About twelve years ago the town of Dillon, TX was split on whether or not the football team needed a giant video board while the academic funds were being cut. Principal Tami wanted to reallocate funds raised by the boosters specifically for the Jumbotron. Taking money away from a successful football program in Texas is the fastest way to make enemies as Tami learned. Those of you who were in high school between 2006-2011 may have picked up that this is from the NBC fictional show, Friday Night Lights. While this may be a total black and white cliche of how academics and athletics butt heads, it does raise some ethical questions of whats excessive in public school athletics. I remember feeling about that episode is how crazy for a high school to have a jumbotron.
I graduated from Willow Springs High School in 2008. Most of our football and basketball games were against other rural schools. I played on an artificial turf field once and that blew my mind. At that time, only major college programs had video boards.
Now that I’ve aged myself, let’s jump to today. I live in Liberty, MO where we have two large high schools. Both Liberty and Liberty North have video boards at the football stadiums and in their basketball gyms. The Liberty school district was able to pay for these by getting local businesses to advertise on and around the video boards. So how can a rural school like Willow have the gameday experience of a basketball video board as these 6A schools? With a little creativity from the band and a principal with media experience.
Willow Springs has 4 decently sized flat screen TVs connected to each other and mounted on the wall in their “new gym.” (Side note, I walked into the High School offices and was asked if I knew where “the new gym” was. I remember thinking how weird it was calling it “the new gym” back in 2008 because it was built in the 70’s. I LOVE that Munford Gym is still referred to as “the new gym.”) The band used this 4 TV setup during football season and at band competitions.
I was invited back to Willow (after filming a football hype video) to film an intro video for the the boys and girls basketball teams. The plan is to have these play right before the starting lineup is announced. One goal is to pump up the home crowd, the other is to intimidate the opposing team. Mr. Spence (principal and radio voice of Willow Springs) wrote a banger voiceover script prior to me arriving to film. The voiceover helped frame the stories by giving me rough idea of the shots I wanted to capture. We scheduled an hour to film the pep club, two hours with the boys’ basketball team, two hours with the girls’ basketball team, and 30 minutes for the voice over.
The pep club film shoot was surprisingly not awkward. They showed off their chants, the rollercoaster, and even did this bowling thing (didn’t make the hype video). I set up three-point lighting with students in the bleachers. I wanted contrasting cool and warm lights so the backlight and fill light were a cooler LED and my key light was a warm, orange tint.
Next up on the schedule was to film the boys’ scenes. Some early encouragement was required to get the guys on camera. You could tell some wanted to be on camera but didn’t want to seem too eager. Finally, things started rolling. The sun passed through the skylights, casting a perfect spotlight. I mean… look at that.
There are some shoots where I end up with hours of footage and only end up using a fraction of the raw video. Due to the time restraints, basically every shot had to be usable. This spotlight effect mixed with slow motion dunks and a backflip couldn’t have been more perfect. Coach Wilson even busted out an impromptu pump up speech.
The Lady Bears were next and there was no shyness or hesitation. They had their own version of “We ready for y’all” that we filmed a few different perspectives of. The girls did a great job of hyping each other up and being genuinely excited for their teammates.
We recorded Mr. Spence’s voiceover a couple times, but that was overkill. His first take was gold.
Editing these intro videos ended up being one of the smoothest projects I’ve ever had. Each shot was specifically planned so I didn’t have to shuffle through “throw away” clips. I took some extra time tweaking the color grade to what I thought fit best. The historic “new gym” had a warm feel to it so I decided to add a gold look to most of the shots. The video below shows the raw video vs the color graded shots.
Being back in Munford gymnasium brought back so many memories. The walk from our locker room, up the stairs, and then running out onto the court to “Halftime Stand Up and Get Crunk” was our way to get hyped. That adrenaline is what makes basketball great. This project allowed me to use my passion for film and sports to create an intro video for the next generation of Bears to have the same feeling. Go Bears!
