Live To Be Rams from Disley Cricket Club on Vimeo.

Live To Be Rams tells the story of Disley Cricket Club’s 2014 season. With our end of season awards night only a week away, 1st XI captain Andrew Clarke and I thought it would be a great idea to combine our shared loves of Disley Cricket and NFL Films America’s Game. What we managed to produce in that week was nothing short of miraculous.

On the Saturday before our Friday night deadline, Clarke fired up his camera and we set about filming the close ups that would make our introduction to the piece. I immediately put it into Premiere Pro and pieced together our own shot for shot version of the real thing. With about a minute and fifteen seconds complete, we released it that night as a trailer for our fellow players to get excited about.

After outlining the key moments in the season, and piecing together our narrative, the next day was spent rounding up some of the key contributors for our interview sections. Clarke would set up the camera, framing the subjects in that uniquely America’s Game way and I would ask the prompting questions. The only shame is that time/circumstance didn’t allow us to source a directional mic, so despite the best efforts of the in camera mic, the sound can be a little inconsistent.

By Sunday night we had an SD card full of footage and photos from throughout the year, which I began hacking into a rough edit. In addition to this we invested in a professional voice over from a great bloke on fiverr.com who gave us that authoritative narration we were looking for. Not only that there is the inherent comedy value in hearing an american trying to use cricketing terminology.

That week, outside of work hours, I dedicated every spare moment to getting our little film complete. By the time Friday night rolled around I was a little bleary eyed to say the least, and frustrated to find the projector I had borrowed had uncleanable speckles all over its lens.

Nevertheless people could see it up there on the medium sized screen and applause and laughs flowed in as we, like all amateur sportsmen, revelled in retelling our big fish stories.

With a little more time to source better equipment we could have had it looking and sounding a little sharper, but the main elements were there and that proved more than enough to entertain folks on the night. A great little project to celebrate a great championship winning season.