Quote:
Originally Posted by cbf
So I was actually filming right next to the official cameraman for Newton up in the Terrace/Club level, and complained to him about zooming in tight and missing action on the other side. He said they did that because First told them to. He said his instructions were to focus on the part of the field that had the most robots.
This guy is also a camerman for St Louis RAMs games. He would have been quite capable of doing a good job, but he said First doesn't explain the game rules to his director, so the instructions he was getting were often clueless. He thought First was great (said he was going to get his grand kids involved when they were old enough). I explained the rules to him as the matches went along, and I'm hoping that the videos got a little better because of that (within the limits of First's instructions). But he was only the up top guy -- the one who could get the full field (and without any people in the way). The director liked to switch to the ground level camera, which was obscured by the refs half the time, and zoomed in so tight, that no one on earth could possibly have a clue of what was going on. It would be like zooming in on Tom Brady's nose hairs and claiming you're filming a football game.
During team selection he said his director had no idea what was going on. (I had explained all of it to him.)
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I've worked with TV crews for track & field competitions, and too often they have no clue what's happening on the field and make many bad decisions. It's the nature of TV that if an event isn't wildly popular, the production crew rarely makes the effort to gain real insights into how to improve their broadcast. I've found them to be quite arrogant at times, unwilling to accept advice from true experts in the sport.
The second element is to be sure to have an announcer who is actually interested in the sport--that he's not just there collecting a paycheck (I've worked with those before). Tom Hammond is an absolutely awful track announcer who hurts the sport unfortunately. If we stuck with a Tom Hammond, we won't get the wider appeal we should. Instead we want Phil Liggett as he does the Tour de France.