If you are really looking to build a highlight film for college recruitment, your final spotlighted film starts with the footage. Not just any footage, the RIGHT footage. It’s 2022 and everyone has a smartphone in their pocket with the latest technology, but it’s likely not the right tool for the job. The proper footage for a highlight film should really have two main components, Perspective and Stability. Your smartphone will likely fail at both.
Let’s talk perspective, in multiple senses of the word. Stability will get addresses within that topic.
- Visual Perspective is the view of the camera. For most sports, an elevated perspective is preferred. For outdoor sports this is usually achieved by using a facility’s bleachers or by using using scaffolding, platform ladders or telescoping tripods. With elevation you get a better video of the entire action, which is really what coaches want to see (more one this later). However, with elevation, especially from the bleachers, you need good, smooth optical zoom, which can only be achieved with a real camera lens, NOT the pinch zoom of a smartphone. Proper zoom cannot be achieved without a tripod, which adds the stability I mentioned earlier. In all cases a true video camera is the preferred tool for this job.
- Shooter’s Perspective refers to what the camera operator is focused on, and this can be easily split into two points of view, Videographer vs Parent:
- A Videographer’s Perspective will film an event impartially, doing their best to capture all the activity in the zones it is occurring, for the entire game. For example a videographer will set up their camera in a elevated position aligned with the midfield line of a soccer field, and pan their camera left and right as the action moves up and down the field, from whistle to whistle.
- A Parent’s perspective (most parents) is to focus on their own superstar. This may capture interesting footage, but likely not the right footage. College coaches need to see your superstar in the context of the field and teammates. They do not want to just watch your superstar shoot and score a dozen times without context. They look for things like spatial awareness, off-ball movement and team work. Think of an oldie but goodie ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’, “where did you come from where did you go?”. Further complicating a parent’s perspective is they are likely personally invested their superstar’s performance individually or the team’s, which means their camera focus may either get tighter on their superstar the more intense the game is, or may start to wander when action heats up. Let’s not forget about the nervous bobbing or dancing that a parent may do, and how that will translate into the stability of the shot footage. Generally speaking this is not a good recipe for quality highlight footage. (also see my post on hype reel vs highlight reel coming later today)
So, to wrap this up, your best footage will come from a stable, optical lensed camera, situated from an elevated position, preferably shot by an impartial party.
In today’s age, most recruiting age club style events provide an event videographer who films all the games and provides paid access to the resulting footage. If you can get the team to all chip in for this footage, it ends up costing very little and you get a superior product. Within the High Schools, it seems there is a more mixed bag. Some schools or sports will film the games and provide that to the athletes through something like Hudl, while other schools or sports do not. In the case of the latter, the team or parents of the players can band together to hire their own videographer. But however you get the footage, make sure it has the right perspective and is shot from a stable position.