Professional Project Review: NFL Highlights

For my professional project, I picked a highlight video from the NFL recapping the Week 15 game against the Buccaneers and Cowboys.

The link to the video is here.

The video is completely time-oriented, beginning with the start of the game and moving through the entire game. They highlight the scoring plays, as well as turnovers and other highlight-worthy plays, such as deep passes, long runs, or big 3rd/4th down plays.

For the majority of the shots, the editors use the "default" XW camera capturing the action from above. This shot is also the most commonly-used shot on the actual TV broadcast as well, and I'm assuming the video editor simply used sections from the actual TV broadcast to make the highlight video.

To tell the story of the game, the commentary is included in the audio, and the scoreboard is listed at the bottom of the screen, including the time, score, timeouts remaining, etc.

I have always been intrigued at the sheer complexity and high quality of the NFL productions. The highlight video showed all of the important parts of the game, providing a complete and high-quality recap of the game. I also appreciate the advanced animation at the beginning of the video (shown above), highlghting the two teams, and the YouTube thumbnail is also designed very well.

I think it's worth noting the graphics design that the NFL uses: they're simple, yet effective. I hope to use this as inspiration for the basketball graphics for the video board. The camera work is also very smooth, with smooth pans, zooms, and maintains the center of the action in the relative middle of the frame, making viewing very easy for the audience. I hope we can model this camera work in our sports broadcasts.