Final Video Story

A few tweaks later, I have my final video project done! I’m really excited about the product I ended up with. I definitely think I got across the feel I was aiming for and told the story well at the same time. It was surprising how much I enjoyed video editing, I hope to do a lot more of it in the future.

I felt the best way to get the story across more clearly (some peers suggested maybe the story wasn’t clear enough for non-baseball viewers) was to add some scrolling captions to the game footage, describing what the viewer was seeing and why it was important. I had to fiddle around with the speed a little bit, but eventually get them all where I wanted them.

It was minor, and probably only bothered me, but I got all of the PIP boxes in generally the same location, relative to the corners.

There was an odd skip in audio in my draft video and I was able to fix the mistake, somehow I had clipped the audio out, so it was a fairly easy fix.

My favorite addition from the draft to the final was the addition of the opening and ending descriptors. The scrolling text was easy to do, but the picture in the background was my favorite part. I already had the cutout images of each individual player on my computer from a previous project, so it was just a matter of importing them and adding some effects.

I really appreciate all the input on my draft video, it really helped me improve my project. Also, to all my friends who did me a huge favor by watching the video and giving me input, I really appreciate your help as well.

I think this is my best work from the whole semester, it was a great way to end a really fun class. Hope you all enjoy the video!

Video Storyboard

Opening descriptive text, player backdrop with fight song playing

Opening text slide:

  • WSU Baseball (13-12) v. Seattle University (14-10)
  • WSU fight song playing

Game 1 transition with players postgame:

  • WSU 2 – Seattle 1

Interview with Ian Sagdal:

  • Question about game winning sac fly
  • Interview goes to PIP, video of sac fly becomes dominant video

Interview with J.D. Leckenby:

  • Question about start
  • Interview goes to PIP, video highlights of Leckenby becomes dominant video

Interview with Coach Marbut:

  • Question about Monda catch
  • Interview goes to PIP, video of Monda catch becomes dominant video

Game 2 transition with players pregame:

  • WSU 19 – Seattle 1

Interview with Derek Jones:

  • Question about tying record for career HR at WSU
  • Interview goes to PIP, video of 40th career HR becomes dominant video
  • Transition to Coach Marbut talking about Jones’ achievement

Interview with Joe Pistorese:

  • Question about how his start went
  • Interview goes to PIP, video of pitching highlights becomes dominant video

Game 3 transition with players postgame:

  • WSU 4 – Seattle 5

Interview with Coach Marbut

Interview with Taylor Ard

  • During short answer, video of Ard HR becomes dominant and interview goes to PIP.

Closing descriptive text, again with player backdrop and fight song playing

Credits

Draft Video Story

Of all the projects I have worked on, this is by far the one I had the most fun with and am most excited about. It’s not yet complete but I’m still incredibly excited about how it looks.

I couldn’t have gotten this far without help though, so I have to thank Craig Lawson from WSU Media Communications for being so great with post game interview accommodations and the WSU Athletic Department’s video department for providing me with game footage.

Originally I planned on simply throwing together interview footage and narrating the weekend series against Seattle University for the video story, but then I realized that would be pretty boring and went searching for game footage. After I got the footage my plan was to simply show the footage of highlights while the interview audio continued over it but soon realized how much better it would be to continue the interview video as a picture-in-picture (PIP) over the highlights.

There are still a few things missing, such as narration of the series so everything is pieced together and the story makes sense. I’m still in the process of writing the script so that should be included in the final draft.

I shot all the interview footage with my digital camera, which records in 720p HD so the quality was fairly nice, which adds a lot to the video. It worked out nicely that the game highlights were also shot in 720p HD so the quality is equal throughout the video.

In a few of the night interviews the stadium lights were shining directly into my camera and caused some weird streaking down the video. Obviously I’d like for that to not be there but I don’t think there’s much I can do about it.

All in all I’m really excited about where my video story is at. I’ve included my storyboard at the bottom of this post. Hope you enjoy the video!

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