Justin King productions pick up thousands of online views
Justin King graduated from USC last May, but his popularity among current students keeps growing.
King is the creator of the hit YouTube videos recapping USC football games. He goes by the username justinking224, and his most recent video upload titled “South Carolina vs Florida” received more than 76,000 views in a span of six days.
“I had seen a bunch of videos online over the years, and I was always good at editing, and one day I saw one, and it was bad,” King said. “It was just a really, really bad video. And I was like, ‘maybe I should just try and do this.’ So I did. And it just took off from there.”
After graduating from USC in the spring of 2010 with a degree in media arts, King took a job at ESPN in Bristol, Conn., where he puts together the highlights that appear on SportsCenter. He credits his first video, a preview for the Gamecock’s 2010 season, to helping him get the job because he sent it in with his application.
King makes no profit from his videos and, although he works for ESPN, the videos are not part of his job or at all affiliated with the company.
“People seemed to really like it, and I have fun doing it,” King said. “I don’t mind making these videos. For the Florida one I actually barely slept that night because the next day I was heading out of town and I wouldn’t be able to put it out until now, and I knew that the faster I could get it out, the better it would be. Other than that, I get home from work, and I don’t mind sitting down doing it. It’s almost how I relax. It’s fun.”
King’s initial idea was to have one long video that would encompass the entire season. He has already released part one of that video and plans to release parts two and three to cover the rest of the season.
The popularity of his videos has come as a great surprise to King.
“The first one that was really popular was the Alabama one,” King said. “And I remember that I put it online and just went to work. And then at work I checked the video, and it was only at 300 views, and I thought was weird. It turns out that the reason it was that low was because YouTube does this thing that if a video gets a lot of views, they don’t count them right away. And then I checked back two hours later and it was at 15,000. I put the Florida one on there and it was even longer and I knew right away that it was going to get more views than the Alabama video just based on the number of people who were ‘liking’ it.”
All of King’s success hasn’t come without some challenges though, as XOS Digital pulled one of his Kentucky videos from the internet. He buys all of his game footage from the SEC website. They allow people to buy full games for $4, so when XOS Digital took down his video, King was surprised.
“I was pretty upset because when I buy the games, I pay for the video, and there is no disclaimer saying that I don’t own the video or the rights,” King said. “I’m also not trying to sell it or make a profit so I don’t think that they’re actually able to claim copyright because I pay for the videos.”
It takes King about six hours to make one video, but he says that the hardest part is finding a good song.
“The hardest part is finding great songs that stand on their own, but aren’t going to overpower the video,” King said. “And that’s the reason that I don’t use songs with lyrics. Because people start paying attention to the lyrics, and not what the video is about. It also allows me to use the commentator’s voices in the videos and when it comes down to it, I feel like that’s probably one of the main differences between my videos and anybody else’s. And
it’s the commentator’s job to have emotion in their voice, and if I can capture that emotion with the music and put that together, that’s what really gives it that spark that I like to think it has.”
Although King plans on making videos for the remainder of this season, he’s uncertain of what his future holds. He said that he loves working for ESPN, but he’s going to keep making videos the best that he can and “just see how it turns out.”
King recently received an e-mail from USC’s marketing department saying that they want to “discuss ideas” with him.
“I’m just kind of going wherever I’m led right now, and I’m going to do the best job wherever I am,” King said. “And if South Carolina ever offered me a job, that would be hard to turn down.”
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