Colorado University Athletics
?Seasons? Is Out! Q&A With The Makers
NOTE: On Thursday, May 30, 2014, Seasons was given a nomination for a Heartland Emmy! We will know if the Emmy is presented to the CU Sports Video department in July. Go Buffs! Below we revisit a Q&A that was done when the video was initially released in December.
BOULDERGÇöThe CU video guys are at it again. That will likely be
the popular thought among those in Buff Nation on Monday morning as
they check in on social media and CUBuffs.com and find the latest
release from the Sports Video Department. Those video guys are, in
fact, at it again, and the latest release, entitled GÇ£Seasons,GÇ¥ is
their best work yet.
GÇ£We wanted to tell the story of a lifetime experience of being a
Colorado Buffalo,GÇ¥ Director of Sports Video Jamie Guy said.
GÇ£Colorado is a special place, before you get here as a child
watching, then while youGÇÖre here and it goes so fast GÇô thatGÇÖs what
every player says is how fast it went GÇô then coming back and
supporting the team, itGÇÖs a cool dynamic.GÇ¥
We sat down with Guy and Assistant Director of Sports Video John
Snelson, who along with senior Film Studies major Connor Cassidy
were primarily responsible for GÇ£Seasons.GÇ¥ But they will all be the
first to tell you that they couldnGÇÖt have done it without a lot of
help.
CUBuffs.com: How did this video get started?
Jamie Guy: GÇ£Early last February, the Boulder
Experience was just released, and (John) Snelson and I were sitting
around thinking GÇÿWhatGÇÖs next year?GÇÖ We both said, GÇÿI donGÇÖt
know!GÇÖ
GÇ£ThereGÇÖs a film called Life Cycles that weGÇÖve used for inspiration
before but never for the theme of it. ThatGÇÖs how it got started, we
thought we should do something like Life Cycles and use the theme
for football, basically tell a story of growing up, experiencing
college at CU and finishing and then how youGÇÖre still involved
after the fact. ThatGÇÖs the base concept.GÇ¥
CUB: In the last 10 to 11 months, how much has changed from
what you originally envisioned?
JG: GÇ£I feel like itGÇÖs close, the base concept
stayed the same, but at the same time itGÇÖs very different from how
we originally envisioned it. We thought it would be over 20
minutes. We tried different things on the script, figuring out the
sequencing to tell the story, as we got footage and started putting
it together, it was nowhere close to the original idea, just the
original concept.
GÇ£We had all these great thoughts and examples of shots we could use
for the passing of time, growing up, things of that nature, but we
didnGÇÖt have a story for quite some time. We ultimately hired a
writer to write a Hollywood style script that we could follow.
ThatGÇÖs how we got started in July, but we had been doing things and
getting started before that, some of the shots are very long
term.GÇ¥
CUB: Give an example of something new you were trying that
didnGÇÖt work, and some things that did.
JG: GÇ£Some of the shots I was doing were more of
the long term shots. During Fall Camp, I attempted to shoot cleats
and a helmet every day to show the wear and tear on those and that
didnGÇÖt work quite how I envisioned it. I did another one outside in
the trees with the mountains in the background. It finally came
together during the second snow of the year. It wasnGÇÖt exactly how
I envisioned it, but it was pretty cool.
GÇ£We had a lot of decisions to make throughout the video and we
definitely dreamed big throughout and tried things weGÇÖd never tried
before. Not everything worked out, but how it turned out is better
than what we envisioned to begin with.GÇ¥
GÇ£I tried a technique called hyper lapse a few times and one shot
really worked out. I went the length of the football field and you
can see Duane turn and the mountains turn and the clouds in the
time-lapse sequence. It took me about five times to get one good
shot.GÇ¥
CUB: WhoGÇÖs this kid seen throughout the
video?
JG: GÇ£ThatGÇÖs Jerome. We went to JeromeGÇÖs house and
shot a lot of things there. We set up a lot of things, but the best
stuff was just him running around with the football, the unscripted
things. We did that in July and thatGÇÖs really when we thought
things were coming together, we used him throughout the video. The
first time we tried to get Jermoe looking at Ralphie, Ralphie
didnGÇÖt run, the first game of the year, but we ended up getting it
at the Oregon game.GÇ¥
CUB: What was the hardest part of the
process?
JG: GÇ£Probably the hardest part, and John found a
way to work it out, we didnGÇÖt really have an ending, and endings
are always the hardest part of any video in my opinion. We had
several different iterations of the ending, and we finally ended up
using something with Jerome and I thought it was awesome.GÇ¥
CUB: What are you trying to say with this
video?
John Snelson: GÇ£Colorado Football is more than just
four years of playing football. ItGÇÖs a lifetime of dreaming and
working and doing and living the rest of your life learning from
that. WeGÇÖre trying to sell Colorado Football to fans, kids,
whatever, we can only show the city so much, the highlights so
much, the sales pitch is that itGÇÖs a lifetime decision. ItGÇÖs not
just somewhere youGÇÖre going to go where a cool uniform for four
years.GÇ¥
CUB: You talked about outside help, explain.
JS: GÇ£It was amazing how many people were willing
to spend time helping us. We had a guy doing sound, a guy composing
music. The narration is awesome. People wrote a script for us.
There are probably too many to mention.GÇ¥
JG: GÇ£We couldnGÇÖt have done it without Connor
Cassidy. He made a lot of those shots; he hooked us up with the
audio guy Grayson Simon. It was really him and the both of us
working on it all the time, and then a lot of people contributing.
Our Student staff was also big helping us, they were able to get
some really cool things when we were busy with practice and other
duties.
GÇ£We had a local company Elevations Video they have whatGÇÖs called a
MoVI, which is basically a motorized gyro camera stabilizer, Jon
Stevenson contacted me after they bought one and wanted to try it
out during a game. This was most likely the 1st time a MoVI was
used at a college football game. With their contribution were able
to get amazing shots with that we wouldnGÇÖt have been able to
otherwise.
GÇ£We had another guy, Ross Stoner, got in touch with us in the
spring, he volunteered his time and equipment, and he got a lot of
shots from a different perspective. A lot of times weGÇÖre focusing
on the play only, and he got stuff that was awesome for us to use.
His parents live on campus, he grew up here, season ticket holder,
itGÇÖs always been his dream, he had a great time coming in to help
us out, but that shows the diversity in all those that helped us
out, we canGÇÖt thank all of them enough.
GÇ£Sefo (Liufau) was a huge help, he always stopped in saying he
wanted to help and how could he help. Paul Vigo was big. I want to
mention Chad Brown, he was a huge help and worked with us several
times. There are too many people to get everybody.GÇ¥
GÇ£One thing we did, we tried to treat it like a Hollywood-style
production throughout the process, but it was in combination with a
documentary style. We did all those different things, sound design,
color correction, all these other things weGÇÖd never done before, it
was awesome having people wanting to help, we couldnGÇÖt have done it
by ourselves.
GÇ£In Hollywood, everything is compartmentalized, one person does
graphics, one person does color and somebody does audio. WeGÇÖve
always done it all at once and now weGÇÖve experienced some of those
elements, and itGÇÖs definitely a much better product because of
that, but it took a lot of help.
CUB: WhatGÇÖs Next?
JG: GÇ£This is way better than the Boulder
Experience, which is a great video and a great accomplishment we
had, this is better than that but we can still do more and better.
WeGÇÖve grown up a lot, we can do a lot of cool things. Delving into
the world of 4K is awesome for us, this is just the beginning of
that.GÇ¥
JS: GÇ£What I want to be known is that we want this
video to be a beginning and not a climax of what weGÇÖre doing. We
spend a lot of time researching in the off season. ThereGÇÖs a lot of
competition in college football, who has the best jersey, best
facilities, weGÇÖre trying to have the best videos in the nation. IGÇÖm
ready to make one way better already.GÇ¥