Chief Delphi - 2015 PNW Highlight Reels: Making of

With the end of the FRC Season come and gone, I had a nice chance to reflect about how difficult it is to make a highlight reel while watching dozens of reporters and camera crew try to write their own stories at champs. I will never be like them, but I aim to create memories for every team at an event I volunteer at.

Highlight reels have been a bit of enigmatic process to most. My team and I work hard day and night during an event to pull out the best video we can. We are quite small, only two other members over the course of all the events, but we never did it alone. Each event is another challenge for us just like it is for the teams. DISCLAIMER: I am in the district system where there is a bit more flexibility with what I can do because I work closely with many of the serial volunteers and I have earned their trust. I have no clue if my types of shots would work at a regional, but feel free to try and report back :)

A bit about me before I start talking about stuff that you may not believe I am credible for, I was 1318's media lead after an interesting number of events that lead me to find my passion of photography through FIRST. I am a photographer first and a cinematographer second, mainly because I only ever make videos at FIRST events cause I don't have a computer to do editing on. I volunteered at 7 official FRC events last year and 6 this year, doing A/V every week in some way. Enough about me, lets talk about how these videos are made.

Here is a link to all the highlight reels we did this year: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...zlMiT8EQ1qdexG

I'm going to break this down into 4 parts; I'm going to cover the equipment, the shots, the editing, and most importantly the song choice, we will get to why that is the most important later.

THE EQUIPMENT

There are two main rigs we have used throughout this season. Basically a budget tier and an I have money tier.

BUDGET
Canon 60D with a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 on a Blackbird Handheld Stabilizer (essentially a steadicam).
Rationale: It is light, portable, and easy to setup. For under $2000, you aren't going to get much better, especially if you use modified firmware. Biggest downside is that a steadicam requires a lot of upper arm strength and a lot of training to perfect. I've practiced every week since I got it and I still don't feel like I have it down.

IF YOU HAVE MONEY
Canon 5D3 with a Canon 11-24mm f4 on a MOVI M5 (gyroscopic gimbal motor stabilizer) along with a hacked together iso elastic exoskeleton.
Rationale: It is awesome and creates much better footage if the operator has no skill. It does take longer to setup, but once you know the balance is good the motor do the rest. It can work with a two-operator mode using a separate controller and a paralinx for wireless video.

The gear is only half the equation, but it is important that you understand your gear and how to maximize its potential. A big no in my book is anything done with a go pro. It never creates footage that is good enough and it makes the overall quality of the highlight reel drop too much.

THE SHOTS
Every shot has a purpose, whether it be an opening, a closing, or an establishing shot. Every shot doesn't have to be planned, but know what to expect and what to absolutely have is important. A few examples would be the opening to every video in the playlist above is a view of the venue from its prettiest side. Each closing this year was traded from being the handshake during finals to something creative with the tote goat. You just want to be consistent and show it in a way that no one else has seen before. Creativity is everything, you can't expect to wow the crowd with the same shot every week, not that I didn't fall into that trap haha.

Shotlists are needed if you want to be on top of things and keep the pace of your video on track. If you don't have enough footage you don't want to be scrambling during finals to finish the video, not that I haven't done that either. While you do have a shotlist that you want to keep to, going outside your boundries is important. You can rarely get the same shot twice of a team experiencing the joy of advancing into the finals or the pain of a team losing their stack (WHICH YOU SHOULD NEVER INCLUDE IN THE VIDEO, I'M LOOKING AT YOU FIRST). Every emotion is something you can capture, but your method is up to you. Convey the feelings in any way you can as long as it makes you feel something.

A few great examples of shots that really convey strong emotion in my mind are: https://youtu.be/strKAK_xbuo?list=PL...8EQ1qdexG&t=74 (1:14 - 1:18), https://youtu.be/NxG_6BTgPXc?list=PL...8EQ1qdexG&t=86 (1:26 - 1:28) and https://youtu.be/AUjy0-f_efo?list=PL...EQ1qdexG&t=245 (4:05 - 4:06, the full shot was probably better. I did not attend DCMP sadly)

Remember, stay sharp and stay creative.

THE EDITING
Fit the shots to the song, not the other way around. You don't need to be fancy and do some magical graphics or after effects stuff.

Just don't edit through finals, we did that week 1 and our editor went 3 straight hours with no food or water. The focus he needed to make the entire video happen was astounding, but it is not worth it.

Edit throughout the day if you can. Otherwise do it when you are in the most downtime like lunch or during the time when only pits are open. Editing can take up to 3 times the amount that filming does.

Create a separate folder just for the files that you intend to use and then drop from that folder into your preferred NLE, we used Adobe Premiere.

Understanding when to speed up shots is really important. I feel like all of FRC tries to speed up everything they can because it makes them look better, but that is the opposite for a highlight reel. Every shoot needs to feel fluid and increasing the speed only takes away from that. The one exception I personally made was during our Mount Vernon reel when I had this one shot that just needed to be faster to fit the music: https://youtu.be/NxG_6BTgPXc?list=PL...8EQ1qdexG&t=41 (0:41 - 0:47). In the video, the shot is only 6 seconds, when in actuality it was about 10. If you can tell me approximately where I made the manipulations I'll make up a prize to give to you.

SONG SELECTION
This is the MOST IMPORTANT part of making a highlight reel. Songs have to strike just the right cord with your team to help convey the atmosphere of the event as close to perfectly as possible. MUSIC MAKES THE VIDEO, if you don't find the song first you aren't going to have a video.

Songs obviously shouldn't include anything explicit, but need to have the energy of the event and allow the video to flow well. Auburn Mountainview is my team's favorite video because of how well the song fit the event. We were able to craft what we consider our best work with the song we found.

Songs should usually (read: rarely are) be found before the event. That happened twice over the course of our 6 week season. If you intend on picking the song when you get to the event be prepared to spend hours (lowest we spent was 2 while the highest was 4) teeming through every source you have to find the perfect song.

EXTRA STEP #5 - THE SHOWING
Talk to your Event Manager about when you can show the video and then coordinate with the Video Lead to have the video queued up. I generally had the video played before the chairmans video, not sure how that trend started. Last year we had it played after the first finals match, during the awards setup.

IMPACT
Teams have told me that these videos really mean a lot to them because they get to relieve parts of their favorite events during the year through them. A few teams have actually gotten them shown to a large school audience to get them interested in FRC. The possibilities for use are endless and the energy of the video allows anyone to watch them without being bored.

A Few Thanks and Shoutouts
I kept my team small, but we worked hard. Thank you to Griffin and Nicolas for working so hard to make these happen, without either of you I would be nowhere.

FIRSTWA got our area into districts and that allowed me to volunteer and make all these videos.

Reese, 1678 alum, was my inspiration for starting these videos. I was blown away by how well he brought all the emotion and fun of an event into a single video and I knew that I wanted to do the same. Thank You so much Reese, it really was a pleasure meeting you at Worlds last year.

There are three videos I want to mention here for being outstanding examples of great highlight reels, two aren't exactly team neutral as I aim to be, but they do a great job in pulling the emotion from a team and conveying it in a video.

1678 2013 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2sKO2Bw9ig
1678 2014 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm79yok3lOw
4914 GTRC 2015 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjqFuNfbhOM

I hope everyone enjoyed this post, If you didn't feel free to comment on why your feelings are less than satisfied and I will try to answer your questions.