Childhood hobby leads to 'viral' videos by ISU's Nielsen

Editor's note: This is the second of a two-part series on the work at Cyclones.tv by Iowa State University student Evan Nielsen of Creston.

AMES — Creston just might be the per-capita mecca of budding filmmakers.

Evan Nielsen, Maxx Walters and Andy Smith were Creston High School classmates who all developed aspirations of working someday in video or cinematic production.

Nielsen's emphasis as a design major at Iowa State University is digital media. His work for a photography class led to an offer from Cyclones.tv to work as a student assistant as a videographer. His productions are similar to movie trailers designed to entice interest in Cyclones sports.

Maxx and Smith went to film schools and are interested in cinematic directing. Maxx is a digital cinema student at DePaul University in Chicago. He has appeared as one of the acting "extras" in an episode of the television show "Chicago Fire." He's also self-employed as a wedding videographer. Smith is enrolled at Columbia College in Hollywood, California.

"Maxx and I always loved making stupid little videos when we were younger," Nielsen said. "Andy was the same way. He's in film school in California now, getting into directing."

Opportunities ahead

Nielsen sees a future in producing videos, whether in athletics or some other endeavor.

"I don't think you have to go to film school necessarily," Nielsen said. "I thought about it, but our family is all about Iowa State and it was a goal of mine to come here. If you have the ambition and creative mind to make stuff look good, you'll get opportunities. I've always thought it would be really cool to direct commercials for somebody like Nike. There's an Iowa State grade in California who's a producer with "NBA 2K," the video game, and he wants me to consider going out there and direct their commercials. He saw my (Iowa State football) video."

Nielsen has two years of college to finish for a bachelor's degree before making those career decisions. In the meantime, he's busy producing sports-related video promotions for Cyclones.tv.

New release

His latest production, to be released this week by the Iowa State Athletics Department and Cyclones.tv is titled, "Enter the Storm." It's a promotion of the 2016 Cyclone football season designed as a sequel to the class project he produced in April, "A Storm is Brewing."

"The shooting takes the most time. I've been working on this project for about three months," Nielsen said Thursday in a Cyclones.tv production room. "You have to organize it, do all the set-up stuff. I'm almost done putting together all of the scenes. Then I have to go back and make it look nice by color-grading it. Then put in some special effects. That takes a full day. The summer workout video I did was easy; I just went in and shot what they were doing and put it together. This one is all scripted, every part of it."

Nielsen, who is interested in art, drew out six pages of scenes on what is called a story board. The extra work on the finer details of the production impressed John Walters, ISU director of broadcasting for Cyclones.tv.

"That might be common in some other places, but it certainly isn't here," John said. "Evan is a perfectionist. He spends a lot of time on what he has in mind for the shoot, and then follows through with those ideas. The fact that he and (media production specialist) Austin Minnihan built their own dolly track to move a camera back and forth on a tripod speaks to their ingenuity in the creative process. Rather than wait for approval of purchasing a dolly track, which can be pretty expensive, they just got together and built one."

The video will be released this week on the Iowa State athletics website – www.cyclones.com – as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts for Cyclone athletics, Cyclone football, Cyclones.tv and Nielsen's personal Twitter page, @Evannielsen1. It may also appear on the large video jumbotron at Cyclone Stadium before or during home football games.

"They played my other videos on the jumbotron when kids were here for camps over the summer, so it's a possibility," Nielsen said.

Busy summer

His summer in Ames was anything but idle. Besides putting together this season's promotion video, he did one on the football team's summer workouts and a spoof of the annual football media day presented in the manner of one of his favorite television shows, "The Office." Logan Angelo, Iowa State football manager from Creston, appeared in the media day video.

Those videos can be found online at http://bit.ly/2bcTaEi and http://bit.ly/2bz03Q1.

Helpful background

John said Nielsen's experience as a Cyclone football manager his sophomore year proved valuable in setting up team videos.

"I think it helps a lot," John said. "First of all, he understands football and the drills they do. If you're going to be putting together these videos on the football team, it helps to have an idea of what they are doing. For his first video, it helped to just have those relationships that he had built. To be able to go to the football coaches and say, 'Hey, I have this idea.' They trusted him. And he could go to the players, and they wanted to be a part of it. That's a real benefit."

Nielsen has been known to run up the stadium stairs behind players performing conditioning drills while lugging the video camera, or holding it on the scene as he follows players through obstacles in a running back drill. One day, one of the arms on the running back apparatus sprung back and struck him so hard he had to regroup for a moment before continuing filming.

"That's why his videos are so special," Walters said. "The audio he gets by being that close to the action is incredible."

Cyclones.tv employs eight to 10 students during the school year to assist the five full-time employees. Nielsen's role will likely stay close to his specialty – concept videos to promote various Cyclone sports.

"It helps to have someone who kind of takes the long-term view on things," John said, "more like a Hollywood director would. We have students who go out and report and do some play-by-play for us or get highlights out quickly to our website. But Evan will be doing more of the things where you think it through in advance, and then go out and execute it."

It's a skill John sees soaring to new heights during Nielsen's stint as a student employee at Cyclones.tv.

"He'll do great for us," John said. "Every once in a while, somebody comes through where you go, 'I knew that guy when he was at Iowa State.' That's going to be Evan. Fifteen years from now when he's a Hollywood producer and director, we're going to be saying that we knew that guy, that he worked in our office. I'm not even kidding. I think that's exactly what's going to happen."