What an emotional end of the game last night. Between a little caffeine to make sure I’m not getting tired towards the end of a game…and the way the game ended last night, it was pretty easy to get most of my work for game #2 done before I went to bed after the game last night.
After looking for Matt Serratore after the game to record an interview for tonight’s game broadcast (which I didn’t see Matt, so we will have to go with plan B tonight) I got in the van with the team to come back to the hotel. The team had food delivered to the rink after the game was over, so as soon as we got back tot he hotel, I ate my dinner.
As I’m eating, I’m thinking about what direction I want to go with the music for the highlights package for tonight. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Let’s say the Beavers score a couple power play goals in a game. A perfect song would be The Fabulous Thunderbirds “That’s Powerful Stuff”. Or, if the team has a couple turnovers that leads to goals, I could use The Red Hot Chili Peppers “Give It Away Now” as the song. I only have one hard and fast rule about the song…it CAN’T be country!
I like to use songs that most people have never heard…or remakes of songs that people do know well. This makes the task of finding the right song more difficult, but the listener is more apt to keep focused on the open segment than if it’s a song they’ve heard 1000 times in their life.
As I was eating, I kept thinking about the song So Close Yet So Far Away by Elvis Pressley or the version by Hall and Oates.
Working in the radio industry, I have access to searchable databases of songs with either the title or lyrics. So, as I searched for those terms “so close so far” I came up with about 500 results. I can click on a player button on the program, and start listening to the song. I can usually tell 5 seconds into the song if the “sound” is right. Most of the 500 results were from bands that I’ve never heard of.
Some of the 500 bands, quite frankly, aren’t very good! I settled on three songs that would make the cut: So Close by Alice in Chains, So Close by Matthew Good, and So Close Yet So Far from the band Future of Forestry.
After listening to the songs a couple times, I settled on the Future of Forestry. I listen back to that song again, and mark the parts of the song that I want to talk over, and the parts of the song that I want the lyrics to be heard by the listener. Once I know how long each segment is, I start writing the parts that I will be speaking, and once I figure out how long each highlight or each quote from a player or coach that I’m going to use is…it’s time to start piecing the whole thing together.
I finished eating about 10:45pm. The final song was picked by midnight. The parts were written by 12:30am, I recorded my parts and pieced everything together by 1:30am.
Here’s the final product: Open
Once I was done with the open, I wrote the questions for my pregame interview with Coach Serratore, and checked on some scores from other games, and called it a night about 2:30am.
Now, I don’t always get that much done right after the first game of the series. I’m a Packer fan…and they played at 11am this morning, so I wanted to be able to watch without having to do much work-wise while the game was on.
I got up about 9:30am this morning, and went downstairs to the breakfast area of the hotel and recorded the pregame with Coach Serratore, then came back to my room and edited that. I updated special teams numbers other individual stats are updated from game #1. Then, I sorted the notes sent to me by BSU Director of media Relations Brad Folkestad. I sort them into categories of must use, or might use…depending on how the game plays out.
Now, it’s the second quarter of the Packers game…and things aren’t going well, so I sat down to write up this post.
Once the football game is over, I’ll try to catch a nap and get ready to leave for game #2 vs the Falcons!
The team today ate breakfast about 9:30am, watched the video clips with the coaches at 11am, and then went for a walk to the garden of the Gods instead of going to the rink for a pregame skate. It’s 45 degrees here today…and the team would rather get their pregame workout in outside. That’s not possible most places we play!
Reminder, our pregame tonight begins at 5:30pm. Listen in on Mix 103.7 or online hear at beaverradionetwork.com.
Thanks for reading…
Brian