By Adam Malev
There are not many 17 year olds who can say they make professional highlights for athletes. That is what makes White Plains High School senior Michael Hunter so impressive. In an industry with a very small market for professional mixtapes, Hunter makes the best of the best.
Many professional athletes agree, including the Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster. Hunter takes footage available on the NFL website and pairs it with music, creating popular videos that go viral and make the rounds on many popular social media accounts, such as Bleacher Report and House of Highlights. Hunter’s professional account (@thunder.prod on Instagram and Twitter) is his platform for sharing his highlight tapes with his thousands of followers (a number of whom are professional athletes). Hunter has turned what started as a hobby during his sophomore year into a successful business over the past two years. By producing and selling his highlight tapes to high profile athletes, Hunter has established himself in this growing field.
This past football season, Hunter started recording WPHS Varsity Football games and making highlight tapes for the team. Many of his highlight videos have been reposted by White Plains football players on their Instagrams.
Some of the videos take several hours to make and edit, but Hunter enjoys producing them and the players certainly appreciate his work. He learned how to start editing by watching YouTube videos and playing around with video editing software. His YouTube channel quickly gained popularity and drew attention from then rising NFL wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster in the summer of 2017. Smith-Schuster reached out to Hunter asking if he could pay Hunter to make highlights for him. Hunter quickly accepted the offer, and his highlights soon began to reach an even larger audience after Smith-Schuster shared the videos on Instagram.
To this day, Hunter is still Smith-Schuster‘s exclusive highlight producer, and Smith-Schuster‘s 1.8 million followers regularly watch his highlights on Instagram. Although Hunter does not watermark most of the videos that get posted, he still has benefitted from the exposure. Many other NFL players, including Smith-Schuster’s teammates Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell, have asked Hunter to make highlights for them.
Hunter is incredibly talented and has already made a name for himself in his field, turning an enjoyable hobby into success. Stay tuned for what comes next.
Check out Mike's videos on www.thunderpromedia.com
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