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Shooting good quality videos of your games is actually not as hard as it seems. With a small budget and some dedication, you can actually get a great video library of your team.
Posted on 9/3/2012
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It is actually fairly simple and inexpensive to have a good video archive of your rugby games.
I have developed in the past three years the video/photo archive for my club, Miami Rugby Youth and we have pretty much every single game the kids have played since day one.
The most important thing is having the person that will commit to tape the games. Should be somebody that goes to all the games and is willing to watch the game through the monitor of the camera and will stay still (and mostly quiet) throughout the game. Most probably your canidadte is a parent, but could also be a club official or somebody related to the team. Coaches, of course not.
Hardware
As far as hardware, the basic equipment is a $ 300-500 photo camera, with at least 15x optical zoon that also is capable of doing video, HD is preferrable, but regular quality is also fine. A couple of large (8-16 GB memory cards and extra batteries are essential. It really sucks to watch the game when you should be videotaping it!
A steady tripod is also essential. A big plus is some a ladder to get over the heads when you don't have any other high point from where to tape. Ground level should be avoided. The higher, the better.
That is all that is needad as far as hardware.
Software
As for software, (I will speak only for Windows-based systems) you already have Windows Movie Maker on your computer which suits most editing needs for a decent quality video. There are of course a lot of software for video editing, but we will stick to this one to begin with.
Finally, you need to have a place where to upload the videos. I personally use Vimeo Pro ($50 per year) and has worked out very well. With free accounts you often run into space problems, size and time limits for uploading, etc. I highly recommend purchasing some kind of paid plan, it is really worth it.
Videotapping the games
Most of the times, what you want to have as the final video is mostly the action in the game, not the dead time, so when you are shooting you should only get the action. You start when the action starts, you stop when the action stops. This way you already reduce the time of the video by 30-40%. If you can, delete any clip you feel are of no value (Scrum resettings, etc.).
Use the zoom to initiate the clip, like getting really close in a scrum and then zoom out when the ball is played, or in a kick-off. Same thing for line outs. Sometimes it is great to get those faces really close!
Don't forget to get the tunnels and cheering after the game. You may also want to get in some quick interviews to the coaches, players and spectators. Better to have and not use, than to wish you had done.
I highly recomend getting some pictures when possible, or having somebody else taking pictures.
Editing
If you have just kept the "watchable" clips, you may just insert them in order in the program, add a cover for the video, some credits and maybe pictures of the games at the end in a quick slideshow and you are done.
If you have time, try to watch it all, trim dead time or useless footage. You may want to create a highlights version of the game, including only the tries or points. This should be fairly easy once you have all the game.
Adding the score as the game progresses is a nice add-on.
If you are shooting in HD (as you should) creating the file to upload may take some times (hours) and also it will take some hours to upload.
Once the video in online, let everybody know about it! Even the rival team. Specially if you won!
Hope this has helped a little bit.
Oh, by the way, my video collection can be found at:
https://vimeo.com/miamirugby
Cheers.
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