MISSISSIPPI STATE CONTENT BREAKDOWN

In January 2024, the entire world of college athletics was turned upside down when legendary Alabama Football Head Coach Nick Saban decided to retire. It affected so many aspects of people's daily lives, especially mine, as I was the Assistant Director of Video for the football team. Where do we go from here? Who's going to come in now? What does a new coach mean for our future? These were all questions the entire creative department was asking ourselves. After Kalen Deboer was hired as the next Head Coach of Alabama Football, the unfortunate news came that my boss, the director of creative, was being let go.

Naturally, this caused some panic, as I didn't know where my future with the program was headed. In the midst of worrying and uncertainty, Jonathan King came in at the eleventh hour to save the day. After being fired from Alabama, he was offered a new position as the head of creative for Mississippi State Football, a brand-new department within the organization, and he wanted me to join him as his Director of Football Video. After touring the facility and talking with the employees there, I decided this would be a good move and a new challenge. With a new department, a new first-time head coach, and essentially a brand-new team, we had our work cut out for us, but he was confident we could rise to the occasion.

This Blog is to detail the thought and reasoning behind content direction for the 2024 Mississippi State Football team:

PRESEASON

Mississippi State Football was entering a new era with Head Coach Jeff Lebby, a first-time head coach from Oklahoma. On top of the new coach and staff, most of the team from the previous season had either transferred or gone to the NFL Draft, leaving a team of new players and athletes with no previous content in a Mississippi State uniform. The first task during spring ball was to introduce the fans to who these new coaches are and how they interact with the players.

Over the weeks of Spring Ball, we mic'd up all of the position coaches, one practice session at a time.

This proved to be a big hit with fans, although some outperformed other, simply due to some of the coaches had glowing personalities, while others "only know ball".

The next task was to start showing some highlights of workouts and introduce a bit of the team's culture and spirit.

So many mornings were spent at 5:30 a.m. up and active with the team, trying to capture the building spirit of this emerging team and the intensity of the 'Rise and Grind" Mentality. Filming every early morning workout also allowed me to get a little creative with my filming and editing to make short "Quick Hitters" for social media so that the content wouldn't get stale or repetitive.

This particular morning, I had the idea to get active with the Ronin, run with the players, and create quick mask transitions to make a simple yet effective looping video.

Workouts were not the only big task for preseason content. Lebby's new philosophy for the program included a big emphasis on community service. To fulfill that role and help develop young athletes into grown men who contribute to society, the DAWG Program was born. The DAWG Program stands for:

Developing

A

Winning

Game Plan for Life

As an initial kickoff to the program, we were sent to Miami to cover players working on several service projects throughout the community.

Spring Ball was ending, and the Spring Football Game was fast approaching. It would be the first big event for the football program and an opportunity for the fans to get a first look at their new team. Spring Games are generally lackluster and overlooked events, but for this new coaching staff, it was the beginning of a new era. Therefore, it was my idea to attempt to mix the rich tradition of State with the new era of Lebby-run football.

At the time, I was still new to all the traditions of Mississippi State. However, it was pretty easy to realize that the colors "MAROON" & "WHITE" were a large part of the program's history. In fact, the chant the stadium cheers during games is literally one side saying maroon and the other screaming white. On top of that, the colors have always been prevalent throughout the program since its infancy. Therefore, on my tour of Davis Wade Stadium, I found a premium area with the colors in giant words and colored walls, and I immediately knew this was where I needed to film the spring game hype video.

I grabbed Freshman WR Stonka Burnside and Freshman CB Brice Pollock because they were in good standing with the coach and were signs of Lebby's program's "new era." Using historic photos and video footage from seasons past was a perfect way to blend the past with the present.

INTRO VIDEO

One of the projects I was most proud of this preseason was the Mississippi State Intro Video, which I had conceptualized and brought to life. Unfortunately, due to some administrative pushback, it was punted to social media instead. Still, the intention of the project was to use the Intro Video before the team ran out onto the field.

From the moment I accepted the role at Mississippi State, I was obsessed with the idea of using the song "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain in a video. In an initial talk with the marketing and athletic creative department, the idea of using an orchestra to create a buildup for an intro video was brought up. I decided to try the idea of using Mississippi Queen and a band to perform it in the stadium, and it was well received by marketing.

Previously that month, Lebby had a crawfish broil at his house for staff members and hired a band to play the music. While in attendance, I liked what I heard and researched who they were.

I learned that Walker Wilson, the lead singer, had the band and was originally from Mississippi and a former contestant on The Voice. I reached out to him about the idea, and he was ecstatic about the proposal. We stayed in contact in the coming weeks and made plans for him and his band to come down from Nashville to record and perform the song in one day.

On the day of the recording, our Assistant A.D. of Fan Experience had gotten with the local theater on campus to turn a staging area into a live recording studio. The band members showed up, and due to them being traveling, musicians were learning their parts and putting them all together on the spot for the first time. The band was able to put it together, and the school's audio engineer made a quick live cut so that we could use it for the video recording of the band in the stadium. He later sent over a cleaner mix that would be used in the final video.

After the recording and giving the band time to get something to eat, we all met back up at the stadium. My crew and I had set up a spot on the seating balcony of a premium area, with a perfect vantage point of the field, for the shoot. We got the band Mississippi State gear to wear and brought in some speakers so they could "fake play" to the song. We wrapped the shoot after several takes and used multiple camera angles with me, my assistant director, and a student shooting.

I used footage of the band mixed with shots of the season and footage from the team asset shoot I produced to create an exciting video for a new era.

This was the final result, modified to become a "College Gameday"-type video. I believe it was a perfect tribute to Mississippi State in that we used a local band and campus materials, and the first seconds of the song quite literally starts with a cowbell. I attempted to make something different from the masses, which felt more personal to Mississippi.

IN SEASON CONTENT

Season content would prove a beast to tackle, as there were several challenges in creating a whole new look and identity for a team with new faces and a new outlook. I will break down some of the week-to-week content I was able to produce and explain the reasoning behind the choices I made.

UNIFORM REVEALS

One of the things that was made clear to us was that Coach Lebby wanted weekly uniform combinations posted on social media. While this was common for most schools across the country, it is something I had never done being at Alabama, so it was a new and exciting challenge. The main issues, or roadblocks were going to be getting players and equipment staff each week to film something. This would be especially difficult, when we would get the combinations told to us on Wednesday or even Thursday and were expected to be posted on Thursday afternoons. While our equipment staff and players were very understanding and willing to help out in this task, when you are in a first season with a new coach you don't know what kind of season you are going to have and the last thing you want it to get blamed for distracting people from concentrating on what they need to be in order to shoot a uniform reveal.

The second challenge would be that, while the uniform combinations wouldn't differ much from previous years, there was virtually no photo of these current players in these uniforms since it was a new team. How do we resolve this? I decided to create a magazine cutout type video where I would take the torso of a player from last year in one uniform, the legs from another, and the head from another and mix and match the combinations each week. This way we could show the different combos, be easily interchangeable, and use photos from the previous team while not identifying who is who.

I added a background of old Mississippi State Magazine that I took with my IPhone, and added a crumpled paper texture in order to add to the magazine look.

24 HOUR VIDEOS

Each week we would put out a hype video to get fans excited for the upcoming game exactly 24 Hours before kickoff. This is something I did at Alabama as well, but this year at State it was contractually obligated, so there was no skipping out on it. At Alabama I would follow a specific format with each one, one year doing player voice overs and the next conducting on camera player interviews. However, at State I decided to make each video unique and fit to whatever situation we were in that week. The season obviously did not go as anyone foresaw and this soon proved difficult, but I was up for the task each week.

Here are a few examples of my favorites from the season:

WEEK 3 vs TOLEDO

The previous game we had lost rather unexpectedly to Arizona State, but were coming back home to face another non-conference opponent. My goal with this video was to use the voice of a former player, and one the fans knew, to deliver the message of resilience in the face of unexpected trouble. This is the type of video I wasn't allowed to make at Bama after a loss, and so I took my opportunity to give the fans a "get back up after you fall" video.

WEEK 4 vs Florida

The scenario of this video is that we had lost to Toledo in an embarrassing fashion. The fans were starting to lose hope in this team, but the next game would be our SEC Opener. In a lot of the themes for these scripts I take inspiration from what Coach Lebby says to the team in the lockeroom after the game. The message after the Toledo loss was "stay together, and that teams who splinter in moments like this will not recover." I took that as motivation and wrote this script and turned to one of State's great alumni players that all the fans love. I used old footage of players from past seasons and roto scoped them to include them in shots from the previous games. This overall gave the message that we are all in this together, from past and present.

WEEK 6 vs Georgia

Well, the team is losing every week and now we are going to play one of the top teams in the nation at home. Highlights of the team and saying "we are still in this" really isnt going to resonate with the fans, so what can we do? Well, this week is Mississppi State Bulldogs vs the Georgia Bulldogs, so how I decided to go with the theme of which Dog is better. I had our live mascot Dak come to the stadium and pose the way I wanted him in order to fit with the video and mixed it with highlights of the team. I wanted to the feel of the video to almost be nature documentary with it being about an animal, and so I turned to our British tight end, and his voice gave it that perfect feel I wanted. The part of the video that says "A good Dawg always listens to commands" was meant to be a direct opposition from the words on screen and what was being shown. "Sit" then showing Ziko Traore hurdle a player, "Roll Over" then showing Mario Craver roll to break tackles, "Play Dead" then showing Michael Van Buren getting sacked, but scoring a touchdown the next play. This was all to mean, maybe they aren't the good Dawgs, maybe we are junkyard dawgs, that have a little fight in therm.

WEEK 10 vs Tennessee

While looking through Lebby's weekly press conference I came across him being asked about his team's ability to fight on the road, and that they were "battle tested." I took that and decided to make that the theme of that week's video. We were playing a night game at Tennessee and everyone always talked about Neyland at Night being one of the hardest environments to play in. I knew the fans would not be excited about this game, given how we were performing on the field, so I decided to go a creative route with this video. My idea was to make video about, finding your way out of the darkness. I took my model out to the tree line behind the practice facility and used that to look like a forest. I shot it very Blair Witch inspired, and it came out exactly how I had hoped. This was one of the one's I was extremely proud of this season.

WEEK 12 vs Ole Miss

Anyone who follows College Football knows that The Egg Bowl, the rivalry game between State and Ole Miss, is a game full of hate and tradition. It is arguably the biggest game of the season and so I had to make this video stand out from the rest. I combined tradition with the current team, by gathering all the old Egg Bowl highlights I could from past years. I used After Effects to make the photos from previous Egg Bowls come to life. I knew I couldn't just use any old song or voice over. I reached out to Rae Sremmurd, because they were a big name in the music industry and were from Tupelo, MS. Both Swae Lee and Slimm Jxmmi agreed to do the voice over, although Slimm was the only one who sent in his audio. I used their song Mississippi Slide for the video and all together I think it created the perfect hype the last game of the season needed.

SPECIAL PROJECTS

In season content and daily internal videos were not the only thing I was able to make this season. There were several projects that I worked on during the season that I am very proud of accomplishing. The biggest task I wanted to accomplish here at State was connect with the community of longtime fans and mix that with this new era. I believe some of these projects were a good blend of those two elements.

Mrs. Frances

On a community service trip to a Retirement home in Starkville, I was introduced to Mrs. Frances. She was a 100 year old Mississippi State Fan who had live in Mississippi her whole life. I knew I had to get connected with her and tell her story. I reached out to the facility and got in touch with her son and we set up an interview. This was a perfect way of mixing the past with the present, because what better way tell the story of a program throughout the years than through the eyes of a fan.

PRESEASON DOC

The content leading up to the start of the season gave fans a good sneak peek at who these coaches and players were. However, we needed to encapsulate how we got to the point we were at, and so I decided to create a full preseason documentary episode. We shot interviews with players during the media day asset shoot, and I took footage from Lebby's arrival in Starkville and pieced it all together as a precursor to the start of something new.

Overall, the choices that I made were in service of the brand of Mississippi State and its fans. I believe I was able to create hype and excitement for this team each and every week despite going 2-10 in the season.

By Ryan Ortegon