The are many rules of thumbs for taking pictures, such as rule of thirds... which I won't get into. It's a matter of making each shot interesting by not having a single object in the middle of the frame. Let's go through my thoughts about the scenes with the above snapshots. The shots are not random, they were shot that way by plan.

 

 

Snapshots #1, 2, 3 and 4 all show shots where the action is along well established lines.... baseball and horseshoes are great for having such structured paths.

 

The straight lines from base to base make it easy to be positioned to shoot the action without having to either pan or zoom. Most of the time there isn't any real action, but you can be there shooting when there is. The same holds true for the line from pitcher to batter.

 

 

#4 and 6 show how to use chain link fencing for interest. Most of the time I was staying clear of the fencing, easy to do because the links are big enough to let the camcorder shoot through with an unobstructed view.

 

Sometimes I'll back up just enough to let a single link of the fence be the frame for a scene, as in #5. Then in #6 I used two fences, the closer for framing, and the farther one for visual interest.

 

 

At any kind of ball game I set the focus manually. Zoom all the way into what you want to focus on, set the focus there, then shoot as usual. 

 

The fencing would play havoc with auto focusing. So would the batter take the focus away from Justin when he was pitching, when I have both batter and pitcher in a tight visual line. 

 

Action in Groups

 

#6, 7 and 11 each show groups of people... a team in the dugout, both teams at the closing, and the fans.

 

It's good to keep shifting from one extreme to another... a single player or two to a group... a tight in shot versus a wide view.... shots with lots of motion, and those without. If the action gets too stiff you can add custom effects or transitions in the editing.

 

 

I don't pan at a ballgame. I choose either a player or the ball and follow it. The background is automatically panning faster than you would ever do it manually as the scene unfolds. I try to keep the camcorder focused on whatever it is I picked to take the shot.

 

 

Like panning, I don't usually zoom. The computer editing can zoom steadier than I can. But, as with all suggestions, rules are meant to be broken at times, as long as the breaking doesn't become the rule.

 

On the other hand, I take lots of scenes tightly zoomed in. #16 is the view of the pitching/batting action taken from beyond the outfield. #18 shows Justin's foot on first base, zoomed into from my position behind the batter.

 

I have the digital zoom feature turned off and only go as far as I can with the optical one.

 

#17 is a close-up of Justin's face... a moderate zoom from where I was. 

 

 

#8 and 9 show Justin and another team-mate in the dugout bench from the back. Views from behind can imply a strong story to a viewer... maybe one that is better than the reality of the subject.

 

Justin wears #24 on his shirt.... the pair of 24/7 had some meaning. There were a few times I was shooting #24 from behind, only to find it wasn't Justin.... it's funny that two of them on the team wear the same number.

 

Slow Motion 

 

Any sport-related video can use a shot or two of slow motion. The Slow Down - Half effect is perfect for it. I used it on the clip of Justin on the sideline preparing to hit, and again on the scene #2 of him scoring from 3rd on a walked batter.

 

 

#10 shows a virtual Sports Illustrated cover as the titling effect as part of the Brady Bunch 60 second opening script... it's also used by itself at the end of the 10 minute video.

 

My camcorder can take 2 megapixel snapshots. But Bernadette was there using a 7 megapixel camera. She's the Photoshop guru who made this magazine cover from one of her shots.

 

No, he hasn't pitched a no-hitter... but he likes pitching. I saw an article the other week about major league pitchers starting at younger ages, so the headlines fit with current stories.

 

I used IrfanView and Paint.net to convert the large cover file to an 800x600 PNG file for use in the Brady script.

 

 

A Photo Story with added text makes a great opening clip for any project... for this video I went further and used the Brady Bunch Avisynth script made by Al HitTheBongo. I tested the script a couple weeks ago and was primed for using it as a real opening clip.

 

                    Brady Bunch Script

 

I used the script as downloaded, opening it in VirtualDub, adding the resize filter to make the output 720x480 pixels, and saving it to a new DV-AVI file using the Panasonic codec for compression. 

 

Frame snapshots #11, 12 and 13 are from the script segment. To summarize again what's happening: you open the script in VirtualDub (or other video app that accepts it... Movie Maker won't) and use it the same way you use a single video input file. Avisynth, running in the background in stealth mode (the only way it works) reads the script and puts all the pixels together from the assorted video clips, handing the pixels to VirtualDub, one frame at a time. Avisynth is a 'frame server'.

 

This opening again demos how powerful such a 'frame server' utility can be... if you have a neat script like Al's.

 

 

For the script, I made 24 projects of 30+ seconds each... more than I needed so I had different ones to choose from. I saved each project to a DV-AVI file.

 

These clips did double-duty. Many were used by script to make the opening scene... and they were all used as full-sized clips for the final assembly.

 

 

My goal was to have a copy of the finished video on my website, and another on YouTube. That gave me one restraint... keep below YouTube's maximum of 10 minutes... it's 9:57.

 

I used the Video for LAN (768 kbps) setting, my usual for videos on my website. Rather than re-render it with my custom Video for YouTube profile, I uploaded the same 57 MB file and was surprised how quickly YouTube converted it to a Flash file ready for viewing. It took only about 5 minutes after the upload.  

 

For the batch of projects and the final assembly, I used some special transitions and two special effects, the slow down - half used in two of the clips. Some well-placed PIP transitions can do lots for a sports themed video. Snapshot #14 shows one of them, using a Pixelan PIP transition.

 

The background music isn't quite what I had in mind. As often happens, it's the last thing into the mix and you're ready to roll out it out for the initial showing. I lowered it's volume relative to the sounds of the video clips a bit more than usual. 

 

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Have a great week and enjoy your summer fun and video work...

 

PapaJohn