By: Zac Miklusak | @zmiklusak
Senior Producer/Editor
Ball State Sports Link
This year in Worthen Arena, there’s a whole new feel thanks to a custom designed, high definition LED video board hanging above center court. There’s six screens.
The sideline screens measure more than 11 feet tall by nearly 20 feet wide, while the panels facing the baselines are more than 7 feet tall by more than 12 feet wide. The angled panels underneath measure more than 5 feet tall by nearly 9 feet wide.
So imagine my excitement to see this premiere before the first Ball State men’s basketball game … and before every game since.
The Inspiration:
It was 2007, and I was at the United Center at my first Blackhawks game with my dad and my brothers. We got in our seats for the start of the pregame introductions and National Anthem. I did not expect what was going to happen next.
The lights shutout. The crowd began to get rowdy. Next thing I know, the giant video board that hangs above center ice illuminates and the sound system began to shake the rafters of the building.
After the video finished, the team took the ice with the blaring goal horn and I immediately realized I wanted to create the same kind of atmosphere one day.
The Beginning:
When I was a junior in high school, I became a part of our broadcast journalism class. We produced the daily video announcements that would air though out the school each morning.
Remembering the feeling I had at the Blackhawks game back in middle school, I realized I had all the utilities needed to create a hype video for our athletic programs.
After all the positive feedback from the players, coaches and faculty at Lake Central, I began to realize my talents and wanted to pursue them at the next level. Which is what brought be to Ball State and the TCOM department.
The Next Step:
As a freshman, I was the video manager for the Ball State Soccer team and one of my duties was to create a hype video for each home game that would play in the women’s locker room before they came out to take the field for warmups.
I began to notice my potential and so did Chris Taylor, the director of Ball State Sports Link.
After going though video production courses and being introduced to new equipment than what I previously was working with, I began to develop my editing skills even more.
I had the capability to put together a decent edit, but the quality wasn’t there, until I became a part of Sports Link.
I had a passion to excel my production quality and took complete advantage of the resources Ball State provided me. Day in and day out, I started to teach myself various effects, methods and styles to create the best hype videos I can.
The Present:
Fast forwarding to this year, I was fortunate enough to have our athletics department come to Sports Link to produce opens for those new video boards for both women’s volleyball and men’s basketball. Here are the finished products:
After a few hours of going though our music library searching for a song to edit my video to, I found two that I couldn’t choose from so I incorporated both into the piece above.
My editing process, I find to be unique. I watch a multitude of hype videos done by professional sports organizations to get my creative juices flowing.
Once I have an idea of what I want to do I try and execute it, most of the time I end up discarding it and end up doing something else. And most of the time I end up just playing around with all the different effects in Premiere (sometimes After Effects) and get lucky with something that I like and just go with it.
The Future:
Who would have thought going to my first NHL game would have ended up with me knowing what I wanted to do with my future career?
The atmosphere at any sporting event is essential to the team’s success and if one day I can say I contributed to that in anyway, then I couldn’t think of a better reward for doing something you already love to do.
