Homecoming week is coming up fast for Connecticut high schools, and it’s easy to treat it like just another Friday night game on the schedule. It isn’t. Between the pep rally, the parade, the tailgate, the court ceremony at halftime, and the game itself, homecoming is usually the single busiest content week of the fall season — and most of it never gets filmed, because everyone’s attention is split five different directions at once.
We’ve shot enough of these to know what actually gets used afterward and what doesn’t.
The game footage is the least of it
Every program already has someone filming the game — a parent, a coach’s assistant, the AV club. That’s covered. What almost never gets covered well is everything around the game: the band warming up before kickoff, the crowd during the parade, the reaction shots when court is announced at halftime. That’s the footage booster clubs actually want for the yearbook page, the fundraising reel, or next year’s homecoming promo — and it’s the footage that requires someone whose only job that night is to be in the right spot at the right moment, not also managing a scoreboard or running a concession stand.
Multiple things happen at once, and one phone can’t be in two places
A parade at 5, a pep rally in the gym at 6, kickoff at 7 — a single person with a phone has to choose. A crew with more than one camera doesn’t. That’s really the whole case for booking this ahead of time instead of hoping someone catches it: it’s not about better footage of the same moment, it’s about not missing the moment entirely because everyone was pointed at the field when the real content was happening in the stands.
This is also senior-class content, whether anyone plans for it or not
For seniors, homecoming is often the last big non-game event of their high school career before graduation season takes over in the spring. Parents want it. Booster clubs want it for senior recognition posts. And it tends to get used again months later — in a senior tribute video, a graduation slideshow, a program’s season recap — long after the week itself is over. Nobody thinks about that in September. They think about it in May, looking for footage that either exists or doesn’t.
Booking this is different from booking a regular game
A standard game booking is one camera, one location, a few hours. Homecoming week usually means coordinating around a school’s actual schedule — parade route, pep rally time slot, kickoff — which takes more lead time to plan properly than a routine Friday night. If your booster club or athletic department wants this covered, the conversation needs to happen this week, not the Tuesday before the game.
If your team’s regular-season coverage is more of what you’re after, that’s the same crew and approach we use for in-season game coverage in Bristol and Southington. And if your program already booked media day back in August, this is really the same idea applied to homecoming week specifically — one more moment in the season worth having on record, not just remembered.
Reach out to JLS Video Solutions this week if you want homecoming covered properly — parade, pep rally, and game, not just the parts one phone can catch.