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The Arizona video crew’s latest production with a Gladiator theme (click on photo to access YouTube video)
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The Digital Gurus, an appropriate name for Arizona’s creative video crew, have come up with another goosebump-producing effort.
In the latest video published today highlighting the 10th-ranked Arizona football program, the Digital Gurus combine stirring filmwork of some of the Wildcats finest moments to date along with imagery and voice-overs from the motion picture “Gladiator”.
The Hail Mary pass from Arizona quarterback Anu Solomon to Austin Hill against Cal is highlighted with this message from Russell Crowe’s character Maximus shouting to a crowd after a fight to the finish in the Colosseum:
“Are you not entertained?! … Are you not entertained?! … Is this not why you are here?!”
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The film then goes to a still picture of defensive lineman Dan Pettinato looking skyward with his arms raised in victory with the title of the video, “Heroes Will Rise”, above him. The message: Arizona hosts traditional power USC on Saturday night at Arizona Stadium. Buy your tickets now.
Preceding that was the part of the video of Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez and a couple of aides signaling the Hail Mary symbol with their hands in prayer before Solomon took the snap.
“At my signal,” Maximus is heard saying, “unleash hell.”
And that Arizona did, with the miraculous win over Cal and the statement victory at Oregon.
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“We’re always keeping an eye out on new movies and pop culture to help give us ideas on new projects,” Arizona’s director of creative services John Daley messaged me in an e-mail. “We settled on using scenes from the movie Gladiator because of the tie-in of facing the Trojans.
“We played off the general turned slave, turned gladiator theme to play up the fight against the ‘Empire (USC)’. We’ve been lucky to come up with some good trailers the last few years that our fans and staff have enjoyed. This one had been in the works for the last couple of weeks and with the success of the team the timing is perfect.”
Teamwork has Arizona’s football team at 5-0. Another group effort has the Digital Gurus still undefeated when it comes to producing must-see videos.
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“I couldn’t be prouder of the guys who worked on this and it was truly a full staff effort,” Daley said. “Chris Foo pulled all the clips. Mike Hausler did the heavy lifting and laid it all down with the movie to tell a story. Carlos Moreno (our make-it-look-spectacular guy) did all the graphics and Ryan Bloom did the finishing edit and audio.
“We hope everyone enjoys it as much as we did putting it together.”
Here are more of the Digital Gurus’ finest productions:
My personal favorite:
ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He also writes articles for Bleacher Report and Lindy’s College Sports.
