USC Bridges Sports and Cinema to Set a New Standard for College Football

All Eyes on USC

Since his arrival in 2022 with Coach Riley, Niven's goal was to elevate USC football. It's a school with prestige, laurels, and the wins to back it up. But in the world of college football, competition is stiff, and recruits have 134 school choices just within the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Prestige and laurels can only do so much, and Niven needs all eyes on USC.

"We have three demographics…your fans, your alumni, and then recruits," Niven said. "We want to give them that first-person experience of what it's like to be a part of USC football."

"I think that's always our goal in anything that we do. We want to have a unique perspective," Niven continued. "With social media being so oversaturated, you always have to have something that stands out."

Finding a way to stand out starts with the players. USC football would just be an empty field without them, so they become the focus for Eric Michael, the Director of Cinematography & Post-Production.

"What we get to do is humanize these guys and build relationships with the dudes on the team," Michael said. "The more we care about them, the more that bleeds into the content, and the more that everybody can understand and know these guys."

On game day, an ESPN broadcast team captures every moment from a game-wide perspective, allowing Michael to focus on more personal questions.

"How can you capture what's going on inside of what's going on? How can you capture emotions in the middle of a play? How can you get a (players') eyes lining up across a receiver on third or fourth down?" Michael shared.

"That's what we've been trying to dial in on this year."

This balance of action and documentation helps the content team build that first-person experience they're searching for. From practice to off-season events, those interested in USC football get a chance to see beyond the layers. Even if a player is injured, his story is still shared.

"From practice to games to all the other things that we shoot outside of being on the field, I'm able to be close and documenting the players in a certain way and highlighting them in ways that people don't normally get to see," added Rob Washington, Director of Content and Photography.

"I'm in places where people normally aren't. I feel like it's an opportunity I can share with family members, fans, and other people that really are just curious."

To uncover those unique angles found on the field and the personable moments worthy of documenting, Niven and his team rely on the Sony FX3 and FX6 as well as the Sony A1. This unifies their look across the brand and captures everything in a resolution high enough to archive for future use.

Finding A New Standard

As Niven and his team elaborated on their approach to connecting with the players, they kept referencing Hard Knocks, a reality/documentary television series produced by NFL Films and HBO.

This was when the cornerstone for Niven's plan became clear. When he looked at the college football landscape, he saw everyone trying to do their own version of Hard Knocks. But that's not what he wanted for the program.

"If you keep turning the channel and you see the same thing, you're not going to view in," Niven explained. "But if you see something different, that will catch your attention."

Niven wanted something that only USC could do.

"A whole different perspective, different style editing, not your traditional slo-mo," Niven explained. "That's our thought process. How do we have pieces that really stand out?"

Only USC is a YouTube series about the USC football players told directly from their perspectives. It's more cinema than sports. And apparently, that's by design.

"We're not making stories about football. We're making stories about people, and football is the vehicle to tell these stories," Michael said. "Ultimately, there's something so much more meaningful than a football game embedded into much of what we do."

"With the (Only USC) series, it's documenting the guys' stories and the stories of the players through their perspective," said Juan Reyes, Director of Digital Strategy.

"Everybody in the country, from different colleges to pro sports, everyone's giving you a similar perspective coming from the top down of coaches and inside of the organization," Reyes continued. "What does it feel like to be a player here? What is it like going to school here?"

The five-episode series follows the players as they lace up their shoes, put on their pads, and battle it out on the field. It's an opportunity for fans, alumni, and recruiters to see beyond the game they catch on TV. It's about the players' perspectives on and off the field.

"That's the goal. Every week we try to tell those stories as best as we can and capture that moment," Reyes said.

USC is one of the most storied programs in college football. There's always something incredible happening, and it happens fast. With Sony, Niven and his team have kept pace and captured it all in high-resolution.

"We had Caleb Williams' Heisman campaign here, all (filmed on) Sony," Niven shared. "From the photography that Rob had on the Sony A1…to Juan shooting the stuff that was happening in the game, to then going to the Heisman ceremony in New York and grabbing an FX6 on a compact build and then capturing the moments where he's holding the Heisman in Times Square…all those moments…Sony is the vehicle to tell those stories."

The power of the creative content transcends the standards the content team once held themselves to. Instead of trying to recreate Hard Knocks for USC, the producers of Hards Knocks are calling them instead.

"We sit here, and we have ESPN on, right? And then we see they're using our footage," Niven said. "They're asking us for those pieces of content from a media request perspective."

"And then we see our stuff on Hard Knocks when they covered the Bears."

"It's not only telling the stories but having Sony as that vehicle to capture those moments," Niven said. "That's such a high quality that we can use down the road for capturing pieces in time."

A Viral Moment

With current and past members of USC football captured on video, the fans were happy. Niven now had one last remaining group to consider—the recruits. Each summer, prospective students who want to join a university team arrive to tour the campus.

"In the summer, official visits are when a kid comes on campus, a prospective student-athlete”, Niven explained. "They'll have an academic tour, housing, a campus tour, they'll talk football, but then we also do a mini media day shoot."

"Think of a media day that you'd do in the NFL for your current teams. We have to do those every single weekend for our official visits."

For talented players that USC wants on their team, convincing them to commit goes beyond the football program.

"Our biggest thing is how do we 'wow' everybody and show that USC is the number one media market in the country," Niven said.

Niven knew that recruits would be doing other visits where universities would be selling their programs. He wanted their experience at USC to be unique to the school, something that encompassed more than just football but the entire legacy the university had nourished.

"When you think of USC, you think of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, the Cinema School, right?" Niven asked. "So how do we integrate that into the experience that recruit feels?"

The USC School of Cinematic Arts shares an alley with the athletics office, and each year, Niven and his team take on several students as interns. Not only do they want to share knowledge between the worlds of cinema and sports, but they also want USC to build bridges between the different schools and programs that make up the university.

"When you look at all the other programs out there, everybody wanted to have that inside access," Niven explained. "College athletics is changing with NIL and Rev Share, so we're trying to be forward-thinking."

"Everyone's seeing the same thing," Niven added. "How do we do something that's different?"

This is where Flint Tanquary comes into the story, who spent his younger years watching USC football games with his father and was drawn to video and film by the Jumbotron at the Coliseum. This inspiration drew him back to USC, where is now a senior at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Tanquary directed and produced the recruiting videos that went viral over the summer of 2024, which culminated in the Arrival of the Trojan video that garnering more than 20 million views for USC Football.

"I vividly remember walking into this office and pitching them…everybody was excited about it, and it was just figuring out the right steps," Tanquary said. "From a creative standpoint, we just wanted to highlight in those recruiting videos why USC is different."

"Throughout the video, you're standing in front of one of the most historic stadiums in the country…and in the foreground is all the Heisman Trophies…alongside being at the school, you're also in Hollywood, so hitting on that iconic skyline with other championships, being on a helipad, and then camera flipping around and, they're sitting on top of a Trojan sign, which is based on the Hollywood sign, which then those stars in the sky turn into the Hollywood star with the name of the recruit."

What made these videos even more impactful was how quickly they had to be turned around. Not only were there multiple steps to the process, but they also needed to be ready the next day.

"You have your photo shoot, your video shoot, green screen shoot, and then once we do that, we turn all that stuff around in 24 hours," Niven explained. "It's a crunch time…and that's unique to college football because you got high school recruits coming in, and you're trying to make the best impression."

"I remember turning around 20 of those recruiting videos overnight," Tanquary said. "I was so tired; I fell asleep for a couple of hours and woke up to calls and texts from Radmen saying they went viral."

The recruitment videos, which combined VFX with cinematic camera work and showcased all that Los Angeles had to offer, made waves throughout the football community.

"It went out, and then everyone's like, 'Is this the new standard?'" Niven added.

This success gave the team a green light to pursue the Arrival of The Trojans, which built upon the building blocks of the recruiting videos and utilized all the School of Cinematic Arts had to offer.

"It being a team effort on the production side really shows how this is just a representation of USC football and Coach Lincoln Riley's approach to Hollywood," Tanquary said. "It was a representation of USC football."