Fresno State Athletics
Telling Fresno State's Story Visually
6/24/2010 12:00:00 AM | General
June 24, 2010
FRESNO, Calif. - Everyday Todd Bowen and Robbie Jellison are charged with the task of telling the story of Fresno State Athletics visually to Bulldog fans around the world. It is a task that is time consuming but it is also a responsibility that the two look forward to every day. The two are constantly producing and editing items such as human interest stories, commercials, graphics and team highlight videos.
The two have worked together for five years, with Bowen working at Fresno State for the last 11 years.
"Both are totally different," Associate Athletics Director Paul Ladwig said. "Todd is the grizzly veteran who has done it all and he is so highly trained and gifted that projects don't faze him. He understands the process of deadlines and getting the best product out to whatever medium we are producing it for.
"Robbie is the creative eyes wide open, everything is new and exciting to him member of the staff. He is really coming into his own over the last couple of years, setting his standards of what he can do and what he likes to do. He is putting his style to things."
The work Bowen and Jellison do can be seen on the marquee at Cedar and Barstow, on the video box on gobulldogs.com, on Bulldog Sports Network television broadcasts and on the video boards at the Save Mart Center and Bulldog Stadium.
Putting stories together for these venues are tasks that Jellison and Bowen look forward too.
"My favorite thing is telling a story," Jellison said. "I really like to write. Editing is visual writing. You go at it with a beginning, middle and an end. Story telling with editing is a lot of fun. Putting the work in, sometimes it is very tedious but at the end if you watch it and they like it, makes it a lot of fun."
Added Bowen, "This is fun to do. We get to control who goes on the video board and what replays to look at it. You have to be creative to find news ways to portray things."
Jellison, who first started editing with friends on two VCR's, has also been able to tell the story of Fresno State team's at post season tournaments. He's been to WAC tournaments, College World Series' and NCAA Tournament's.
He just recently edited the women's basketball end of the year highlight video that was shown at the team banquet on Thursday. The video was five minutes but the time it takes to put together a video, commercial or feature story takes a lot longer.
"It takes a long time to edit film," Jellison said. "You can spend an infinite amount of time on 30 seconds. I am not finished until someone says I am finished. It is very time consuming."
The reward for putting in hours of hard work for just a short five minutes video comes at the end when the finished product is being seen by people.
"It is nice sitting in the corner watching everyone react to something," Jellison said. "I know they enjoyed it. I am more of the behind the scenes guy."
As Jellison looks back at the opportunities he has been given in his five years working at Fresno State he is grateful for the mentoring he has receiving from Bowen during the process.
"I learned the basics in school for studio shooting and then Todd helped me with sports," Jellison said. "We worked well together because we understand the time it takes to get something done. There is a lot of stuff coming through for every sport. We always make sure neither of us is stressed out and ringing each other's necks, which has never happened. That is why we work well together."
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