When the University of Charleston was picking its team for a recent fundraising campaign, they called our number. In less than four weeks — 19 work days to be exact, MotionMasters had the initial meeting with the UC staff, scouted shoot locations, shot four days of video, conducted on-camera interviews, scripted, edited and delivered a video for a capital campaign with a goal of $8-million.
The fundraising campaign is focused on improving the facilities for several university sports teams, and expanding innovation opportunities at the school. Video production took place during soccer season, so our videographers were able to grab some live action game footage at a playoff match during the Golden Eagles’ run up to winning the DII National Championship. But how to capture baseball or lacrosse, which was out of season? In order to tell the story we needed to show all three sports. The solution — MotionMasters transformed one of UC’s ballrooms into a studio from top to bottom. Using multiple cameras, videographers Rich Granberry and Wesley Poole captured “hero shots” of three student athletes in uniform kicking a soccer ball, swinging a baseball bat and cradling a lacrosse stick. The hero shots were interspersed with interview footage of the same athletes.
In all, 10 interviews were recorded in various locations across campus using two cameras. As usual, senior producer Diane Dimoff made the interviewees comfortable and drew out great comments to bolster the school’s case statement on why the funds were needed.Lo ok closely at our interview with baseball coach Andrew Wright. We chose to conduct his interview in the batting cage at UC. The primary camera was a locked off medium shot with the coach framed on camera right.
Camera two was a close-up profile shot. While the cage’s netting provided an interesting backdrop, we wanted to ensure the viewer could easily identify the location. We decided to add two baseball players working through drills in the background of our shot. This would immediately establish our location as well as create a more dynamic interview. Interestingly, though, the baseball players were not present during the coach’s interview. They were added in post-production. The challenge would be ensuring the baseball players would be in the correct position depending on the interview bites we would eventually decide to use.
Here’s how the effect was accomplished: we chose to utilize Camera One’s locked position, shooting the coach framed right without the players in the background. After we finished the interview, we brought in the two baseball players and left Camera One in its locked position, making sure the players positioned themselves frame left. In post-production, we merged the two images from Camera One so that it appears the baseball players are practicing behind the coach. This technique gave us the ability to choose the player action we wanted in the background. The effect accomplished our goal of an easily identifiable dynamic interview setting.
The finished video is less than 7 minutes long. And according to our client, we scored a big win!