Hot Shots.(videotaping sports highlights)

Capture Your Video Audience With Action

A sports enthusiast may not realize it, but every day he sees an action "hot shot."

What is a hot shot? Is it a dash of Tabasco sauce in a glass of tomato juice? Is it an electric shock from plugging in a frayed lamp cord? No, it has to do with sports.

By hot shot, I'm referring to that video footage on sports highlights shows--or even still photographs in magazines and newspapers--that draw viewers like moths to a street light.

It's the football and the hands of the receiver filling up most of the video frame as the two come together in a touchdown pass. It's the baseball bat, straining muscles in the batter's arms, the catcher's head, and a blurred baseball jumping off the bat, all filling up the video frame. It's the golfer in mid-follow-through with a ball blurring past the camcorder.

Every amateur videographer worth his weight in endless and boring Little League videotapes knows the hopeless feeling of just finishing the videotaping of two hours of sports footage. The problem is that 95 percent of the video is worthless. It was hard work, but nobody, not even the Little Leaguer or coach, shows an interest in investing an hour or two to see it.

Once a person realizes there's a problem, the next step is usually recording just the highlights. But somehow those are often boring, as well, because the angles and the perspectives are all the same. Often, there's nothing about a home video of sports that can hold an adult's attention for more than a minute, much less an adolescent with a 20-second attention span. …