Football Prep Headquarters

Somebody told me, "that must be an easy job," referring to Football Highlight Department I've built over the past couple of years. I nearly took his head off. On top of making myself free every Friday night and Saturday night for Capture and Review of the games, the daunting task of adding and removing highlights from game to game becomes a spreadsheet, lots of notes, lots of angles to recap and can be an absolute headache if the team plays good. (I know that sounds terrible.) It's a full time job on top of my full time job.I have to pay my guys, pay for equipment, get everybody to the games, depend on them to get the plays and do it with the cameras white balanced through out the game where the sun sets slowly and the buggered fluorescents begin to burn brighter as the game goes along. I have to capture the footage, sort, and review and we're talking about 5 hours of review for each game from 5 different camera angles.

Here is the blueprint that was carefully constructed on my approach to filming my "innovative way of doing high school football."

Then as soon as the capture and review is performed. The clips are separated into the different players folders depending on their particular highlights. The editing begins. With 4 different camera ops with four different cameras, the colors and contrast have to be adjusted and due to the real time scenario some camera men may not get the play at the best angle so the other cameras have to be referenced for the best angle. Then a bloated highlight reel goes out to the parents. The parents and coaches decide on the clips to keep and this process usually goes through 5 sets of eyes which makes everything just a tad time consuming before a decision is made.

The final cuts are recorded on a spreadsheet. Then the clips are joined together to make "game tapes" the following Friday for the players to look at and cataloged in case colleges want "full games." The highlight reels then are shaved down and then Friday comes again and it's time to do it all over again.

So to answer your question, no it's a terribly hard job as a matter of fact. If I didn't love football so much there is no way I would do it.

The Game Tape Reels to go out to parents, players, coaches.

The Camera Call Diagram, matched with spreadsheet of plays from camera angles, to list of "keepers" from outside sources, to the DVD Label for finished reels.

The DVD Label Before the Cut Out