On tuesday my boss suggested I make a football commercial from the footage we shot on the Salt Flats in May.  You may remember that we went to the salt flats to film a behind-the-scenes featurette on the university photographers and their 2009 season poster shoot.

The photography office edited their own video from the footage, and you know my thoughts on that. 

By the following tuesday this commercial was finished.  I decided to mix the salt flats footage with game highlights because 1.) the mostly just stood around on the salt flats, which isn’t very exciting, and 2.) slow-mo football footage is absolutely stunning.  The isolated blue motif is how I unified the two types of footage, and my patient co-workers were very helpful with using FCP’s color tools.  We eventually hired Jacob Schwarz to finalize the color correction.  I love his mostly-desaturated look. 

I spent days adjusting the cuts by one frame in either direction, and I still think there’s room for tweaking a few edits.  It completely alters the energy of the piece.

The athletic department loved the ad, and FedExed it to Cowboys stadium for this week’s big invitational against the Oklahoma Sooners.  I’m thrilled that my commercial will play during the game, and hopefully pump up the fans.  But the real honor is airing the ad on the world’s largest plasma screen. 

I can barely comprehend how big this screen is.  It’s the center-piece of the brand new $1.1 billion Cowboys Stadium, and cost over $40 million dollars... more than the cost of the entire stadium that preceded it. 

Anyone have a couple extra tickets for the big game?!