Fresh vids from DTSker - PROJECT HUSKER 4-parts 1 and 2

[Eric the Red]

NEW FEATURE

 

NEW FEATURE

[huskerfan500]

very nice videos, I am not quite sure with first and last songs though, a little slow for me, but still very good videos

[DJR313]

Once again, another quality production.

[huskeraddict]

A great plug for our board at the end of the video. Another top notch performance DT!

[Drowning_in_the_Sea_of_Red]

Great videos!!!

 

Anybody else catch the "reset the bone" in the first song when it zoomed in on that USC guys mangled foot? I swear that's what it said...maybe I'm just hearing things...

[huskerfan500]

I heard that too, and in the A&M game for the final drive they are saying something about tasting it. Also when showing the new complex it says "some debts are never payed"

 

Did anyone else notice there was no Nicholas St, plays on there, o well we all know what heppend

[BIGREDIOWAN]

Great videos!!!

 

Anybody else catch the "reset the bone" in the first song when it zoomed in on that USC guys mangled foot? I swear that's what it said...maybe I'm just hearing things...

 

Yeah I heard that and I also heard the vomit hit the floor below me because that was one gruesome break!!!

[Eric the Red]

very nice videos, I am not quite sure with first and last songs though, a little slow for me, but still very good videos

 

 

That's what makes his vids the best. Something different

[Blackshirt]

DT is an amazing artist. If he isnt already, he should and will be working for a major production house. This is up there with ESPN quality. Big ups DT - and thanks for the love.

[Licensed to Ill]

If you guys like this watch his Alamo Bowl video. I watch that a few times a week at least

[Foppa]

Yeah, not a big fan of the tunes this time around, as I love the grinding, pounding, no-nonsense beats that have popped up before, but the videos are second-to-none, you do a great job, thank you, keep it up!

[Blackshirt316]

I love these videos, well worth the wait. Only thing I was kinda disappointed with was the walkoff play against CU. an overhead view/sideline view would have been much better as it would have better shown the beauty of that play much better. The view showed makes it look like nothing more than a regular miscue followed by another play of a run thus it doesn't show the play that accompanied the walk off as a complete play. The opening music was kinda slow and fruity for my taste but the lyrics worked well so it didn't bother me TOO much.

[DT McDowell]

Hey you guys, I just wanted to log in and thank you all for your nice words and compliments. I was contacted by one of the mods on my youtube a while back, asking if I'd include a similar version of the tag that Rich McWilliams and others regularly start their productions with. I'm a little hesitant to do something like that, as I don't really want to align myself with any one particular group, at the risk of alienating others. I hope you all understand my reasons for wanting to stay "independent" in this sense. That's not to say that I don't appreciate the effort you make to support Husker YouTubers much more than many other newsgroups/messageboards/blogs...I was more than happy to give your great board a little plug at the end and I'll continue to do so in the future. It's what little I can do to repay all of the kind sentiments that I've noticed your members voice from time to time about my videos.

 

Blackshirt's comment was very flattering (I don't fancy myself an artist, but I sure do appreciate being called one!) and it was also one of the more perceptive that I've seen regarding my videos. So I thought I might share a little background...I worked for ESPN for about 5 years (1996-2000). When I left there, many people asked me why I'd leave such a "dream job". I'd usually tell them that in five years, it wouldn't matter--I'd then be able to produce whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, on my own computer and I'd be able to broadcast it over the internet for the enjoyment of whoever wanted to watch. (It turned out that I was just slightly wrong...as it was actually about six years to the day of my leaving the worldwide leader that I uploaded my first YouTube submissions.) After I had made my decision to take my life in a different direction and move closer to home from the east coast, I aggressively contacted Huskervision in hopes that I would be able to continue my career in the sports broadcasting field. I finally received an interview in the fall of that year and was contacted via form letter on Thanksgiving weekend that I had not been chosen for that position. Apparently, they had found someone more qualified than a Nebraska alum who had spent the previous five years working for the largest sports media outlet in the world (who had letters of reference from two departmental heads and on-air personalities such as Kirk Herbstreit & Rece Davis). I didn't really want to work for any other broadcast outlet besides Huskervision...and right about that time, some other circumstances arose that made me decide to stay in my hometown of Scottsbluff and go to work in my family's restaurant business. So while the experiences that I had at ESPN definitely flavor the projects that I work on in my spare time today, some of my motivation stems from wanting to prove to myself that I can regularly give away a better product than the Athletic Department charges people for. It helps to still have contacts at ESPN who are usually able to provide me with better video than what Huskervision shoots themselves. (Which may answer one of Licensed to Ill's questions in another thread.)

 

As to the content of the videos, I usually let them speak for themselves. Being nothing more than a fan myself, I always try to tell the story of the season from the fans' perspective. All the while, not necessarily trying to overhype the good or downplay the bad...but rather trying to put together the images and music that really illustrate what it was like to be a fan over the course of the season. That said, sometimes contrary to my wishes, the restraints of time bring me to make decisions that leave what I'd like to include on the proverbial cutting room floor. When these types of choices present themselves, I try to keep in mind that most Husker fans worth their salt will have most of the big plays that define any given year ingrained into their memories anyway. So usually, just a snippet of a play will convey the reference I'm trying to make to most viewers. Case in point is Blackshirt316's mention of the 4th down play against CU. I cut that about three different ways and wasn't happy with any of them. I loved the iso shot of Taylor walking off shrugging his shoulders and wanted to include it because I really felt that this was the genius behind what made the play work. Considering the timing of the portion of music that I was trying to squeeze it into, there was no way that I could get the whole thing in...believe me, I tried. But flash cut to the payoff and most Husker fans will generally remember the play as a whole. Your point is well taken, in that to a viewer unfamiliar with the specifics...this might need a little additional explaination and clairification. I guess I just don't consider that to be the audience that I'm playing to. Think about it, you saw that play and knew its exact circumstances, so I guess that shows what I'm trying to explain. But if that's your only critique of the whole shebang...I consider that to be quite a compliment!

 

Music is always a little bit of a different story, I try to pick songs that I like, which also fit the mood of the season--and that's my most difficult challenge every year. Sometimes that means taking tunes from a wide variety of genres and that, in turn, often means that a significant portion of the audience will hate the particular tune that I select. You can never win with music, as every viewer has different tastes. But I also see videos that others cut to songs that I can't stand and I can appreciate the tune that they chose a little more after viewing them. The bottom line is that I'm the one who has to listen to the song for 30 or 40 hours while editing these things...so I guess I consider myself a little selfish about choosing music that suits my own tastes, first and foremost.

 

But I didn't mean to get too carried away. I just thought it was important to take some time and share some details about myself with the board and shed some light on things that I don't publicly discuss very often. I just wanted to pay back the nice things that Huskerboard has done for me with a little disclosure. I hope that nobody is offended that I don't contribute regularly...I do come by and read what's on posters' minds ever week or two. I've had bad experiences in posting on boards where my opinions were not shared by others, so I usually try to say what I feel needs said in 15 minute music videos every year...and keep it at that. But I do notice how the regulars here are usually more civil and cordial than those on some other boards I lurk on and that's one reason I'd like to do what little I can to direct some more traffic your way.

 

Thanks again for all of your kind words and encouragement. I only do this for the fans...and it's those fans who say nice things about Project Husker that keep me motivated to keep the project going.

[huskeraddict]

DT, that's a great post. Many of your points touched at home with a fellow video maker. Music is always a tough choice because the mood is tough to set. Driving rock is good but is old with every single sports video has it. The music used in this video set the correct mood and I enjoyed it. I knew you had to have some kind of background because these are top notch stuff and they are broadcast quality. One question though, all your stuff comes from TV broadcasts. I'd like to take my stuff from TV to PC because of the many angles of plays and such. What kind of stuff would I need and how much would it run me? Also, what program do you use to edit? I have to use Windows Movie Maker but it can be manipulated with plug-ins and such to make it look very good. I'm very interested into getting into this for a career.

[DT McDowell]

huskeraddict: I use a mac and I use just the basic video editing software that comes with all macs, iMovie. I don't know much about movie maker, but I'll bet it's very similar to what I use. It does have several effects and transitions, but I usually just stick with the basics...dissolves/fades/cuts and a wipe every now and then. I think that some of the effects that I have as options are pretty cheesy and actually make it look more amateurish. Sometimes I'll try to do some things...the Jay Z part of Project 2 is an example where I tried to effect some of the video. I've tinkered around with some of the flash-cutting techniques that are pretty popular on TV, and some of the speed-altering techniques (like when you see a shot that goes from live speed, then speeds up at a certain point, then returns to live speed...all within the same shot) but I can never seem to get things to work out to my liking. My program will do all those types of things--speed changes, reverse video, etc...but usually I prefer to just play it straight (Unless I have to change the speed of a shot to get something to line up better with the music). Same goes with the audio...I always have good natural sound to work with, but usually I find that it distracts from the work I do in trying to line things up along with certain beats or rhythms of the songs. A lot of guys like to use nat. sound of the crowd roaring and play-by-play calls and it works really well...it's more of just a matter of personal preference. I'd love to have a program like Final Cut pro, but I could never justify the expense (about $1000) unless I was doing this as something more than just a hobby.

 

A lot of my video comes from a friend at ESPN who provides me copies of what are called "melt reels" of all the games that he can find in the ESPN tape library...usually those that are on ABC/ESPN. These reels usually run between 30 minutes to an hour long and are compiled in the broadcast truck on the remote site after the games have concluded. The associate producer who's in charge of producing replays and building in-game packages will work with the tape operators after the game is done and dump all of the big plays from each camera and other useful video to one reel, which is sent back to Bristol and archived. It's pretty common for the networks to trade these melts with one another and pretty easy for my friend to burn me copies of what he can come up with...but this year, the only games I was able to get melts from were those on ABC (so you'll notice that for games such as LaTech/Troy/Ksu/Auburn I had to use what was available off of the television broadcast. Earlier, huskerfan500 mentioned that there was no Nicholls state footage--that's because I had absolutely no video of this game to include, and didn't care too much about looking too hard for video of such a meaningless game.) It's nice to have several camera options to choose from on the melt reels, but you kind of have to have a connection with someone in the industry to get your hands on this type of video.

Other than that, I just tape every game on my DVR. It's an older model, made before they started putting hard drives on them (it cost around $400 at the time, although for less than $100 bucks you can buy a digital encoder box that would do the same thing with a VCR...but I think that most DVRs should now port directly into most computers.) so I just burn every game to disc and then import my video clips into my editing software, choosing from the cleanest that's available during a particular broadcast ("clean" meaning no clock & score/network bugs/graphics/etc.) Sometimes I have only one option (like Cally's "throat slash") Sometimes, having the clock & score as a point of reference actually helps apply some context to what I'm creating (like the 4th and 11 play at the end of the Cotton bowl) but in the past, I've also chosen to put a letterbox effect on shots that I wanted to block graphics out of...but like I said, I tend to look for shots with the least amount of crap on them to begin with, so I have to deal with the issue less. Some people don't care...it's just in my background to look for clean vid...at ESPN, some producers would yell at you if you included bugged video on a clip reel. A lot of times in the past, TBS games have had lower-third scoring updates that ran through their otherwise clean replays...this always pissed me off when I wanted to use a particular play, but it had the score and stats of the USF/Uconn game plastered across the bottom of the frame. But from the looks of the new Big 12 TV contract, it looks like that's not going to be a problem any more.

 

Hope that helps to answer your questions, if not I can keep trying...but I'll quit now for fear of boring everyone to death with tech-talk!