There’s an adage in visual journalism that if something features either kids or puppies, you’ll get a lot of people ooh-ing and ahh-ing your work. This time, for me, it was kids.
The Spokane Indians — the Single-A pro baseball team (affiliated with the Texas Rangers) I’m covering this summer — held a youth clinic July 16 before their evening game. Knowing I couldn’t pass up such a kids-or-puppies video opportunity, I joined everyone on the field.
Here’s the result.
Filed under: Baseball
The Spokane Indians started their baseball season Tuesday, which means for the next three months — at least while the team is in town — I will be at the ballpark every evening. For those of you who aren’t privy to the Indians, they are a short-season Class-A minor league team for the Texas Rangers. If you don’t know what that means … well, simply put, the Indians are pro baseball players, but play four levels below major leaguers.
I sit up in the press box at Avista Stadium and watch baseball. And crack jokes. And eat sunflower seeds. And keep score on one of these. And then scramble to write a story and get quotes before deadline at 10:15 p.m. Often I’m writing during the game, just to make things easier. It’s actually fairly stressful by the end of the night and I’m quite tired when I get back home.
But to me, having grown up a huge Seattle Mariners fan (they suck now, if you haven’t noticed), nothing says “summer” more than baseball. Warm nights, going to the stadium, eating a hot dog, watching for foul balls. There’s something very pure and American about going to the ballpark. And, so far, it’s been mostly fun to go every night.
There are drawbacks. For instance, Lisa works all day then I work all evening, so we barely see each other during the week. And deadline is so early that I’m rooting for 15-0 blowouts every evening, which doesn’t make for very exciting baseball; the close games are better, though five home runs in a night has its excitement factor.
On Friday night, after the game, they played “The Sandlot” on a big screen in the parking lot. It reminded me of days when I was a little kid, one of hundreds dreaming to someday be a professional baseball player. (Yes, I had that dream, though maybe for a much shorter period of time than other little boys.) It felt like summer.
With every video I produce, I feel, I get a little better. Each video is a little more polished, and if you look at my first video and take a look at my latest (below), you should be able to see a bit of a difference. (If you can’t get through the Spokesman’s firewall to see the first video, take a look at my second one.)
However, my production time is still long as hell. Now, I’m not complaining here, just saying. The video below, on Spokane’s Avista Stadium, took me about an hour to shoot and 10 hours to edit (including laying down the voiceover). My two-minute video on the Swoop tryouts took me two hours to shoot and seven to edit.
Much of the reason this stadium one took me so long is because I tried two new things with it. First, I did a voiceover, which really wasn’t that hard. It just took some time. Second, I used still images, and had to learn how to put them in motion. Also, I color-corrected every shot.
I can’t imagine editing a feature film.
