Starting in late spring to early summer, members of N.C. State’s marketing and promotions group began brainstorming and pulling together ideas for pre-game clips for a football game that wasn’t until Sept. 2.
When they came together, there was no question as to what this year’s theme would be. In a season where approximately 7,000 new seats were added to Carter-Finley Stadium per the construction of the north end zone, and a season marking the 40th anniversary of Carter-Finley’s existence, there was no doubt that the theme would be celebration of the stadium’s history.
Chris Alston, the director of marketing and promotions, said after talking with coach Chuck Amato during the summer and discovering the football team would be entering the stadium by walking out of the Murphy Center and through the crowd, they wanted something to tie in with that.
“We really wanted to create a dramatic video that would have a sentimental value,” Alston said. “We decided to have a four-minute clip devoted to celebrating Carter-Finley’s 40th anniversary.”
When it came time to select music for the anniversary clip, Alston said there was little debate on what music would evoke the mood they were trying to establish.
“The theme from the movie Gladiator is perfect for this,” Alston said.
Although State’s marketing and promotions group brainstorms and comes up with ideas for the pre-game clips, the Carolina Hurricanes’ audio and video production group, CanesVision, is responsible for actually producing the clips.
Pete Soto, the director of Gale Force Media, CanesVision and Wolfpack Television, said using the theme from Gladiator helps create a similar feeling to that of the movie itself — going into battle.
“It really evokes a sense of tradition,” Soto said. “It is the gladiators that came before now that built this stadium; gladiators like [Philip] Rivers, Bill Yoest and Roman Gabriel.”
After players have exited the Murphy Center and walked through the crowd, they enter the tunnel under the Murphy Center from where the players have entered the field the past few years.
Since the goal of pre-game clips is to get fans excited and ready for the game, Alston said a 45-second, more traditional highlight clip was created.
This clip streams several plays, selected by CanesVision, from returning players who marketing and promotions believe are going to be high-profile players. The clips are streamed to the Korn song “Blind.”
Alston said selecting the music for a clip that is supposed to excite all fans is the biggest challenge faced by the marketing and promotions group each year.
“With the highlight clip, we are trying to get people excited and ready for the game,” Alston said.
“We want the peak of when people are pumped up to be right when those fireworks go off. It’s always about the entertainment value for the fans. We want them to get excited about kickoff.”
Selecting the music that accomplishes this goal is what Alston said is the toughest part of creating pre-game clips.
“We have fans that are 5 years old, and we have fans that have been coming to games for 40 years — that is such a wide age range,” Alston said. “That is our biggest challenge, trying to find music that everyone will feel a part of and enjoy.”
Every year CanesVision sends the marketing and promotions group a list of 15 to 20 songs it says would be good to use.
Some of the finalists for this year included songs by Metallica, “Boom” by P.O.D., “Bodies” by Drowning Pool and “Bring the Pain” by Abstract.
“Boom” has been used three times in the past five years and was also considered for this year’s clip, but the group decided it didn’t tie in well with the anniversary video.
Alston said changing songs every year helps to keep things different, but that at the same time it is a balancing act when trying to create tradition.
“At every Virginia Tech game the band comes out and plays ‘Sandman’ by Metallica before every game, and fans love it. They have a great tradition going,” Alston said. “Here we change things up to keep everything fresh. It’s really a balancing act.”
Soto said changing songs from year to year also helps in keeping the pre-game interesting and separating seasons from one another.
“We don’t want to do the same thing over and over,” Soto said. “We don’t want to remember the bad seasons.”
Something special to State’s pre-game has been the production of animations where Mr. Wuf and the opposing team’s mascot are inserted into popular movie-clips. Clips have Mr. Wuf attacking or teasing the opposing team’s mascot.
The ideas and production of these clips all come from CanesVision.
Alston said the movie spoof clip created for the opening home game last season against Virginia Tech has been the best clip based on fan’s comments.
“The clip was based on the Jurassic Park, and a scene where the Hokie is eaten by a T-Rex,” Alston said. “We got a great reaction from our fans for this video.”
Clips so far this year have included a spoof of the movie 40-Year-Old Virgin for the Appalachian State game, Kangaroo Jack for the Akron contest and War of the Worlds for the Boston College game.
Soto said maintaining integrity and not crossing the line when showing Mr. Wuf has never been a challenge when creating the movie spoofs.
“We have to use good judgment because we don’t want to embarrass the school,” Soto said. “We want to make fans realize that it is us versus them.”
Alston said with all the resources State has at hand that all of the pre-game clips combined create a pre-game unrivaled by most other schools in the country.
“In terms of the technology and coming up with the animation, there isn’t another school out there that compares to that,” Alston said. “In terms of what we are able to do with the three video boards that we have, there isn’t another school in the conference that can do what we do.”
When creating the clips, Soto said passion is one of the most beneficial requirements to making a great clip.
“We have a passion for the Wolfpack despite being labeled as CanesVision. We back the Pack,” Soto said enthusiastically.
Soto said if that passion is missing, then the quality of the video is destined to be low.
“When you look at other universities, you can tell that passion is missing and it is just another video,” Soto said. “If we made pre-game clips for UNC, they wouldn’t be that good because we are passionate about the Pack.”