Tag Archives: indian wells

The Mini-Monets

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Similarly to our kid press conference video from 2017 that garnered 1.5 million views through Facebook, we hoped to rekindle the magic in 2018. Our team had elementary school students create portraits of Roger Federer for him to critique in person. His interaction with them ended up working as a condensed piece. The video ends with Roger walking the kids down to a professional mural unveiling of him on the side of Stadium One inside the tennis garden.

The second piece featured here is a kid press conference starring Novak Djokovic. Novak, who is currently experiencing a slump while recovering from an elbow injury, requested to star in a kid press conference similarly to Roger’s 2017 rendition. Novak has long been the villain to both Roger and Rafa. I have seen him booed at Indian Wells and the US Open. Novak is booed, not for his character, but because he’s often been the one stopping Roger from capturing more titles. From 2013-2016 Novak was incredibly dominant. But that dominance did not come with a Nadal or Federer-like adoration from a global fanbase. Maybe only now that he is struggling, fans will get behind him as an underdog to champion. It seemed like he used this press conference as an opportunity to espouse his personal moral philosophy, rather than as a time to relax and cut loose. That sincerity and seriousness ended up making the piece somewhat difficult to edit. It is interesting comparing the two press conference videos from 2017 and 2018. The first became our most viral hit of all time. The second earned a paltry 6.5k views on Facebook before Novak lost in the second round of the tournament. One cannot help but feel for Novak. He may have made over 110 million in prize earnings and inked a new sponsorship deal with Lacoste, but he’s not Roger. Roger seems to singlehandedly carry the sport of men’s tennis. For most fans, even the third-winningest active male tennis player in a video with cute kids is not enough of a draw.

 

Baccarat Trophy

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I enjoy shooting the trophies for tennis tournaments. I like trying different moves, shots and editing techniques that keep the pieces fresh and watchable for the viewers/fans. This year I tried three new things. In addition to using a MoVi M5 gimbal to capture a pushing in shot, we tried in-camera light leaks using a prism. I would wave the prism in front of an 85mm f/1.2 lens. This creating transition points and ideally a classy bit of visual interest. To get the mountains to move behind the trophy, we used a 70-200mm lens on a 42″ Rhino Slider with the Rhino Arc. This combination allows an operator to program a specific move so that the subject (the trophy) always remains in the same position in the frame, but the background spins. This is called a parallax effect. To further compound the amount of movement in a shot of an object that is typically static, I brought a motorized weight-bearing turntable. The turntable spun the trophy in place while the camera slid along the track turning to create parallax.

I love the view of the San Jacinto Mountains from the tennis garden. The colors and the light change throughout the day. That view has such great depth. The supporting non-trophy broll in this piece was shot using the Inspire 2 drone paired with a 45mm lens. The X5s camera is a crop sensor, there’s a 4k crop too and then when you push into a 4k ultra high definition image for a 1920X1080p timeline, it means you’re essentially flying smooth shots with a 200mm lens. It’s one of the most effective and versatile ways to get telephoto aerials. Indian Wells is one of the best places to fly.

The western showdown music is also a track that I licensed and have held onto for years in the hopes of using it at Indian Wells eventually.

The Williams Sisters

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Indian Wells marked Serena’s first return to the tour since giving birth in 2017. Serena Williams is often discussed as the greatest female tennis player of all time. She was eight weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open last year. She holds 23 Grand Slam titles. Her playing the BNP Paribas Open was big news in tennis. Serena ended up facing her sister, Venus in the 3rd round and lost. She definitely looked slower on court than in the past. But it was still a very exciting match. It’s always fun to watch the Williams sisters slug it out.

Here are three pieces T&T produced. The first two were filmed and edited by Ian Davidson. The third by Drew Carlisle. Because the WTA, ATP, Tennis Channel and ESPN were all giving the sisters a lot of coverage, I cut the third piece in black and white to make it stand out. We also began experimenting with a 4:5 aspect ratio for Instagram and Facebook. When a video is taller than it is wide, it takes up a lot more real estate on an iPhone newsfeed. Below are the original 16:9 versions of these pieces.




 

Wheel of Fortune & Wolfgang Puck

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I’m grouping two different videos together in this entry because they fall under what I think of as more general around-the-ground news reporting at a tennis tournament. Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant, Spago, has a location inside Stadium One that is only open during the tournament. He was in town watching some tennis, checking on his chefs, his recipes, doing media to promote his restaurant etc. We covered him as the tournament and the piece played on some social media channels but was primarily meant to be played on the large video boards inside Stadium One and Two (jumbotrons).

Likewise when Vanna White and Pat Sajak were on location filming bits for “Tennis Week” on Wheel of Fortune, we produced a piece for social media. But it was more so intended for in-stadium viewing for the 440,000 fans in attendance during the two weeks.

Indian Wells Memories

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Similarly to what I have done for Wimbledon, this year we had players watch iPad video of themselves during a pivotal time at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

Roger had an epic rally with Lleyton in the early 2000s. Isner became the #1 American at IW. Jack Sock won the doubles title in 2015. Petra thoughtfully recalled being injured, missing the tournament and the large poster fans signed wishing her a successful recovery. Lastly, Elena Vesnina remembered when she was in the press conference after winning the single’s title in 2017. A man came up and took the trophy. This was Matt Van Tuinen, the director of media for the tournament. The men’s final was going quickly and they needed the only trophy back on court for the ceremony. We had Matt return to take the iPad from her during the filming of this memory. Elena got the meta joke and took it really well. She ended up posting the memory video to her personal Instagram profile where it reached 22,000 views.

This series was moderately successful. The epic point with Roger and Lleyton is genuinely amazing tennis archival footage. Roger provided some solid play by play for us. The other memories were released sporadically but remain on the tournament website as a bingeable series.

Also of note is that we shot this series in an interview room filming in 4k ultra high definition using the 1DXii. We lit the subjects using Arri Skypanel S30-c LEDs. The hedges with the flowers were brought in by the onsite florist to fit the full bloom theme.

PlaySight Tennis

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This corporate overview of PlaySight’s tennis products and operation is a recent capstone to our extensive work for this client spanning three years. Many high-profile interviews, shot in multiple states and outside the US are featured as is our best broll and motion graphics. PlaySight is a sports technology company that sells hardware, software, cloud storage and live streaming all in the service of better data and analytics. This helps coaches and players from amateur hobbyists to the elite professional levels.

Explaining what the company is and what it does for the sport of tennis tightly while using existing interviews was quite a challenge. VP of Marketing Jeff Angus and Eric Berman, head of their external agency, worked directly with me to determine the direction we headed.

Everyone of importance in tennis is aware of the PlaySight brand at this point. This video is more for media to pickup and embed with any PlaySight related press releases. It could also be used to reach out to new investors, as the company is still in the late start-up phase.

This piece required some editing on location with PlaySight employees mentioned above in Los Angeles. The finishing post-production work was completed remotely. Our talented motion graphics contractor, Andrew Dicharry of Wasabi provided the excellent Adobe After Effects work.

It’s three minutes but hopefully feels like it moves along at a good clip. It’s always a balancing act making something that’s punchy and watchable while including everything required for the message.

From PlaySight, “PlaySight’s SmartCourt is the only all-in-one video and analytics solution for tennis. The SmartCourt system uses internet-connected high-performance cameras and an on-court kiosk to provide shot tracking, line calling, multi-angle video, detailed analytics and more. All video is accessible to the user immediately while on court. SmartCourts are automated and intuitive: no operator required!

Hear from some of the game’s best coaches and players (Novak Djokovic, Tommy Haas, Darren Cahill, Paul Annacone, Peter Smith,) on how they use PlaySight to play and coach smarter.”

To learn more visit us at: https://www.playsight.com

Oh, You’re Not Mistaken.

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It was time for me to make an end-of-year wrap up video at Indian Wells for 2017. Rather than retrod the same type of highlight that I had done for years previous, I wanted to make a unique statement. We tapped Andrew Krasny, the gravely voiced on-court host at Stadium 1. Andrew is well-known in the sport as a host of Court Report on the Tennis Channel He could successfully anchor the piece with gravitas and some bite. When recording him, I instructed Andrew to read the copy I wrote (that had been edited by our head of PR and approved by our marketing director) with cocky malice. Like Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood without the faux Charleston accent. When Jon Hamm does Mercedes commercial voiceovers he says, “the best or nothing.” Indian Wells strives to be the finest, most elite tennis tournament in the world. In the past the organization has pushed to be categorized as a Super Masters 1000; in a league above all tournaments and just below the grand slams. Indian Wells is exceptional in location, amenities, access to the players and accessibility for patrons. Plus no other tennis tournament boasts both a Nobu and Spago branch.

Post tournament this video has been used as the Facebook cover photo video for the BNP Paribas Open too.

 

Kid Press Conference

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Kid Press Conference with Roger Federer:

The teachers, parents and students at Gerald R. Ford Elementary came on board two days prior to the shoot date. Roger Federer was set to participate. The thought was to stage a kid press conference and emphasize the cuteness of the children, the likability of the greatest male tennis player, and to hopefully capture some laugh-out-loud moments.

My objective was to film the piece in such as way as to be very flexible when editing. Editing allows us to take a scene or a moment and make it funnier by playing with the timing, the cutaway expressions etc. We ran four cameras. A closeup on our star, a wide providing context for the press conference room, and two closeups on kids at different mics. We set it up town hall style to keep everything consistent visually.

I directed the camera operators on the floor to use the techniques of cinéma vérité such as crash zooms and whip pans familiar to fans of the shooting style of NBC’s “The Office” or any TLC reality show.

Kids are unpredictable which is part of what made the press conference so much fun. We ran audio through the built-in house system. However we also ran redundant lavalier mics taped to all house microphones. Our mics proved to be of higher quality and are what made it into the master mix. It is always important to have two clean sources of audio when filming something live that must be captured in one take.

Roger entered and while these kids may live next to a large tennis complex, not all knew who he was. But they knew to scream because a superstar was entering! What really mattered was that Roger was a good sport, had never done anything similar in his nearly 20 year career and seemed to truly enjoy himself.

I think we may have made news when Roger said he hoped to play five more years until he is 40. Other details like his pet rabbits being Blitz and Blacky were lighthearted new nuggets of information into the life of a man studied and admired worldwide.

The piece quickly hit over 10k reactions, 1.1k comments and 1.5 million views on Facebook between the tournament and Sports on Facebook pages. It was uploaded natively to the BNP Paribas Open Twitter account and later retweeted by Roger Federer’s personal account. This single video surpassed every metric from from the totality of our work at the tournament in 2016 and 2015. It was picked up by news outlets worldwide providing additional positive earned media brand exposure for Indian Wells. Our crowning achievement may have been that part of the video played on ESPN’s SportsCenter and was on the homepage of ESPN.com for more than a day.

I thank those behind the original idea (Sara Romano & Steven Villatoro) who also served as the child wranglers. Our camera crew was stellar and everyone behind the scenes who negotiated and organized a very special moment. What a team!

Rotoscoping

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To rotoscope video is to trace over each frame creating a cartoon. The cartoon bares a remarkable photo-realistic quality because that’s exactly what it was derived from. For this piece, the tournament was hedging that Federer would win a fifth title at Indian Wells. I was hired to spend a week tracing frames of video to create the animated sequences within the below piece. The hand drawn quality is intended to immediately catch the viewer’s attention. Rather than an average action highlight, the video should transcend to be a more memorable piece. The tracing and animating took approximately one week. The video was completed pre-tournament. The footage of Federer winning was inserted right after it happened on the last day of the BNP Paribas Open 2017.

GIFs (Video Loops)

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Repeated motions conveying a specific emotion or idea are what we were going for here. Giffable content is what we were creating using our all-access time. Media outlets, including the tournament, get time with the top players to interview them, film them, play a game etc. We hedged that the best use of our time would be to do something with them no one else had done yet. Using props and goofy direction, they were put at ease, opened up and had fun. As the editor I looked for motions that could be repeated or looped in post. These video loops were uploaded natively to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where they correspondingly were released by the account administrators responding to real-time events. A well timed finger wag or victory dance at the end of a match going out on social media went over well with engaged fans.

Indian Wells was left with a trove of over 300 GIFs to use throughout the year. Is it a player birthday? Indian Wells can celebrate that with a video clip as specific as that player wildly throwing and trying to eat popcorn in slow motion. The video below is a supercut of some of the best “GIF” content we created. It’s a square cut piece instead of a 16:9 aspect ratio so that it suits Instagram and takes up a larger amount of real estate when viewing a phone feed vertically.

So while produced videos will likely always be our thing. Getting down to super short, meme-worthy reactions or moments is still a valuable use of social media video. We may have started a trend. The Miami Open lovingly copied this idea just a week later.

Grip It and Rip It

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Rafael Nadal the golfer? With our PR director I took a small crew to the famed Indian Wells Golf Resort. The tournament had negotiated for a gaggle of photographers to tag along with Rafa while he played nine holes. Rafa was a good sport to let it happen. GoPros in holes, a GoPro mounted to the golf cart. It’s nice to get an opportunity to use the action cams. We shot in slow motion, used a 400mm lens, plus a 16-35mm on a MOVI M5 with an Easy Rig. The drone was out too. It was quite an operation scrambling from hole to hole and setting up gear while monitoring audio on Rafa the entire time. It stands out as probably the hardest shoot in 2016. Minimal time to plan and no PAs running around to carry gear. With that said I like the deliverable a lot. Matthew Hill did a great job second shooting with his Panasonic Varicam. Nadal shared it from his personal Facebook account too.

Novak Dubstep

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This is a piece created for Indian Wells back when Novak was still number one in the world and seemed unbeatable. Tennis seems to lend itself well to highlights cut to wild electronic music. Shaking the picture digitally, playing with the speed ramping is all in good fun. I like the closing shot here that goes day to night with a hard cut to the music.