2008 Highlight DVD is officially in the books!

The main cog of Catdomealumni.com is the game highlight videos and I’m thankful to say the complete 2008 Highlight DVD is officially finished! I tell Mrs. 11 whenever a new highlight DVD is finished that “I think this might be my best yet” but really….I think the 2008 Highlight DVD might be my best work yet.

The team banquet was a few weeks ago and I pushed in wrapping up the main highlight reel (all the game clips and senior salute) but there was still work to do after the fact. There were some minor tweaks I made to the highlight DVD that 99% of folks wouldn’t notice but I wouldn’t feel right without fixing them.

***Video Nerd Alert*** I kept the format pretty much the same of past years (because it works) but instead of using Adobe Premiere Pro to capture, compose, and edit the highlight clips I moved the whole process to Adobe After Effects and that created a whole list of different issues. However, I made the move because of the power and flexibility of After Effects. It did take much longer to render the finish product and to cut each game but I think it gave the clips a higher quality finish. ***End of Video Nerd Alert***

I really don’t want to bore you with all the painful details of putting a football highlight DVD together but here is a little dirt; I work on each game after it’s played and try to have it close to finished before the following week. It’s a tedious and long process and it can’t be done with out someone like Mrs. 11 having my back and giving me great feedback on music, edits, clips, etc. She would be my executive producer and has always been supportive of these projects. The football part is pretty easy but the hardest part is the music. I’m 32 going on 33 and my first instinct is to reach for the AC/DC and Guns N Roses but I want the DVD to reflect 2008 and so I spend drives to work with my Sirius Radio tuned to channel 28 “Faction” and 20 “Octane” in hopes that my ear will pick out music that works and I’ll ask for input from some of the players. The end result is a good mix of hard rock, hip hop, top 40, and movie scores.

For the players, they’re getting close to 1 ½ hours of original clips that go beyond just the season highlights. Here is what will make up the 2008 Highlight DVD:

-2008 Season Highlights

-2008 Senior Salute

-Coaches Salute

-2008 Scoreboard Team Intro Video

-2008 Gameday

-2008 Bloopers

-Linfield Trivia (as shown during season on video board)

-Senior Moments (as shown during season on video board)

For the rest of you, I’m sorry but you’re going to have to wait till March before I start rolling out the clips on Catdomealumni.com but it will be worth the wait to have entertainment during the dreaded off season.

I’d also like to thank Brad Hazenberg who shot the opposite sideline during every home game, Kelly Bird for providing great still photos, David Cunningham and his student workers for all their great work in shooting the home games, Linfield Linebacker Calvin Park who was injured during the UPS game and stepped up and shot that game for an absent WC11 (great work!), Coach Hire for all the help with tapes and equipment, and of course Mrs. 11 for being the brains of the operation.