A Behind-The-Scenes Look At SEC Hype Videos

An interview with a hype video expert!

Jan 26, 2022

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If you watch college football, you’ve probably seen a hype video. They usually have dramatic narration, trending music, and touchdowns among touchdowns.

While schools (and professional teams) across the globe create hype videos, there’s nothing quite like an SEC football hype video. They just really take things to the next level. As the kids on the Internet say, They! Understood! The! Assignment!

georgiafootball

A post shared by Georgia Football (@georgiafootball)

To understand the process that goes into creating these works of art (they really are!), I spoke with Eric Black, the former Director of Creative Media Services at The University of Georgia.

He kindly answered all of my absurd questions—including if there’s anything called a “Chill barometer” (I made up this pointless phrase). Oh, and he shared with me that Samuel L. Jackson almost voiced the National Championship hype video for Georgia.

I can’t believe we didn’t get to witness Dawgs On A Plane. 10/10 would watch.

Anyways, enjoy this nonsense. Dawgs. On. Top.

You started out as a video editor. Can you walk me through how you landed the gig at Georgia to be the Head of Creative Media?
I was coming out of a previous job focused on creating videos about SEC football as a whole and I was looking for a position specifically in Athens, GA. I was fortunate to land in the coaches' film department creating some videos for in-house use. I quickly shifted to what is now known as GBSM (Georgia Bulldogs Sports Marketing) where I was responsible for creating videoboard, web, and social content for other sports like soccer and softball at UGA.

Just a few months later, Kirby Smart was hired as the head coach here at UGA. He was immediately looking to create a small in-house creative department to aid the recruiting and social efforts of the football team, and I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. I started in February of 2016, Hannah Brinks started in March as a graphic designer and together we made up the entirety of the Creative Department.

georgiafootball

A post shared by Georgia Football (@georgiafootball)

What are the main responsibilities in your role?
I'm responsible for leading the efforts of the Creative Video Department, as well as managing some projects for the Creative department as a whole whenever necessary. We create short-form social videos, long-form player profiles, trailers, game recaps, coach features, in-house recruiting content, as well as material that lives on the many video-based pieces of technology in our new football facility.

I’d love to talk about hype videos and the digital video strategy for Georgia. As someone who works in social, I know that we always prep our content calendar far out. Given you don’t know what big moments are going to happen in a given game, how do you prep, shoot, and edit content for game days?
We can only prep our content calendar in so many ways. Yes, we know we have a game schedule, a practice schedule, and some team events that are planned far in advance. But we have no idea how those are going to go, so a huge part of our job is learning to adapt. We shoot roughly the same way every game: One shooter behind our end zone, one on each sideline, one in the team box, and at least one roaming the stands.

We're fortunate to be able to exchange footage with our friends at GBSM that have their own three or four cameras at games, as well. Our job is to capture three things: The game, the emotions, and the atmosphere. If we win, we blow it up and make sure everyone knows it, and it gives us great creative freedom to edit some fun highlights and give our next trailer a little more juice. If not, it's our job to make sure we're not silent and twiddling our thumbs on social media until the next game day.

Are you given full access to the field to capture whatever you want or are you working within limitations?
We definitely have limitations. Some of those limitations are universal for every team, some are set by the preferences of our coaching staff. For instance, I know our coaches and players don't like to have a lot of cameras in the locker room or in the bench area. It can be a distraction, so we keep it to one or two there.

Aside from that, we're granted an amazing level of freedom to be almost anywhere the team is on a game day, whether it's on the plane or bus, the pregame locker room, the tunnel, on the field for warmups, halftime locker room, on the field for postgame, and again in the locker room for postgame.

What are the components that make a good hype video?
When it comes to the trailers, Frank Martin, Neil Peterson, and Trevor Terry are the masters. They've been responsible for putting together those emotional, action-packed, beautiful pieces of work since 2013. They pack in the emotions. Great coach or player audio. Great music. And a great script. This year, Trevor and Bailey Pelletier— one of our student interns—took things in a new direction. They wanted each trailer to be voiced by great former players or celebrity fans through the 2021 season. Aside from that, it's just a matter of putting the right elements in the right places to give you those goosebumps.

_frankrmartin

A post shared by Frank Martin (@_frankrmartin)

I’d love to know how your team starts prepping content for something like a National Championship game. I loved this video that went up. Do you have a shot list of things like getting the players walking onto the plane, the sunset, close-ups of players, etc? Or is it all captured on the fly?
Every time we travel, we put out some photos and video of the team getting on the bus or plane. When it comes to the playoffs, we like to make sure we exhaust all of our resources. So yeah, ‘Let's get a drone going for this one.’ We know what to expect when it comes to shooting team travel, so we don't bother with a shot list. The idea is just like everything else: Capture the moment! Show us what the guys are wearing, show us where they are, show us their game faces.

georgiafootball

A post shared by Georgia Football (@georgiafootball)

Can we talk about the trailers? I truly get chills every time I watch them. Do you have like a “chills barometer” (I’m making this phrase up) that you want to hit to ensure it’ll hit all those emotional buttons for the fans? The Orange Bowl one here really did it for me.
Chills barometer... no, lol. Their goal has always been to tell a story and usually that story is carried by the visuals of people and events that our fans really care about. The challenge every week is deciding what story to tell. We like to share our core values and instill a commitment to what the team is all about, which effectively gives fans a little peek into what the program is built on, and that usually helps with the buy-in and the emotional investment.

What’s the selection process like for finding narrators to the trailers?
This year, we did things a little differently. Before the season, we wrote out every opponent and had an open brainstorm session to see who we thought would fit for each game. Some of them were no-brainers. Some were challenging based on things like availability. But we were really happy with every guest narrator that was generous enough to spend some time with us to make some really cool pieces.

Who is your dream narrator for a Georgia hype video that you haven’t worked with
We almost—and I mean ALMOST—secured a voiceover from Samuel L. Jackson prior to the National Championship. Obviously he's a busy guy...and we got the audio file like a week after the game. Does that count?

Editor’s note: Samuel L. Jackson narrated a 2012 hype video for Georgia that you had to see to believe.
How do you select the music for the videos you share? I especially loved this clip + music choice.
We have a few subscriptions to websites that grant us licensing rights to use some great music in our social videos. The subscriptions we have give us enough options that we can really search within genre and mood to find something that perfectly fits the attitude of any video we create.

What’s been your favorite video or creative asset that you’ve made to date for Georgia? Why?
That feels like an impossible question, I'm not even gonna try! The variation in our content is my favorite part of the job.

I’d love to also talk about the still assets Georgia shares. Do you have a visual theme that you follow? I loved this graphic from the Orange Bowl. Were you instructed to include certain players? Or were you given the creative freedom to make them how you want?
That all falls on Chad Morehead and Chandler Eldridge. They work closely to create a central theme for their graphics and posters and they do a GREAT job of adapting that on a weekly basis to fit the narrative of a particular game or location. No two weeks ever look the same with those guys, and it keeps things nice and fresh for the fans. Usually the players included in graphics like that are captains, seniors, starters, or top performers from the relevant game.

georgiafootball

A post shared by Georgia Football (@georgiafootball)

Is there anything else that my readers would want to know about hype videos or your role?
I'm leaving Georgia and my colleague Trevor Terry left his video position right around the time of the National Championship after spending four years with us as a student intern and one as a full-time superstar. So I think I can speak for both of us when I say this: We really loved being able to create so many pieces for Georgia fans that hopefully made them feel much closer to the players and coaches than they would have ever been able to experience otherwise.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.