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Unread 30-03-2007, 00:25
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Re: FIRST Championship: Made for TV?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ahecht View Post
As other people have mentioned, the real thing that is needed here is better coordination between the play-by-play announcers and the video directors. In a real televised sporting event, the play by play guy can see not only the final TV output, but several other camera shots as well. He then typically choses to describe something which is caught by one of those cameras (or, in the rare occasion that he mentions something not on one of his monitors, he'll very carefully describe exactly where it is happening so that the director can tell one of the camera guys to cover it). The director then choses which shots to cover based primarily on what the announcer is saying.

I've never seen this sort of coordination at a first event.
I can see where you're coming from, but speaking from an announcer's standpoint, I don't think it's ever going to happen. Namely because of the way that FIRST differs from sports. In professional sports (whether it be football, baseball hockey...etc) the cameras are fixed on the ball and they move with it.

In foot ball it starts with a wide shot of the two lines, then cuts to the quaterback, follows the ball through the air, and cuts to the wide out that catches it.

In baseball, it starts behind the pitcher, then cuts to the camera that has the angle where the ball will land, and then cuts to a wide view of the action on the field.

The reason the play-by-play syncs so well with the cameras is that there's only one scoring object to follow, and only a certain number of players interacting with it. Whereas in FIRST, there are (at least in this years game) 6 robots, all trying to score at once, so trying to orchestrate a pattern that both the announcer and the camera man can follow is HIGHLY difficult, if not near impossible.

But to get back on topic, I'd love to see coverage like they have at the Olympics. Maybe where they have commentators describe what's going on at the event in full...and only show highlights of key/really exciting matches.

Just my two cents though
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