Kirk Barron

Between playing Halo: Reach (review to come), running, projects around the house and the Corning Union football project I’ve been quite busy the last few days.

I started work on Corningunionfootball.com last week but hadn’t done much because I didn’t have any content. Then, on Friday, the friend I talked to about the project called me up to see if I could help him shoot video at the Tehama County Shootout.

Growing up in Corning the Tehama County Shootout was a big deal. It’s the annual football game between Red Bluff High School Spartans and the Corning Union High School Cardinals. Corning (Population around 7,000 according to the 2000 census) and Red Bluff (about 13,000) are the two biggest cities in the county and the rivalry has been intense over the years.

It was always fun being the smaller school and traditionally Corning Union football has always played larger schools during its non-conference schedule. When I was in high school the team had Pleasant Valley High School on its schedule, a team quarterbacked by Aaron Rodgers. We didn’t lose.

This year Red Bluff had been blown out in its first two games by two very good teams and Corning had won fairly easily in its first two games against a very bad Las Plumas High School team, which has won a grand total of three games in the last six years, and a strong, though smaller Orland High School. Orland is another rival located just 10 miles to the south on Interstate 5 and used to be a league rival before the section realigned leagues.

So I went with Eder the 14 miles north on Interstate 5 to Red Bluff and helped him shoot video of Corning’s 19-6 victory. Eder has two cameras so we both shot the game and he edited together the footage of the game along with some interviews I did with two of the coaches and a player.

TEHAMA COUNTY SHOOTOUT 2010: Corning vs Red Bluff from Corning Union Films on Vimeo.

Next week I’m going to be out of town but I think I’ll be helping Eder shoot video the rest of the season, at least as long as I’m still in Corning. I enjoy shooting football video and that’s one of the things I miss about my old job so this project is a lot of fun for me.

Eder gets some b-roll of the bus as it leaves Corning Union High School for Red Bluff.

The footage will be cleaned up and used for the larger, season-long, project Eder is working on but he liked the idea of doing a short 3-minute quick edit to go up soon after the game.

We used two cameras, one stationed ahead of the play and one behind the play.

We have a lot more access to the team than I did when I was working at a newspaper because this project is about the kids and not so much a news story. Eder has been shooting video for the school rallies and in high school he was coach John Studer’s student assistant. They’ve been good friends ever since.

Coach Studer and Eder after the game.

Eder sent me the video today so I posted it on the website along with the team roster and the video he made for the rally with the players introducing themselves.

I found a theme for the site that I really like but I’m having trouble getting the rotating image on the front page to work. Hopefully I’ll figure it out tomorrow if I have time. Once I get that working I’ll be able to finish the basics and get started working on the more time consuming elements of the site.

Coach Studer said he had a huge book with the stats and some history but there was only one and it wasn’t in digital form. I imagine that will be a several month long project so I’ll save it for last. I think I’ll have some time to find the right database application to use.

Now that the site has some content on it, I created a Twitter and Facebook page for the team/site so we can do some promotion and hopefully provide some live updates from the games.