EUGENE, Ore. — Some of the best athletes in the world will compete at Hayward Field in Eugene next month for the World Athletics Championships. It'll be the first time that the global track-and-field event will take place in the United States.
Before the games begin, a video created by University of Oregon freshman Quinn Connell will be featured on the jumbotron inside the stadium.
"I love editing high energy and infusing edits with momentum," the 19-year-old said.
Connell has had a love for video editing for the last eight or nine years. He first dabbled in stop motion and green screen effects, then started adding motion graphics to his videos. It has become his passion.
"From the early on, I wanted to make a sports montage that was really exciting, really high octane and also just really fun and bold and bright and colorful."
This past winter term, he enrolled in a motion graphics class at the U of O and decided it was a perfect fit.
One of the assignments in that class was to create a video montage for the upcoming World Athletics Championships. Organizers submitted a list of branding guidelines that students needed to follow.
"They wanted big, bold, colorful, really bold graphics. So we had that baseline parameter to work with and then from there the students created their storyboards with their ideas," said Nikki Dunsire, motion graphics class instructor at the U of O.
From January to March, over a dozen students competed against each other for a chance to be featured for the event.
Dunsire said although it was a competition, it was still a class effort.
"There was a healthy competition, but I would say it was equal parts collaboration between the group."
In April, Connell found out his video was chosen.
"When I won, my whole world just flipped upside down," Connell said.
Since finding out, he spent the last couple months working on his video with Dunsire's guidance. She called herself a "Swiss Army knife" when asked what her role was in the creation of the video.
Connell took creative control while still meeting the organization's demands.
"The level of detail, the level of craft and the amount of client overhead that we got through this project was unlike anything I've ever done before, and it was extremely professional," Connell said.
When the video plays on Hayward Field's new jumbotron for tens of thousands of fans, Connell hopes it gets the crowd going.
"I hope it'll be good. I hope people will enjoy it obviously. I think it's pretty crowd pleasing and gets people hyped up for the event, which is the intended goal."
The World Athletics Championships is happening July 15-24. KGW will be broadcasting some of the events.