2008 Diamondbacks Little League

2008 Madison Heights Diamondbacks Commemorative Video

I enjoyed using my children’s youth sporting events to improve my skills in photography, videography, and web development. When not coaching, I captured and transformed those cherished moments into books, videos, and photographs for our family and the team’s families, all free of charge. Here are a few videos for you to enjoy.

A Word On The Videos:

To open the video, I curated vintage baseball clips from books we had at home, along with archival photos of coaches and my father-in-law during his high school playing days in the 1950s. These visuals were paired with an edited excerpt from James Earl Jones’s iconic “Field of Dreams” speech, setting a nostalgic tone and highlighting the timeless connection so many have with the game.

The second half of the video is stills of each boy by uniform number to the tune of Take Me Out to the Ballgame on trumpet performed by George Rabbai from BASEBALL, A Film by Ken Burns.

I used Final Cut Pro with many different Magic Bullet Looks plugins for gate weave and film stuttering and other distressed looks. Photoshop, Illustrator and Audition were used for sounds. The old projector sound effect comes from iDVD sounds in the app that I extracted to use in Final Cut Pro.

Music selection was just as intentional as the visuals. The second video blends fast-paced action footage with still photography, all tightly synced to Hotei’s Battle Without Honor or Humanity to amplify energy and rhythm. For the third video, I took a more unconventional approach—pairing youth baseball footage with Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of Prelude from the Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007, famously featured in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Despite the contrast, the elegance of the game and the emotional depth of the music came together seamlessly. Subtle color grading, soft-focus transitions, and thoughtful pacing helped bring it all to life.

Skills Used on Project:

Software: Final Cut Pro, Magic Bullet Looks Plugins, iDVD extracted sound effects, iMovie extracted sound effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Comic Life 2 (for the books), Apple Aperture

Delivery method: Personalized DVDs, Apple Book Order Service