Continuing Education New Media Committee Feature: Video Production On A Small Budget (Part 2)

April 9, 2018

in Education,

College Sports Information Directors of America

Continuing Education New Media Committee Feature: Video Production On A Small Budget - Content & Strategy (Part 2)

2) What do we post? How long does it take to create?

I tend to look at who is doing great video from around the country, and yes, those are Division I schools. I want to emulate that in our brand – but I also realize our capabilities. So that means my main goal is to produce QUALITY content to be consistent with our quantity and timing.

SEASON PREVIEWS: These I try to stick to under 4 minutes (even that is probably too long). I interview one student-athlete per team (one of each gender if it’s a combo video, like swimming & diving), and the coach. I shoot some B-roll of practice and if I have anything riveting from the previous season, add it in. I want to change these up next year, but they’ve been good starters to get content rolling for everyone.

Timing: The interviews take about 15 minutes to set up equipment and then about 15 minutes each to complete. Shooting B-roll of practice takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on if you feel like you’ve had enough. Downloading the footage, editing clips of interviews/B-roll, choosing music, and then piecing it together might take another 1-2 hours, so all in all, one preview video can be shot/produced/edited in 3-4 hours.

Example: Men’s Tennis Season Preview:

POST GAME VIDEO

This video is dependent on several things:

Am I able to shoot? (depends if we have multiple events going on that I might need to staff/stat)
Did we lose? I usually don’t a longer highlight piece or interviews after a loss. If we do lose though and there’s a few great highlights, I’ll cut those short clips for social media – Instagram & Twitter for us. I tend to only post the longer videos on Facebook.
Did we win? For most home victories* I do put together a longer highlight footage and also try to add in post-game interviews if possible. If I shot with my DSLR, I use the B roll footage, but if that wasn’t possible I do occasionally cut from our game broadcast. Making things even easier now is that our producer (using Production Truck software) can cut highlights in-game for replays and I can just take those clips right off the laptop and use them as necessary.

• Post-game interviews: I tend to just use my iPhone 7 for post-game interviews (it shoots great 1080p video and I can keep it steady easily). In order to boost the audio, I purchased this nifty iQ7 MS Stereo Microphone for $99 on B&H.

• Schedule & Plan Ahead: Since each sport does not have its own SID, that means I also have to be very aware of balance. That means I don’t ALWAYS do a video for every home win if we’ve already done say, four for women’s soccer while sports like cross country/tennis have only done one. I know it will never be truly even, but I do try not to overload on one sport just because it’s lucky enough to have more home events/opportunities to shoot than others. Therefore, I look at the composite schedule about a month in advance and choose which games I will most likely highlight.

• Be Creative, and it’s OK to post later: We had a cross country national champion, but I wasn’t able to attend the race because we were hosting NCAA Soccer and a basketball tournament. I still of course, wanted to do something to celebrate the XC title, so the following week, I interviewed the runner/coach, and was lucky enough to get footage from the race from a fellow SID – had I not received that footage, I would have used photos. Even though it was posted several days after, THAT’S OK, too. Our videos tend to get the same views even if you have to wait a day or two to have time to cut and edit footage.

Example: Khia Kurtenbach, NCAA Cross Country Champion:

PRE-EVENT VIDEO

NCAA Previews: I did NCAA preview videos for both men’s & women’s soccer, women’s cross country, and volleyball. The soccer teams, since they both went to the Final Four, got a short preview for every round. While that may sound daunting, it wasn’t – I saved time by just using choice quotes/voice overlays from the existing post-game pressers as well as highlights that had already been cut. For the initial previews, I did interview players with our typical backdrop set-up.

A few examples:

Cross Country NCAA Preview:

Volleyball NCAA Preview:

Men’s/Women’s Soccer Final Four Preview:

3) Where do we Post & Why?

YOUTUBE

I post nearly all of our videos (expect for some of the short clips I use for Twitter/Instagram) to our YouTube channel, which I then use to embed in our website, so they have a nice organized place to live forever. Each sport on our website also has a video landing page.

Chicago Maroons YouTube Channel

Example of Sport Video Page on website

I know, however, YouTube isn’t where we get our highest traffic, but that’s OK, that’s what our other platforms are for. See below:

FACEBOOK

I post the longer highlight packages, season previews, game previews, etc., here, directly embedding the video, NOT linking it to YouTube (people don’t like to click too many times). This is where our videos tend to get the most traffic. With just 3,800 followers, a good video view count for us is about 2-3,000 views. From August 2017-Jan. 2018, we’ve had 126.K views across the 80 videos we posted.

TWITTER

I also embed the longer video pieces to Twitter, where they get decent engagement numbers but still don’t live up to Facebook. Since you’re limited to 2:20, I post part of a longer video and then link to the full video on YouTube.

INSTAGRAM

I post short, 30 seconds or less, highlights here just for fan engagement. Sometimes I only post it here, sometimes also to Twitter. I live to give people reasons to follow all of our accounts, so I try not to post everything the same on all three. See Example

Calendar

Important Dates

All Events +

06/23/26 / 11:59 P.M. M/W At-Large Academic All-America National Ballot Voting Deadline (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
06/30/26 / 11:59 P.M. M/W Track & Field/Cross Country Academic All-America National Ballot Voting Deadline (NCAA, NAIA)
07/07/26 / 12:00 P.M. W At-Large Academic All-America Announced (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
07/08/26 / 12:00 P.M. M At-Large Academic All-America Announced (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
07/14/26 / 12:00 P.M. M Track & Field/Cross Country Academic All-America Announced (NCAA, NAIA)
06/07/26 / All Day 2026 CSC Unite Convention in Las Vegas
06/08/26 / All Day 2026 CSC Unite Convention in Las Vegas
06/09/26 / All Day 2026 CSC Unite Convention in Las Vegas
06/09/26 / 11:59 P.M. Baseball Academic All-America National Ballot Voting Deadline (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
06/10/26 / All Day 2026 CSC Unite Convention in Las Vegas
06/16/26 / 12:00 P.M. Softball Academic All-America Announced (NCAA, NAIA)
06/16/26 / 12:00 P.M. M/W At-Large Academic All-District Released; National Voting Begins (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
06/16/26 / 11:59 P.M. M/W Track & Field/Cross Country Academic All-America Nomination Deadline (NCAA, NAIA)
06/23/26 / 12:00 P.M. M/W Track & Field/Cross Country Academic All-District Released; National Voting Begins (NCAA, NAIA)
06/23/26 / 12:00 P.M. Baseball Academic All-America Announced (NCAA, NAIA)
06/23/26 / 11:59 P.M. M/W At-Large Academic All-America National Ballot Voting Deadline (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
06/30/26 / 11:59 P.M. M/W Track & Field/Cross Country Academic All-America National Ballot Voting Deadline (NCAA, NAIA)
07/07/26 / 12:00 P.M. W At-Large Academic All-America Announced (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
07/08/26 / 12:00 P.M. M At-Large Academic All-America Announced (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
07/14/26 / 12:00 P.M. M Track & Field/Cross Country Academic All-America Announced (NCAA, NAIA)
06/07/26 / All Day 2026 CSC Unite Convention in Las Vegas
06/08/26 / All Day 2026 CSC Unite Convention in Las Vegas
06/09/26 / All Day 2026 CSC Unite Convention in Las Vegas
06/09/26 / 11:59 P.M. Baseball Academic All-America National Ballot Voting Deadline (NCAA, NAIA, College Division)
06/10/26 / All Day 2026 CSC Unite Convention in Las Vegas