Tag Archives: novak djokovic

The Mini-Monets

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.

 

PlaySight Tennis

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

Novak Dubstep

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.