A stadium will be watching — 57,000 fans to be exact. You’ve spent countless hours poring over years and years of highlights and videos. Saturday, you’ll be working for two hours trying to focus on every detail of the game.
You aren’t a coach. You aren’t a player. You’re the video crew for Arizona Athletics.
“”It’s wicked awesome,”” said Ryan Bloom, a media arts senior and one of five interns for the Arizona Athletics video department.
The video will only last around one minute, but the department works on the idea all summer and edits it for more than a month.
The entire department was putting the final touches on the season opener pre-game video on Thursday.
Greg Byrne, the UA athletics director, approves the music before they can start researching the concept.
“”We go through the Internet, YouTube, different places. It’s hard to come up with original ideas with hundreds and hundreds of teams,”” said Michael Hausler, producer for the Arizona Athletics video department. “”We try our best to be original. If we see something, we always embellish it or change it just get some ideas. You have to be creative.””
This year, the crew hopes to include both the Red Armies and the Zona Defenders in their videos.
“”They’ve been around forever, but we want to show everybody all the groups that we can,”” Hausler said. “”We need people to be loud. We need to put other groups up.””
Hausler, a 1989 UA alumnus, starts the editing process for the season opener by selecting the highlights from previous years.
“”We’ve had a football team for over 100 years, and we have all the past highlights, so since I’ve been here for so long I know the big plays,”” Hausler said. “”I try to make a plethora of all these different times, and we pick some big shots and we pick the best.””
Once the videos have been selected and edited for time, another editor “”makes them cooler, nicer, hipper,”” Hausler said.
Then Steven Kundrat, another student intern, adds graphics and completes the video.
“”It was a fun process. We’re all really good friends, and we can all work together and hang out together and have a good time,”” Bloom said.
“”For me, my favorite part is at the actual games, when you see everything you’ve done and atmosphere-wise come together at a game, that is the most fun part of what we do,”” said Shawn Chevreux, director of marketing for Arizona Athletics. “”We want the fans to get into it. The fans get the team excited.””
“”We’re here to make people happy, especially the crowd. That’s why we’re here. We want to make sure the crowd is happy,”” Hausler said.
Tom Gilmer was the first coordinator in the video department in 1989. Now he does freelance filming at the games.
“”I’m a diehard Wildcat. I’m an old fart now, but I went to the U of A so I’m an alum and I enjoy it. I enjoy watching those videos every game,”” Gilmer said.