Clemson Digital Media Team Delivers Unrivaled Access as Tigers Take Home Another CFP National Championship

Clemson Digital Media Team Delivers Unrivaled Access as Tigers Take Home Another CFP National Championship Relentless hustle - and a few mirrorless cameras - play a critical role in content success. By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Thursday, January 10, 2019 - 2:19 pm

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The sports media industry has truly been blessed by the perfect storm.

Now with a pair of College Football Playoff National Championships in three years, Clemson University has not only thrust the names of Deshawn Watson, Trevor Lawrence, and Dabo Swinney into the spotlight, but it's also given the ultimate playground to one of the undisputed leaders in modern video production, the Tigers' digital media and video team.

The Clemson football digital media team in Dallas at the Cotton Bowl for the College Football Playoff Semifinals.

Clemson's talented media production outfit has been going full send since week 1 of the season, so when a College Football Playoff berth presents itself, it's all about sticking to the plan and continuing to execute; showing the world what you can do when the lights are at their brightest.

It falls under the pillar that this is another football game, says Nik Conklin, Director of Creative Solutions, Video Production for Clemson Athletics. There's a beginning, middle, and end. Within that, you've got a new venue, a new locker room, and a new context that needs to be provided by us. Although the team arrives in some form or fashion the same way they do any other game, the backdrop of the National Championship provides a unique experience to try and tell the story in a different and unique way.

Nik Conklin (left kneeling) and Jonathan Gantt (right) get into position to capture the Clemson Tigers football team taking the field prior to the start of Monday's CFP National Championship Game.

We treat all football games the same, says Jonathan Gantt, Associate Athletic Director, Creative Solutions at Clemson. We have an event coverage content plan, and the good news about that is that we've been doing it all season long. It's really just taking that plan and putting it in a setting that gets a lot more attention and executing that same plan that we have all year.

A team of 15 (made up of four full-timers and a handful of students and contract employees) were on hand in Santa Clara to tackle the beast of covering this National Championship for Clemson fans. With the luxury of so many hands on deck, Clemson was able to unleash an onslaught of content to feed the hunger of fans back home in South Carolina and around the country.

We want to make sure that we are proving value and showing that it makes sense to have so many people here by having the output be very high, says Gantt. When it comes to publishing, it's fire at will. There's no such thing as oversharing when you are in a National Championship Game. Fans who didn't make the trip want to see as much as they possibly can. I'm not worried about clogging somebody's feed.

Gantt notes that, due to the west coast location of the game and the three-hour time difference from campus, much attention was put into strategizing what content went out when. There was a desire to avoid pushing out content when many fans would be sleeping on the east coast and, instead, save some content for fans to wake up to in the morning.

Clemson graduate assistant videographers (from left) Andy Turner, Madison Williams, and Carly Gough capture the action of Monday night's CFP National Championship Game from behind the Tigers' end zone.

On the gear end, the crew came fully equipped with gear perfectly suited for the run-and-gun nature of an event such as this. Videographers were shooting with a lot of mirrorless cameras - mostly from the Sony Alpha series. There was also one shoulder-mount camera - a Sony FS7 - that was used on the sidelines to shoot primary game action with a cinematic flair.

As for the debate behind mirrorless cameras versus DSLRs, the Clemson video team has found a lot of positives with the newer format of device. According to Conklin, it feeds perfectly into the group's need for smaller file sizes, as well as speed and efficiency of workflow. They've also found that the training curve on them hasn't provided a substantial challenge at all.

The most important thing is if you are proficient in Canon, Nikon, Sony, whatever, it's really just a change of buttons, says Conklin. Get back down to basics and understand frame rates, shutter speed. How do all of the video and filmmaking basics work their way into each brand of camera? Once you get that down, it's really, again, just a change of buttons and trying to figure out your custom function menus and find out where things are so we can work quickly.

One of those mirrorless cameras is being used to capture Clemson's signature piece of content this year: the Vlog. Using a selfie-style rig, Clemson's media team has spent all season putting the rig into the hands of coaches and players to speak directly to fans following a win. The content is used in individual chunks on social and used within its popular Facebook Watch series, The Vlog, which gives fans all-access to the team.

We ll be waitin for ya in The Valley, Coach.

Parade info https://t.co/MbCduNeP2F#ALLIN pic.twitter.com/uNR2px2Gr8

Clemson Football (@ClemsonFB) January 8, 2019

Clemson's Vlog rig is a Sony a6300 with a 10-18mm lens and a Rode microphone mounted to a Manfrotto stabilizing gimbal. Clemson's videographers have worked hardest at establishing relationships with the players and coaches, working to familiarize themselves with the unit. The content delivered from it plays perfectly in the insider feel that Clemson's digital team wants to offer fans.

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LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/01/10/clemson-digital-media-team-deli...
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