At Tri-Marq, the most exciting time of the year is Marquette Basketball season. As long-time fans, long-time partners, and alumni, Marquette is a passion project for us. While the fact remains that MUBB is exciting and fun, the basketball season also comes with quick turnarounds and last-minute additions or changes that are unavoidable when working in sports.
Here is what a typical season looks like for those of us who do our work behind the scenes, before and during the season.
Post-March Madness:
Just as the season ends (hopefully for the Golden Eagles that is in April after the NCAA championship game), Tri-Marq begins exploring new creative ideas for the men’s basketball Hype Intro Videos that air during home games at the Fiserv Forum throughout the season. In early summer, we pitch our creative ideas to the Marquette Athletics marketing department, Coach Smart, and men’s basketball staff. If you’ve been to a game, these Hype videos introduce the team, along with each player’s coordinating headshot onto the court to help hype up the crowd.
Pulling inspiration from professional sports and ad campaigns along with many years of experience producing Marquette’s videos, we storyboard how we envision bringing these videos to the court for another year of basketball. Our partnership with men’s basketball began in 2008, so every year our creative team works diligently to dream of fresh, new ideas for both Hype Intro Videos and the corresponding player headshots.
Late Summer:
Once the creative teams zone in on two concepts, it’s time for the location shoot with the team, Coach Smart, Iggy, and the spirit squads. After a full day of gear set-up (for two ‘sets’ for each concept – yes we capture all of this in one day), camera tests, lighting tweaks, we shoot with the team for a full day on location at the Al McGuire Center.
Early fall:
After the shoot, we go into the editing suites and begin our final stretch crafting the video using the footage we shot, game highlights, and custom designed animation. While the Hype videos are being created, our design team is also designing the player headshots.
In addition to the season’s content, we collaborate with Marquette’s sponsorship partners to create sponsor graphics that play during games in the Fiserv Forum come November.
Pre-Season:
The start of the school year means that basketball teams are itching to have their first practice after a relaxing off-season. For us, it’s crunch time. This time of year is when our video team is cross checking and ensuring that everything is ready for the first game of the year. This process includes reviews at the Fiserv Forum to watch and review all of the videos and graphics for the season.
Tip-Off:
Just like all Marquette fans across the globe, we’ll be enjoying the game during the first matchup of the season. Watching the Hype Video air for the first time is an exciting experience for the team and the fans alike (that includes us!). Our work is not done, however, until everything runs smoothly. Even after the first airing of the Hype Videos and player headshots, we’re not out of the woods just yet. As the season progresses, we make tweaks to the videos to include game highlights from the season so the crowd can be wowed by the team’s best moments again and again. For this reason, the intro videos look a little bit different from game to game. And as the season starts to wrap up, it’s time to start thinking about how we can make next year even better.
