Alabama's Crimson Tide Productions Leverages Cine Lenses To Capture High-End Content at CFP National Championship

Alabama's Crimson Tide Productions Leverages Cine Lenses To Capture High-End Content at CFP National Championship A team of 12 captures a wealth of content - and even streamed a Coaches Show live from site - on CFP weekend By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Thursday, January 10, 2019 - 12:49 pm

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Alabama may have fallen short of claiming its third CFP National Championship in four years but that doesn't take away from the fact that it was another outstanding season for the talented team at Crimson Tide Productions.

A video and photography team that was 12 people strong was on-hand in Santa Clara to capture the action and it led to an impressive output of content leading into Monday night's game.

A journey worthy of celebration.#OutworkYesterday#RollTide pic.twitter.com/GGsycZwfCk

Alabama Football (@AlabamaFTBL) January 10, 2019

While a fan base surely never tires of annual trips to the National Championship Game it does provide the challenge of crafting a unique message each season for Crimson Tide Productions. While the group has taken approaches from honoring the program's history and catering to the prospective recruits yet to put on the uniform, this year's message was to live in the moment and focus on the accolades of this squad taking the field.

A lot of our content is designed to get fans excited, says Justin Brant, Director of Crimson Tide Productions for the University of Alabama. Coach [Nick Saban] has been very adamant about what this team has done, so its one of those things where we're playing off that message and promoting this team and what this team has done, in addition to the tradition and the past success.

Brant and his team came into Santa Clara with some high-powered cameras in tow. Primarily, the crew was shooting with a Sony FS7 with a 30-300 lens all mounted on a hi-hat rig. This was a huge upgrade from Director of Video Production Alex Seiver, who three years ago when they first used the unit at this event in Glendale, Arizona carried the heavy camera as a shoulder-mount throughout the entire game. Fortunately for him, that wasn't needed this time around.

Also on hand was a Red camera with 17-200 cine lens with built-in servo from Canon. Brant says he and his group are big fans of the flexibility offered with shooting in 4K cine lenses.

The huge thing with 4K glass is that its much clearer than everything else we've got, says Brant. If you are shooting in 1080 you're really doubling everything. Some stuff we'll shoot 4K, some 2K, some 1080. So it just depends on what we're doing but either way it brings a lot of depth.

Crimson Tide Productions also had some fun with a 360-degree camera that it used to shoot some fun social content.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of the whole experience was the tight turnaround time from the CFP Semifinal Game (which Alabama won at the Orange Bowl in Miami) to the title game at Levi's Stadium on the opposite side of the country. According to Brant, the team's equipment truck arrived back in Tuscaloosa the Sunday after the semifinal before being emptied out and reloaded again to leave the very next day to make the cross-county trip to the Bay Area.

When the crew arrived on Friday they hit the ground running, capturing all-access content and bringing Bama fans at home into the experience of the CFP. They captured a lot of content at Media Day on Saturday before live streaming a Coach's Show with Nick Saban on Saturday night. Sunday was a lighter day of shooting practice and sharing content nuggets acquired the day before. During the game, the team took a more graphical approach, using images shot to create static and motion graphics to quickly celebrate touchdowns, turnovers, etc. in realtime.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/01/10/alabamas-crimson-tide-productio...
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