Behind the March to Music City Madness

Allow me to start this post by apologizing for the delay in getting this "behind the behind the scenes" post out to the masses. One of the things I have learned while interning with the OVC is that even when an event as large as our basketball tournament comes to an end and I think I'm finally going to have a little down time to get caught up on tasks for other sports, I still am left with hardly enough time to complete everything and new tasks pop up frequently. That being said, the time has come to dive into our behind the scenes look at the 2010 OVC Basketball Championship.


Kyle came to me with the idea of a behind the scenes look at our basketball tournament over the summer when we first toured Pringles Park for our upcoming baseball championship. I loved the idea and was anxious to get started even though it was still months away. While I was rich in motivation to film a quality documentary, I was lacking in equpiment. We have a mini DV camera which works well by all accounts for the amount we use it but since I tend to think big when it comes to the ideas I have for our videos, I was worried the documentary wouldn't turn out well enough or capture everything to its full extent and while I am pleased with how it turned out, there are definitely things that did not make the final cut that I will discuss in this piece.


A professional film crew would be ideal...and expensive, so it was never really an option. I'm not really into reality tv myself, but I do think following an event like this would make great entertainment.


There were instances throughout the tournament that would have been worthy of making the final cut but we just didn't have the man power to pull it off. For instance, during a friday shoot around session, the power in the arena failed. Evidently, the construction crew working next door cut the power without telling anyone, or maybe they weren't told that we were hosting a tournament there that weekend... Regardless, those practicing were not happy, those of us hosting the event were not happy, and the least happy of all of us was probably Kyle, who now had to deal with power issues all morning. The power at the scorer's table was not re-established until 5 minutes or so before the first tip. I wanted to get footage of Kyle and what he was going through because these are the dramatic things that make for good entertainment but I'm also smart enough to know that I wouldn't be welcome if I was shoving a camera in his face while he was understandably busy.


We toured the facility when it was still the Sommet Center to map out where we would set up our hospitality room, training room, interview room, etc and while there we were told that in a move to increase branding efforts of the venue, any entity using their basketball court would no longer be able to cover the logo at mid-court. We were also told that the floor would at least be half way set up when we arrived at 3am Friday morning. Not only was the floor not assembled until literally only minutes before UTM, the first scheduled shoot around, began their practice but it was lacking our biggest branding opportunity at half court. Due to tardiness of the floor, we weren't able to set up the scorer's and media tables until the first game warm ups were underway. Also another worthy segment that we didn't have footage of. Also, there was a little tournament the following week at the same arena hosted by the SEC in which they did, in fact, have a logo at half court...interesting.


I was in charge of the our Youth Media Challenge and as I was seeing to that portion of our tournament, I was faced with a sticky situation that would have been good entertainment as well, but we were not able to get footage of that either. Also, since the program sellers were under my direction, I had to see to them periodically which kept me from my filming duties as well. The Friday segment of the video is missing a few key components to the weekend for sure but it what was in the video, does capture the majority of what friday was like.


Saturday morning we met as a staff at 11:00am, which was another thing I would have liked to have on film, but we weren't able to capture that as well. It was interesting, as most meetings are (at least to a intercollegiate conference sport junkie like me) but again, some things are better left in house. It was determined at our meeting that the only problems we had encountered were the floor assembly and power outage and its domino effect.


The rest of Saturday ran very smoothly which made for a very exciting championship day. My Youth Media portion of the tournament had ended and I spent my Saturday behind the camera.

In all, the tournament was a rousing success. Maybe next year we can spring for a film crew that will follow each of us around so we can truly capture ALL that goes on behind the scenes of our tournament. Plus we'll be at a new venue for a longer time frame, which will surely bring new challenges that will be well worth watching.


P.S. we are now accepting donations for a film crew...