Does anyone have tips on how to make a brief soccer recruiting video? My sophomore son has clips on a variety of different places, and I’m not great with technology. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you.
The parents of the kids who were wanting to play in college seemed to have cameras, tripods, and the athletes wore something that was associated with the camera? Two of my kids’ good friends were on their varsity teams/club teams and this was just my observation.
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It’s been a few years, as my kid has graduated college but – we used basic, free editing software, no music or fussy graphics which coaches had said was distracting and annoying anyway.
We added text on the Intro shot with name, town/state, height, weight, position, and contact info. Then we did basic transition to new clips, adding arrows to highlight his position on the field. I can’t recall the software, but I’d found it just by a basic search.
We used basic handheld videocam, though iphone video quality is so much better now, probably iphone would do the trick and could be edited in imovie.
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One free video editing software that may be useful is shotcut. Not shortcut. It’s powerful and there’re plenty of tutorials on YouTube.
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I did all of my D’s highlight videos on iMovie. Very easy to do, can add the intro slide mentioned above and easy to use arrows, etc. to highlight the player. There are tutorials on youtube.
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I did it all in iMovie too. I am not particularly tech savvy. There are plenty of basic directions on how to do this if you do a google search. Our local photo shop (yep we still have one) will create a highlight video for a pretty reasonable price, so maybe that’s an option by you? If not, I bet one of your kid’s friends would do it for $.
-If you take one bit of advice….Start with his BEST highlight. Coaches aren’t going to hang around watching to get to the best stuff.
-Make sure he is circled or highlighted throughout the video. It has to immediately be clear who he is.
-iPhone footage is fine. You do NOT need a fancy camera or tripod.
-Create one video of the best highlights that’s a max of one minute. You can pin up to two min video on Twitter, so I would create a second one as well for that.
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Thank you for the suggestions! I will check out iMovie and shotcut. Its seems like this is going to take longer than I was hoping!
One more question…He has some clips on our phone, others on different websites from club and high school soccer. Can I combine those all with iMovie or shotcut?
You should be able to as long as you can download them all to your computer.
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This is correct. @Runnermom26, have your DS download all of his videos to his computer, then he can assemble the clips in iMovie. My son does his own highlight reels, and he gets the videos from different platforms. Once they are all on his computer, he can assemble the clips to form the reel.
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yes, shotcut works with many file formats.
It does take a bit of time to do the first time, but then adding to it etc. can be quick. iMovie can be fun.
You can let him do it himself if he’s up for it and can find some good ones to mimic, as long as he and you take what @Mwfan1921 says as gospel - best highlights first, make it clear who he is in each clip, keep the video short. (I don’t know if it needs to be one minute, but it shouldn’t be ten.)
This post from NCSA gives some suggestions on what you might want to include based on his position - don’t worry if you don’t have all of the film angles etc. Have a very short transition between clips so the coach knows you just changed.
I just watched a friend’s basketball video for his daughter that was like three minutes long, quick switches from clip to clip without any transitions so I was lost, I couldn’t find his daughter in half the clips, and one was just her being pushed to the floor for a foul… nobody wants to see that. 
The video is a sales job - focus on what they want to see.
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Exactly!!!
I used Movie Maker and taught myself as I went along, with zero prior experience. I was able to incorporate my own tripod camera video and video from other sources.
It was NOT quick. It takes forever to isolate highlights from hours of footage and combine them into a video that is less than 3 minutes long.
Best wishes; I salute you.
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That article states “The recruiting video should be 3–6 minutes long and include 20–25 clips of game action for field players.” That’s longer than some of the suggestions here.
The link has good advice to focus on key skills for the position. I remember one college coach telling my D that he appreciated that her video actually showed defensive plays for a defender. His statement implied that he saw a lot of highlight reels for defenders that didn’t do that.
Coaches aren’t going to watch more than 2-3 minutes of a highlight reel. That’s why the suggestion is to put the best plays at the beginning.
If you have more high-quality clips, consider making an additional highlight film (maybe focus on different aspects - attacking, defending, movement off the ball, etc.)
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A coach might not watch more than 30 seconds if the opening content isn’t good!
The linked goes on to say “Recruits have about 30 seconds to make an impression on the coach, so pick opening plays or skills that will leave an impression. From there, make sure to add in other key skills that college coaches want to see. The goal is to get coaches hooked in the first 30 seconds, so they continue watching the video to see the depth of the skillset.”
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Also make sure your child picks a good song! It should go without saying, but nothing with explicit lyrics. LOL. One of my son’s club coaches used to say, “Pick a song that your parents like. Chances are the coach watching it will like it, too” My son used Walk this Way by Aerosmith for his summer highlight reel, and a couple coaches told him “great song”.
General advice (that doesn’t appear to apply in this case with video from multiple sources but may be useful to others): if you have game footage on Hudl, it is FAR easier to make really good highlight videos using their embedded platform than to download that footage and use third-party software.
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A general suggestion: Make it short. Two minutes is great. Take that 3-6 minute highlight tape and divide it into two tapes. That way, you get two touches for one coach, as opposed to one touch that may result in the coach losing interest after 2 minutes.
I cannot underscore enough how important it is to reach out repeatedly to coaches. Do not think that you are “bothering them.” Literally, recruiting is 75% of their job. So if you have two 2 minute tapes instead of one 4 minute tape, you get to reach out twice.
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