Thursday, December 18, 2014

A Hobby Within A Hobby: Making Highlight Videos

You may be familiar with my YouTube channel, SapELee485, which contains array of tennis videos ranging from players' practices to matches and highlights. This is actually my 4th account (the previous three dedicated to music).  I originally created the channel to showcase the young American talents, but have expanded it to include other nationalities and ages.

In the beginning, I mostly uploaded full challenger matches but ran into copyright issues (USTA Pro Circuit).  I ended up deleting many videos.  Frustrated and trying to find a solution, I began to experiment with making highlights.  I had done slideshow videos before and thought to myself, “it can’t be that much different”.  I was right, it wasn’t; however, it was time consuming because you have to re-watch the match.

The first highlight video I made was of Rhyne Williams’ run to the 2013 Challenger of Dallas Championships, his maiden title.  It was the first of many Rhyne highlights (as I mentioned in my opening post, he is my favorite player).  I even created a playlist dedicated to Rhyno.

My First Ever Highlight Video



My collection grew larger as time passed by and expanded to include ATP and WTA matches.  I still upload unedited matches every now and then (mostly juniors, slam qualies, and college tennis).  I try to avoid Roland Garros’ contents after receiving a red flag on the 3rd round encounter between Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and Donald Young.  The clay slam prohibits publicized fan videos. 

Below are the other playlists in this channel:


You will notice that majority of the highlight videos are long and thorough (for analysis purpose).  I like to show the players’ strengths as well as weaknesses, and sometimes their mental game.  And because of this, I am accused of “Subliminal Messaging”.  To avoid future conflicts with this player's fans, I no longer make highlights of his matches.  I actually had several videos that I never shared.

That concludes the history of this YouTube channel and how I got into the video highlight hobby, a hobby within a tennis hobby.


What's ahead: 10 American Teenagers to Watch in 2015.



1 comment:

  1. I don't know who complained, but I'm sure 99% of people really appreciate your Youtube videos and highlights. Please don't let him/her deter you from posting videos. Many thanks to you for your time and effort put into these videos!

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