What really goes into the galleries we post?

by Ryan Coleman on Jun.05, 2010, under How it's done

This weekend Dave Kisor turned to me and told me that he was really impressed with all the work we put into the College World Series… and by “we” he meant Pat Coleman, Jim Dixon (both of D3sports.com) and Larry Radloff and myself (for d3photography.com). He also mentioned that he used to just look at the photo galleries and like the photos he saw, but never knew how much goes into a game from start to finish.

He suggested we post a video of what it takes to do the work, I figured I’d make it easier on you to follow by posting it here on the blog.

This was our Saturday, and there might be a few omissions or errors in what I report so please bear with me.

1:00 AM: Return to hotel from Friday games. Start editing the games from the previous day
3:00: Put the computer away and fall asleep
6:30: Wake up and finish editing job for schools that are expecting DVDs of images that morning.
8:30: Roll out of bed after falling back asleep and get ready for the next day.

9:05: Arrive at the Fox Cities Stadium, unload the gear out of the car and meet Larry Radloff in the press box.
9:45: Larry starts shooting the warmups of the first game. I continue to set up my equipment in the press box.
10:15: I continue editing those games from 1AM and 6:30 this morning.
~12:45: Game 1 finishes, I’ve finished the editing and DVD burning and labeling of the games from yesterday. Starting to upload them to the server.

12:50: Rush into the News Conferences to roll video of each team. Got there early, but the NCAA pushed the UWSP press conference both early (<5 minutes after game completion) and out of order. First one of the day, have to set up the tripods and cameras. Have to run the news conference online without the UWSP team (see video here or here).
1:00: News conferences wrap up, rush back to press box with cameras and drop the videos off the cards for later use. Start editing down game 1 photos

1:40: Start of game 2, start wrapping up edit of game 1; focus on video work from Day 1 and work towards putting those online.
2:30: Relieve Larry Radloff for a few innings so he can take a break.
3:15: Come back to press box, get photos together for D3baseball.com website, continue work on Day 1 video.

For each 5 minutes of video I have to post, it takes the computer 45 to 90 minutes to convert into a file that I can upload to Youtube.com. That upload takes about another hour or two, depending on the length of the final video.

Basically, we washed, rinsed and repeated all night; by the time the 4th game ended (close to midnight, if not past it) there was no press conference because of the late hour.

12:15 AM Sunday: Go into the radio booth with Jim and Pat to shoot Day 2 Wrapup in SD and HD; After wrap, do some titling, a little audio tweaking and convert for Pat to post on the D3sports YouTube page.
1:00: Leave for Hotel
1:15: Back to the hotel, start editing game 4 photos. Work on uploading other games to server to build galleries.
3:00: Go to sleep.

And we started Sunday over again at 9am instead of 8am.

Five days of insanity mark our Memorial Day weekend every year. Larry does (nearly) all the shooting, I do almost all of the editing; I spend what “free” time I have talking to SIDs, ADs, other school personnel that may have hired us at the event that year to find out what it is that they expect from our time and their dollar.

A little background on that: For a set price, each school will receive a few photos of players of their choosing for their website after the game (typically within 15-20 minutes), the day after the game – or evening following an elimination – they receive a DVD of just their players (none of the other team’s players are the focus of these) photos from the game. The school now owns those photos outright; d3photography.com can give 400×600 pixel images away on its partner-website Pictureprints.net and D3sports.com can use the photos for news purposes.

The video work I’ve put online so far is a lot of work that really shouldn’t be done by me at the events – but I try anyway. We shoot with two cameras, both Canon EOS 7D’s recording at full HD 720p, 60 fps, and running most of our audio through my iPhone’s Voice Memo app. I have to sync up three audio sources which gets me both of my video sources, attempt to compensate for players or coaches not near the microphone and usually for media members who are on the opposite side of the cameras.

Add to that, also, the titling, crediting, switching from camera A to B and back in Premiere that can take up to two hours to master.

On Tuesday night, the last thing I worked on before I left (after getting artwork to SUNY-Cortland and D3sports.com) was editing, running post-production on and then processing the D3sports.com Day 5 Wrapup video, which we shot solely in high definition (along with the interview of Jeff Grodecki). I actually had to re-cut the video twice before posting it: Once at a rest area in Menomonie, Wisc., and again after I got home because I had missed a few things that the choppy video preview window didn’t show during my test runs.

So, in short: 5 days in Appleton actually results in a pair of 19-hour days (Fri and Sat), two 16-hour days (Sun and Mon) and a 20-hour day (Tuesday – including driving and work done back in the Twin Cities).

Why do we do it? I know I do it because I love it. Photography is my biggest passion and learning the ropes on video production has opened up my eyes to say the least.

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