A&E after thought

[ggoldman]

OH yeah. I forgot to say.

I remember hanging out with some of the Grundy peeps in 1999. They are really nice people. SO i can vouche for them too.


GRUNDY---YOU GUYS ROCK. (especially those wheels you had.. they rocked too.)


Gabe Goldman
Head of Design Team; Public Relations Manager
J.R.Tucker Robotics Team

[Jessica Boucher]

I watched it last night round 11, and then when it was over I couldnt get to sleep so I threw in some UTC 2000 footage.....

But seriously, I thought it was very good. Finally, someone can explain the game! Sure, it took 8 months since its release, but I think A & E really hit it on the head, by focusing on scoring & balancing, and keeping the time multipliers & alliances on the backburner.

I really liked how they focused on Grundy and made them into the "root for the underdog" team. Teams like that are overlooked a lot, and it was good to see them contrasted with the NASA team, and furthermore, watch the NASA team be contrasted with even bigger teams, like Metal in Motion & Gila Monstors, who both just seemed like this impending force throughout the entire show. (Which, when you're a rookie team, thats what teams like that look like to you anyway.)

I also would like to see more than just the robot building & competing, but I rather feel that all you can really fit in a quality fashion in less than an hour is, well, the robot.

But all in all, if I had 45 min to show a video on FIRST, I think that would be a good one to show; it's like having newer ESPN footage.

[dlavery]

Given what the show is about, I think that we got about the best treatment possible. The official A&E description of "The Competition" says:

"Terry Bradshaw, will take viewers inside the action of some of the country's most outlandish competitions to meet the people whose passion reveals a lot about America. Through colorful interviews and in-depth coverage of the players, The Competition explores these contests and the people who enter them with one goal in mind: winning."

With that as their focus, we can't be surprised that they concentrated on the regional competition event itself, and de-emphasized some of the more important elements of FIRST. Overall, I think that the show portrayed FIRST in a good light, and did a lot to promote FIRST. All the comments I have heard so far from non-FIRSTers (i.e. all my neighbors that I made watch the show so they would finally understand what we were doing all those times in my garage at 1:00 in the morning in the middle of February), have been very positive.

-dave

[Justin]

Okay,

I don't know if folks have ever seen the ESPN footage...and maybe some years are better than others but....I have the 1996 footage...and it is _horrible_. The ESPN people are complete morons...and you get the impression they are just covering it because they were assigned to, they don't really care at all about FIRST. There's no excitement to thier voices, nothing. It is also so cut up that it really slows down a match. If they had just showed a few complete 2 minutes matches it would have demonstrated the real excitement of FIRST. I've always thought that the 1996 game was one of the most exciting ever....and I watched the ESPN coverage of 96 I wondered what I was watching...because it wasn't the Hexagon Havoc I saw that's for sure. I haven't seen A+E yet...but i think we should all be glad ESPN isn't butchering FIRST anymore.

-Justin

[GregT]

Cable went out where i am and i missed it (i sware the cable company is out to get me)

Oh well, hopefully they will show it again, so i can put more then static on this tape.

I saw the first 5 mins and the last 2 or so and from what i saw they did a good job, but 7 mins isn't enough to base that on.

[mike o'leary]

ive heard a lot about the espn coverage, and mostly its been bad. but still, im curious cuz i never saw it. do you happen to know if its available anywhere. did anyone digitalize it by any chance?

[patrickrd]

I was shown the ESPN footage in high school (i'm not sure whether it footage from the '96 or '97 season), and that's what got me to sign up for a FIRST team. Hey, it's a lot better than nothing. We showed the ESPN footage in classes this past fall to get students to join our team. I think the A&E footage will be good to show to classes as well.

Patrick

[Andrew Rudolph]

I saw all but the first 4 mins. of the video and i have to say i loved it. All of the other videos made arent nearly as well done. What i really liked was the fact that they showed how hard the game really is, and how tough its is to win. I didnt like the fact that they didnt show much about the spirit of first, but thats not what the general public cares about and they make the show for the general public. I think the best video is the one first made and was shown numerous times on TV last year. They showed it during lunch at kickoffs, then later on, on Discovery Science. They also had it available for teams to get for recuitng money people and other teams. But as far as videos done by TV this was one of the best.


Andrew

[Justin]

Hello Everyone,

I watched the A+E Special today, after having taped it yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised. After my rant about ESPN. I think that A+E did a pretty fair job covering the event. I think that we all need to keep in mind that FIRST is a massive organization, program, with a lot of missions, goals, etc. A FIRST competition is 3 days worth of robots playing complex games, executing complex strategies. Sorry if I offend any athleetes out there but in comparison a sporting event might be simple to cover. That being taken into account I think that A+E did a good job because the focused not on just the competition or just the building but really provided a good look at how you go from, that time that every FIRST team (rookie or vet) knows, crunch time to fielding a robot. They did a reasonably okay job with the matches. I still think that they were to cut up and really created a slower feeling to them...maybe that is just because a FIRST comp is always more exciting when you are there watching a couple hundered ppl scream @ the top of thier lungs in support of robots. All in all tho...my hats of to A+E for a very nice portral of FIRST. Anyone who could make this years game look even semi-exciting/fast paced on TV....deserves a round of aplause. (come on I had to get @ least one chepshot on the came in )

-Justin

[Elgin Clock]

Does anybody else find it a little odd that A&E didn't even have a few words with Dean or any other FIRST rep???
Also why was nothing mentioned about the Nationals?? It seemed like the Va. finals was the last step in the Competition.

Other than that I found so much of that show true to life. Like having people who were near exhastion or sick near the last days, or finishing the Bot hours before shipping or still fixing it at the comps. Or what about the many Bad Alliances or Bad luck; ie. a black ball getting stuck under the bridge and nothing we could do about it!!!!


Overall it was a good presentation about FIRST and even if it wasn't the best coverage as some of you seem to think, Some coverage is better than none at all!!

[GregT]

Originally posted by Elgin Clock
Does anybody else find it a little odd that A&E didn't even have a few words with Dean or any other FIRST rep???
Also why was nothing mentioned about the Nationals?? It seemed like the Va. finals was the last step in the Competition.

Other than that I found so much of that show true to life. Like having people who were near exhastion or sick near the last days, or finishing the Bot hours before shipping or still fixing it at the comps. Or what about the many Bad Alliances or Bad luck; ie. a black ball getting stuck under the bridge and nothing we could do about it!!!!


Overall it was a good presentation about FIRST and even if it wasn't the best coverage as some of you seem to think, Some coverage is better than none at all!!

I agree about that. Fixing the robot in the pits always seems to be a big part of the competition.

Black ball stuck under the bridge is bad luck? I think one of an alliance member's adult advisors hitting the big red stop button and losing all the points for the match is bad luck

[Justin Stiltner]

To answer a few questions,

They did have footage of some bad aliances and such.. but they dident put it in...

and disney wouldent let them come to nationals,

the reason for no footage of dean or woody is that they were only at the va. regional and dean and woody werent there.

Justin Stiltner
Team #388
Epsilon
Grundy Va,

[A. Leese]

Now for me to add my own comments on ESPN coverage..

I didn't start out in FIRST when I was in ninth grade like most people. I started in FIRST in 7th grade. I didn't even want to do it. My dad was the teacher representative from MCHS and dragged me to the meetings. One day when I was in sixth grade he brought home a video of a bunch of kids acting like idiots all over EPCOT and driving little robots all over the place to earn score. He also showed me what I believe was a team's Chairman's Award submission. Then I got interested. Soon my dad had copies of all sorts of competitions and we watched the nats of 97 on ESPN that April. I fell in love with FIRST. I didn't care that the coverage was bad or that they didn't show all of the mathes. To my seventh grade mind, it was the most awesome competition I had ever seen before. ESPN doesn't air the competitions for the sole purpose of those of us who missed competitions to watch them, but also to get kids (of all ages..eg engineers..oops! did I say that out loud?) interested in it. You could have the worst video coverage you could imagine and it would still inspire someone to want to get involved.

~Angela who never thought she would say that much, but oh well..she's got half an hour of class left

[Elgin Clock]

DEAD THREAD REVIVIAL!!!!
YAYYYYY!!!!!

Anywho...

I just picked up this video tape on Ebay.

I didn't remember it being from soooo long ago. 2001 seems so far away!
(My first year in FIRST was back in 2001)

If anyone ever gets a chance to pick up a copy of this, it's still one of the coolest specials a TV network ever did for FIRST.

[Mark McLeod]

I have a copy of that special too. I thought it was a pretty good special too. How long did you look for this old thread?