Tomorrow is the last home game of the season for St. Louis CITY SC ⚽️
For the second weekend in a row, I'll be editing a 24-hour turnaround recap. To keep these edits high level, a solid pre-plan is key. First and foremost, the production team must be aligned on naming conventions for each card throughout the night. This allows continuous filming without formatting delays and ensures pre-ingested footage is marked to avoid any confusion over what has or hasn't been transferred. The goal is to maintain a constant flow of card ingestion as frequently as possible. Meanwhile, that footage is logged and imported directly into our Premiere Pro sequence.
As the night goes on, we pull the best selected clips, often working well into the early morning hours. Pre-approved music tracks with labels and notes allow us to drop selected footage efficiently, with pre-determined moments in the music guiding the edits. While we stick closely to this model, we have flexibility to adjust on the fly. Our Premiere Pro project is pre-set with adjustment layers for Rec709 and color grading, while everyone films on the same Slog3 settings to ensure consistency. Only minor tweaks to individual clips are needed to adjust white balance or exposure.
For example, last Saturday's St. Louis CITY SC vs Sporting Kansas City game kicked off around 7:30 p.m., and by 6 p.m. the next day, the final video—fully color graded and audio mastered—was delivered. It's a huge task with little sleep or breaks, but the quick turnaround keeps everything relevant, especially after a win against your arch-rival.
See you tomorrow night, and go CITY!
#MLS #RecapVideo #STL
