Leaves are falling, the wind is blowing, apples are being picked, and football is being watched, the sure signs that fall is upon us. For many Americans, fall just means football and, personally, I’m one of those Americans.

I can’t get enough of the football season and I love that I can use sports media outlets to catch up on any missed highlights or news. When it comes to sports, it’s one thing to read about a game or play, but another to actually see what happened. That’s why I find the sports video side of media to be so important. Seeing a well made highlight reel or game recap can make one fell as though they missed none of the action, and I admire that ability.

Recently, I have gotten involved in doing this myself to see how much really goes into delivering a short yet fulfilling recap. Through The Daily Illini I have begun to work on producing highlight reels for various sports. I have already discovered that it’s far from easy.

The entire process of making even a one minute highlight reel takes several hours. Every single clip taken from a game must be evaluated to see if it delivers something that was important to the game or worth watching. The amount of clips can be in the hundreds for sports such as soccer and football, and editing them makes it feel as though you are watching the game all over again. After the best clips are taken out, there is a good chance that more than half of those won’t even be used because they either don’t fit smoothly or make the video too long. Then starts the real editing process of trimming down clips and adding audio, which is followed be an overall “clean up” of the video making sure it all flows appropriately.

Now that was just a short summary of what an average sports highlight reel creation looks like, but many smaller, time-consuming components are involved. When all is said and done, you have a one minute video sitting in front of you that really tells a two to three hour long story. I imagined the process was a tad tedious, but I never imagined how long it can actually take. However, the finished product gives such a satisfying feeling of accomplishment.

I have nothing but enormous respect for those that do such videos for companies like ESPN and NFL.com. These videos help us gain any information we missed and feel as though we actually watched the game. I am now aware of the grueling process that goes into delivering this information. I suggest that maybe next time you go to watch a recap of the Bears game, think about all that went into the making of that short video that made you feel like nothing was missed.