What I Did This Summer
Boys Lacrosse Shuffling Drill
I spent a good part of this summer the same way I have spent most of the past 25 summers — working lacrosse camps. This summer I also got to do something a little different. The founder of Sum It Up Lacrosse and Swax Lax, Laura Gump, asked me to help make 10–12 short videos that would help explain and demonstrate some drills and games that we find effective at Sum It Up Lacrosse and that would also showcase the Swax Lax training balls we use.That sounded pretty straight forward and kind of fun. I’ve been coaching for years, I think Swax Lax balls are awesome, I love movies — how hard could it be? Well, I got a chance to find out.
Campers, Coaches, Balls, Camera, Action!
Smiley Face Using Swax Lax Balls
If, like me, you are not creative, talented, or knowledgeable about something, I recommend that you find and hire people who are. Luckily, I am blessed to be surrounded by a lot of creative, smart, and talented people, and I should probably tell them that they are all those things more often than I do.
Laura helped pick out drills and games. I got a professional videographer who is also a lacrosse coach to shoot and edit. I had a couple of interns write up a script explaining the drills. I had a whole camp full of players and coaches to demonstrate all the games and drills. The campers and coaches looked good and followed direction. It didn’t rain the day we were shooting. We had plenty of Swax Lax balls. This wasn’t so hard.
Until I read the scripts aloud. They were all 3–4 times longer than the under a minute we wanted. We needed to savagely edit them down. Then Laura and I went to the studio to do the voiceover narration. It’s a lot harder than it sounds to read your lines without a mistake (and poor Laura had a miserable cough that week). I’m pretty sure we needed at least 6 takes for each segment.
Getting the videos edited and synched up with the narration was thankfully done by a professional.
Now that I know what goes into the making of a bunch of one-minute instructional videos, I have a much greater appreciation for the writers, producers, directors, camera and sound people, and the actors who create movies or even TV commercials. That stuff isn’t easy.
So, that’s what I did this this summer, I made instructional videos for Swax Lax training balls while learning to appreciate the amount of energy and effort needed to create a video that doesn’t look like you shot it on your cell phone — and I worked lacrosse camps.
I am pretty proud of the results and think the videos came out pretty well. But you can judge for yourself — take a look!
