewhere and share it.

The shakey stuff was a bit annoying, also the audio for some of the interview parts. I have gotten used to paying attention to where the play may go. If the defense is killin em, hang behind the line and look for sacs maybe. But I usually go sidelines past the line of scrimmage about 10 yards. If they get close to the end zone, I'll go behind the end zone, maybe to the corner or something. Just try different angles. This year I made a fig rig type of stablizer, and used it for every game. Once I got used to using it, it really worked great.

The coach this past year made sure a few plays came my way. But it took doing the video last year to get him comfortable with what I can do. To me there is too much extra stuff and not enough highlights on your video. I always use a few songs too, just be careful not to offend people with the type of music or the lyrics. Parents are a bit picky about that.
 
I saw the movie and wrote down these comments while watching:

1. The music must be changed. In the first shot where they brake the ribbon it's really awsome. past that it gets totaly anoing.

2. I couldn't hear what they were saying because of the music you have to lower it way down. I think you should put parts without music at all, the music really got on my nerves after a while.

3. The movie should be much shorter because there is no story and it really gets boring. maybe if you can find a story in the materials. some development that happend during the game or something, preferably with humans.

4. The rythem of the movie was too slow, this is sort of an action film and it should have much faster editing. That slow motion stuff also got on my nerves on the second time I saw it.

5. You used two same shots of the ribbon breaking which made the first shot cheap (The one at the begginning and close to the end)
 
Thanks to all for the advice, suggestions and kudos. To respond to specific issues ...
Many have commented (on other forum as well) about the song choice, poor audio in some interviews, and lack of footage from games. This was one of 3 highlights reels. This team has two sub-teams--A Team and B Team. I filmed every single game (only because my son in on the team). The disc has overall highlights reel for each subteam, which was where each game's highlights was shown. 2nd reel is "Hard Hits" which was nothing but hard hit after hard hit with hard rock music track. 3rd HL reel is Blooper & Funny Moments. The reel posted here is called "Season Remix." It was meant to include all the interviews, sideline and practise shots, etc. Then added some game footage to even it out a bit. BY the time I did this reel I was feeling more game footage would have been a bit much. I perhaps should have mentioned all this beforehand, but with this knowledge, would you still recommend more game footage?

As for audio, I got footage at perhaps 3-4 practises. For some reason I didn't use my headphones for any of the filming. Also, because of the way the coaches ran their practises, I was often grabbing kids whenever I could--usually grabbing all those on the sideline while others running practise plays. Then at the last practise I attended I announced during the coaches' wrap-up talk that all kids who had not interviewed should stay after and do their interviews. So this rush approach caused me to not look at my levels most of the time. This overall approach was fine for most of the time, but for the interviews it was a major mistake! It was often windy and as many of you stated, some of the kids were more shy and soft-spoken than others. I didn't know about the low voice until it was too late. I lowered the song during each interview anyway, and during the shy kids' interviews I lowered to almost barely audible, AND for the voice track I normalized the gain, maxed the standard volume, added a volume effect and maxed it. Did all this to just below the point of crackles and distortion. What you hear is those that were still too low to hear. My only other option would have been to leave those interviews out.

To top it off, I only got 10 orders. I was charging $45 per copy, which seemed fair considering I recorded EVERY game and some practices. This was middle school by the way.

Thoughts for next year: Talk with coaches about setting aside interview time; wear headphones all the time; setup cam on sticks for interviews and have kids do an “action interview” (running up to cam, catch pass then look into cam, etc.) This was actually my orig idea but lack of time and poor planning prevented it. Also set minimum order before first game and limit number of games recorded (maybe 3 games, 3 practises). Any other suggestions?
 
use more zooms and more action style shooting.
edit it more interesting and short and add music only after it looks perfect without music.
try to catch story moments like between kids, how they talk to each other how the coach gives them the pep talk. maybe you'll catch somthing emotional.
make it like a short movie
 
With so many comments about legal risks of posting video with minors without parental permission, I decided to remove from website. (Those comments were made on videouniversity forum.)
 
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