Excitement mingled with adrenaline flows through sophomore Mason Ramirez as he examines the monitors that depict different angles of the RUHS football field. With a live audience watching the sportscast, Redondo Sports, everything has to run smoothly, from the audio to the camera shots. There’s no room for error in the field of broadcasting.

“Physically, you’re sitting there, but in your brain, you’re on a roller coaster. There’s people at home watching live, and if you make a mistake, you can’t go back and edit it, like cinematography. You have one shot and you have to fulfill it,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez directs Redondo Sports, a sportscast that consistently streams live games and events that take place at school. For him, Redondo Sports is a tight-knit family focused on his passion: videography. As the director, Ramirez calls the shots, controlling the camera angles, the graphics and the transitions between shots and other aspects of the show.

“It’s a lot of moving parts, so my head’s not exactly straight, because usually we have behind the scenes pregame issues. Those issues you won’t notice because we get them fixed, but I have to worry [about] making sure everything’s working. Once the game starts, I’m going to focus on the shots, make sure everything’s looking right, do color corrections on the cameras, make sure audio sounds good and make sure everything’s running well,” Ramirez said.

From the age of five Mason has had a passion for videography, beginning his journey with only an iPhone six. He produced short films with his family, piecing together small family trip videos. As he grew older, he became more invested, progressing into more advanced videography. In 7th grade, he shifted towards broadcasting and started doing freelance, filming for birthday parties, restaurants and other events.

“[Videography] started off as a passion, [but] as I dove deeper into videography and broadcast, I realized that this could be a career, and I’m looking at potential opportunities to fulfill that,” Ramirez said.

Despite working around 50 hours a week on videography, Ramirez manages to juggle his passion with his academics, requesting work early from his teachers to complete in order to avoid any clashes in scheduling.

“[With] time, you have to be really flexible,” Ramirez said. “If your schedule conflicts with when you’re going to go film, it’s not going to work out.”

Ramirez dedicates a lot of time to Redondo Sports, spending hours at the events for broadcasting and returning home as late as 11:00 p.m. He hopes the fruits of his labor will pay off on future applications and resumes. Although videography requires a “good deal” of labor, he still enjoys broadcasting.

“You never really have to ‘work’ in something that you love. It is a lot of work, but it doesn’t feel like work,” Ramirez said.

His mother, Jessica Ramirez, is extremely supportive with his videography, helping to fund his passion and dedicating her time to transport him to wherever he needs to go.

“Mason is an old soul. He’s very mature for his age, very responsible and very driven. He has an entrepreneurial spirit, which is super respectable as an adult looking down on a young child. You don’t see that very often,” Jessica Ramirez said.

This drive and determination is apparent in one of Ramirez’s more memorable broadcasts: his first football game, before the creation of Redondo Sports, that served more as a testing ground to better understand the logistics.

“That was the first time we had ever built a system that would capture the game from multiple angles and then broadcast it out to families across the world,” Ramirez said. “By across the world, I mean we can see where viewers are coming from. We have people in Brazil, Asia, Africa, Dubai, the United States, anywhere. It’s incredible to see how many people we can reach.”

Ramirez’s passion for videography is reflected through the dedicated broadcasts he produces, and he plans to pursue a career in sports broadcasting in the future.

“I really get to paint the picture and create a story with those angles and the music and everything because I get to depict what the viewers at home get to see,” Ramirez said. “Based on my liking and what I believe would look best to go on the show, it has to fit what the people at home and around the world want to see.”