If you are an Athletic Director, Coach, Student Athlete or a Parent, you know how important it is to have great video for teaching, coaching, and recruiting purposes. Great video means the pictures are clear, well framed, stable, and smartly follow the action. Athletic Directors want great video for sharing, promotional, and marketing purposes. Coaches want great video to be able to coach every player, pause and point out position and technique issues, scout themselves and opponents, and ultimately game plan to win. Student Athletes and their parents need great video to use in searching for scholarships, transfers and other recruiting activities, which can include taking the very big step to the professional level.
If you are shooting games yourself, you should at a minimum have a tripod and the ability to smoothly pan and zoom, in order to easily follow the action. Cellphones are convenient and can take great pictures, but when it comes to following sports, it can be hard to keep the hand held phone stable and smoothly follow the action, so a video camera is a better choice. When shooting game coverage (for the team) you need to stay wide enough to follow the action and see what each player is doing, but not too wide where you can't make out uniform numbers and who each player is, and what they are doing at each positon. A good quality HD camera on a tripod makes this a lot easier, and shooting with some height is also recommended. Full game coverage also means capturing every play, so access to AC Power or having mulitiple batteries is paramount to being able to record the entire game. Many stadiums and arenas have raised camera lofts, so get permission to shoot there, and find the AC outlets to power your camera. If there is no loft, arrive early enough so you can secure a spot in the center section of the stands, preferably in the back row, so you have maximum height.
Most highlight videos I see come from game videos, which can be good or adequate, but a great highlight video for an individual player really needs some individual and close up attention. One technique that helps with highlights culled from wide game videos, is to use a spot shadow to highlight the featured player, so the viewer knows where to watch when evaluating the player. This is okay, but a better solution is to pick a few games where you also hire a shooter, or shoot close-up video your-self, of your player, so the recruiter or evaluator gets some compelling video to review while evaluating their on-field performance. Close-up video is tougher to shoot and follow the player, but will pay-off nicely when you get some great shots of key play-making by your athlete.
I have been shooting sports at all levels for 36 years, and have worked with many coaches and scouts, so I understand what they are looking for in great video. Check out some our work here on this video, let us know how HBSU Sports can help you and your sports video coverage become great.
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Looking to do your own videos? I am working on a book called, "Video Marketing Made Easy", which I hope to publish early in 2017. In the meantime, download our "Free Video Tips" report by clicking the button.
