by Matthew Fenton – Messiah College, Director of Athletic Communications; mfenton@messiah.edu
Member, CoSIDA New Media Committee
Fans eat up video content, but postgame highlight packages can be a daunting task, especially for a one-person shop or small team. After a long night of article writing, social media creating and posting, not to mention game coverage with stats and video, the last thing you want to do is sit down and edit a three- to five-minute highlight video of the game.
Since there is a definite interested in video, but not always the resources to do it in a big way, we’ve tried to incorporate smaller more bite-sized chunks of video into our social plan. The result has been what we call the
Highlight of the Night.
Background
At first, our highlight videos were long and tedious, trying to tell the whole story with a voiceover. These resulted in videos that were multiple minutes that did not results in many views. As a result, the Highlight of the Night was created as a video of the single most important highlight or play from the game. Essentially saying, if you missed the game this was the one play or moment that you needed to see from the event.
Over the years, the Highlight of the Night has expanded and adjusted slightly. Our current philosophy is a video that holds a small handful of highlights from the event with a voiceover that tells the story of the game with a little bit of background context/other stats. These videos are always under 60 seconds and are quick hitters that keep fans engaged and informs them of our teams. We strive to have a Highlight of the Night for all home events that we stream and occasionally other events on the road if we have access to quality video.
General Outline
As you could see in the video above, there is a pretty consistent template for our Highlight of the Night. The script is as follows:
- Opening Slide with Highlight of the Night Title
- Game Information with team, opponent, and date included
- Highlights of the game (generally 2-5 clips, depending on how long the highlights are)
- Closing Slide with information on how to follow the Falcons
Throughout the video, a voiceover with information walks you through what you’re watching and hopefully gives a little bit of context to the plays or goals.
Building Your Template
We don’t use anything too high-tech to make the Highlight of the Night happen. All we use is a small handful of informative .jpgs, a downloaded video file of the game, some music, a voice-over, and iMovie or another video editing software to put it all together.
Building a template is an important first step and I’ll show you how we did it in a couple of easy steps.
1 - Creating a Simple and Consistent Opening
To start, I didn’t want to take a ton of time building a sweet intro in After Effects or anything like that, so I planned on putting something basic together in iMovie. I lined up three informational slides and put different transitions between each to create a very simplistic intro. Our total intro is about five seconds.
Tip: I make sure our primary logo is shown on the very first frame of the video so that when we post on twitter the logo is there. Last year, our videos started on a white screen and every Highlight of the Night on Twitter had a thumbnail of a white screen.
What it looks like in iMovie:
2 - Finishing off the Template
Next I finished the visual elements of the template by putting in a placeholder clip in after the intro and adding an information slide at the end on how to follow our teams. In the past we used to make a specific slide for the next upcoming game, but I didn’t like having to remember to update that slide every time, so a generic one works just fine for us.
What it looks like in iMovie:
3 - Adding Music
Lastly, I throw in some generic background music and turn the volume of the clip down to somewhere between 10% and 15% so that our voiceover can be heard clearly over the music.
What it looks like in iMovie:
Editing a Highlight of the Night After a Game
Now that we have a template built for the Highlight of the Night, a lot of postgame updating is just dragging and dropping clips and updated slides. Here are the steps I use to update a Highlight of the Night after a game.
1 - Download your Film
Might seem like an easy set, but critical to get this part started as fast as you can. We currently stream through Sidearm and in the system it takes a few minutes for our stream to be ready to download, so I always start this process as soon as I get back to my office after a game. I’ve worked with other streaming providers (Stretch and Boxcast) in the past and their process is similar.
After you’ve downloaded your game, load the video into the project media panel in the top-center of the window.
Where to add to video in iMovie:
2 - Add Clips to Your Video
After I added the full video to my project media section, I pull out the clips I want to use in my video by selecting the clip and dragging them into the bottom section of the screen into my timeline/workspace.
After I add the clips, I like to doublecheck that the audio levels are looking good. For me, that’s turning the background noise in the clips down to 0%. They will initially show up at 100% (as you see in the screenshot below), but you can easily turn them down by clicking on the line in the audio section of the clip and dragging it to the bottom.
Tip: In iMovie, use I (in) and O (out) to select the clips from your original file to pull them into the timeline below. I also never try to be perfect with my clips when I originally select them. I plan on refining them in the timeline below after I see how long my video is.
What it looks like in iMovie:
3 - Updating the Game Match-Up Slide
If you used a similar format to the opening sequence that I made, the beginning of your video will have a slide that includes some game information. I have that slide saved as a template and for each game, I simply swap out the information and update the slide. To update the old slide, grab you new slide, drag it into the project timeline, and hover over the slide you want to update. When you let go, a window will pop-up, select “Replace from Start” and the length of the clip will not change, all that will adjust is the content.
4 - Voiceover
This is one that is different for every person. I personally love the voiceover because you can give context to the event, reference other notable performances that are not shown, give historic stats, and tee up the next event for the team. My approach when choosing clips and creating a voiceover is to think of major parts of the event and get a couple of clips to fit into that narrative.
From there, I just try to transition fans from one clip to the next while telling a little bit of a story as to what happened in the event. At the end, I talk about the result while saying what’s happening next for our team.
To create a voiceover, click the little microphone underneath the preview video in the upper right portion of your screen. A record button, audio level bar, and settings dials will appear underneath the preview. You should just be able to talk and have the microphone in your computer pick up your audio. If not, plug in a microphone and mess around with the settings bars next to the record button to select your microphone of choice.
Tip: Not sure if this is a tip or just my personal preference, but I do not write a script for a voiceover. In my opinion, I have a hard time making it sound like I’m not reading if I have a script in front of me. I just write down the player who had the kill or the goal so I remember (maybe who had the assist), the score from the set of game, other notable facts that I want to throw in, final score, and when they play next. This helps me talk naturally about the event while serving as a bit of a cheat sheet for key things I want to mention.
Note: This might take a few tries! I always have first-timers on Highlight of the Night voiceovers to go over the time for a take or two. Always easier to tone things down rather than build up enthusiasm. You can also clip away parts that you want to include and start from the middle. When you click the record button, the screen will count you down and then start your recording.
4 - Exporting the Video
After the voiceover is done, it’s time to export the video. For a variety of reasons (including quality of initial game footage, download time, disk space, etc.) we export or Highlight of the Night videos in 720p resolution with medium quality and faster compress. I’m no expert in video compression, but I’ve found that the file size and quality work well for what we use the videos for on social media and YouTube.
To export the video, click the box with an arrow out on the top-right side of the screen and select file. There you will be able to name your video, select the format, resolution, quality, and compression for you export. Click next… and you will select where this will save.
Tip: Before you export, make sure your voiceover and music don’t extend past your last slide. If they do, simply extend your clips slightly or lengthen your final slide to cover the end. You don’t want music or a voiceover playing while there is just a blank screen as a visual.
Tip: We save all of our Highlight of the Night videos to dropbox. I have the app on my phone so can easily download the videos right away and post immediately to social media.
5 - Posting the Videos on Social Media
We post our videos on Twitter and Instagram while also uploading them to YouTube. We always use the hashtag for the sport (ex. #MessiahWSOC) as well as our department’s hashtag (#GoMessiah), but for Highlight of the Nights we also add #MessiahHOTN. I started doing it a couple of years ago and it was great to be able to see all of them in one place.
Instagram Tip: On Instagram make sure to have your entire video shown on the screen. Just hit the little arrows out button when you select you video. Also, I change the cover on all of our videos so that it’s not just the primary logo for each one. You can adjust the cover on the second screen after you select you video (on the bottom right).
Twitter Tip: Always make sure that the entire length of the video is being shown. It will naturally try to clip to a 45 second segment of the video, but you can adjust the in and out points of the video by clicking and dragging on your phone.
6 - Posting the videos on YouTube and adding to your story
The last step for us is taking our Highlight of the Night and uploading it to YouTube. Our primary reason for this is to include the videos in our stories through Sidearm. After you upload the video on YouTube, just copy the video link. For Sidearm users, go into the backend of your website and select the story that you would like to associate your video with. Edit the story and select primary image. In the bottom box under attached video, past the link to the YouTube video and save changes. Your video will show up with a play button in the middle of the primary image that people can watch right on your homepage.
Tip: For Presto users, there is a way to embed videos, but I believe you just need to make it a separate story if that’s a route you want to take. I don’t believe they can attach to the primary image in a story, but they can always be embedded in the body of the story.
Tip: When uploading videos to YouTube, be sure to add to different playlists. We have a playlist for every sport as well as a main playlist that all videos go in. These playlists are linked on each sport page and update automatically for consistently fresh content.
Final Thoughts
I’m no expert in any of this stuff, but that’s how we get our little highlight videos out here at Messiah. Nothing crazy fancy, but our fans seem to love having some sort of video content consistently throughout the year. In general, after downloading the footage a video will take about 10-25 minutes to make from start to finish and the majority of that time is messing up on the voiceover. I think those 15 or so minutes on a video is definitely a worthwhile investment for some video content that doesn’t require extra filming at games on the sidelines.