The 2005 Tecmo Bowl Playoffs

Wild Card

The second video I made was the Wild Card Playoff of Washington at Tampa Bay. Like all of the 2005 NFL Playoff games, I had recorded the highlights of this one on my DVR. Transfering those to my computer and using it as a base, I began editing the video and "Tecmo Bowl-izing" it. Just like the video game, I started off with the "NFL Wild Card Weekend" title screen followed by the "vs." screen and a quick recap of the bracket.

Then the fun began. I edited the plays close together so they'd flow one right after the other. I went in and inserted the play animations wherever they were needed. Things like the touchdown celebrations, and the pass and catch animations. With most of the animations, there is text at the bottom describing the action. I had to edit out the text that was there from my capture and add in the new text. So instead of saying "Touchdown!" in the video game's pixelated font, it now looks a little better and gives the correct player name.

A situation came up near the end of the game where a potential touchdown catch was ruled incomplete and then challenged. I decided to take the music from the video game's measurement sequence and combine it with a shot of the referee making the call. I think it ended up working out pretty well.

Once this was done, I laid down the music. I decided that instead of in the video game where the music stops after each play, I'd let it run for the whole drive and stop it only when there was a turnover or a score. After that, I had to go play by play and insert all the sound effects. This was very tedious. Inserting every throw, every catch, snap, hit, deflection, and every "hut hut hut" sound of every play was a lot more time consuming than I first realized. I have a newfound appreciation for all the sound editors out there. I think I'd go crazy if I had to do that for a living.

My video started coming together though and I was beginning to see the fruits of my labor. The only thing left at this point, was adding in the names and score at the top of the screen. This was another tedious process, as each time the ball changes hands the names have to be changed. I also had to add in the scrolling headlines every time there was a fumble, interception, or touchdown. Once this was finally done, I got the chance to render the whole video and sit back and enjoy what I had envisioned from the start. This video had taken much longer to finish than I anticipated, but I was very satisfied with the results.

Download

View the video on YouTube.com. Or, download a DivX version:
Medium Quality [320x240, 34MB]
High Quality [640x480, 68MB]
(Please right-click and choose "save as" to download.)

Next up, the Divisional round...