Mens Basketball Fire-Up

Over the last couple of years we've had the opportunity to create fire-up videos for the Purdue men's basketball team. Basically these videos play before the players run onto the court to begin the game. The intention is to fire-up the crowd and get them ready for the team. In the past, due to time restraints and budget, we've always been forced to basically do clip shows of past big plays from game footage. This year we had some time to work a little more on the piece and we created what's above.

The idea is the preparation the team does to get ready for the game.. the practice, the pain, the dedication, etc. One thing we've been limited to with video is the lack of good slow motion. It's not like film where you can just shoot more frames and play them back at normal speed. Enter NAB 2006. At the conference Sony introduced the XDCAM format. This allowed us to shoot in the HD format in true slow-motion. Since it uses a digital interface and not analog, the camera is basically writing files and frames so you can over and under-crank the footage. At least this is how I understand it to work... remember I'm a graphics guy, not an engineer. Anyways, we were eager to do something with slow motion so we shot the piece over a couple of practices using the Sony XDCAM and edited it in a few days. I, along with a co-worker, shot all the footage and Scott Horton, the editor put it together into the piece you see below.



[click image to view video]

Along with the opener video we created supporting graphics to fill the screens that hang around the court. These LED walls have just been blacked out in the past seasons so this year we wanted to make support grapihcs to video. The idea was to focus on the chorus of the song, but not be distracting. The main focus should be the video itself. I made the graphics in a day with photoshop and after effects.