I read this article the other day (couldn’t find a suitable thread for it):
tl:dr - “They should show more camera footage from behind the goals.”
Got me thinking: It was hard for us to know whether Zaka’s 2 posessions a couple of weeks back were part of a “role” or not, since he wasn’t on camera most of the time.
My wife always says she can understand what’s happening so much better at the ground than on the TV.
It is a hard game to telecast, so what does it take to make it better? Do they need to utilise fancy ditigal feature like: “choose your own camera angle”?
(This thread is NOT about: “The commentators are talking drivel, etc.” Its about the actual camera footage - what visuals tell the story best?)
I think an overhead shot.
From the centre of the field to the goals every time a player marks and stops.
It’ll help show how players move to create space and mismatches.
Needs wider shots in general. They zoom too far in, you can’t even see the bloke receiving a handpass because they’ve gone all in on the bloke with the footy.
I like Blummers idea. When I go to the footy I generally sit at the front of the 3rd level near the goals. It’s good to see the play unfolding as it comes down the ground or even how the defence puts it together going back.
Ideally, there’s a time for the wide angle, and there’s a time where you want to see what the player can see.
For example in F1, most of the you see the cars coming past you, but occasionally you get the in-car shot gives a feel for how difficult it is for the driver.
Pfft, yep Ive been saying this for about 20 years to people I reckon.
The game flows North-South (goal to goal) NOT east west. It is filmed from the wrong angle. Simple. When you play the game, this is how it flows and how you see it/react to it.
Historically, the TV budget/poor quality (north-south longer shots etc) have stopped this - you need constant positioning to effectively be behind the player with the ball look towards his angle to goal. But with 4K coverage, and this fox flying thing it can be done.
Think of Tennis - it is played north-south. Games which are usually in one screen shot, ie NFL, Rugby, Soccer have gone down the East-West Route but they too flow the other way in reality.
Take soccer - the best spot for a penalty view is behind the taker. And that angle is often available but on shown rarely, often the standard angle is shown and it is horrid. No idea why they don’t change it.
Next thing - fix the commentary. Channel 7 is actually embarrassing to listen to.
The jump cuts to close-ups of players about to kick the ball inside forward 50 is mildly infuriating.
But the commentary, that doesn’t even attempt to describe modern football styles during play or at breaks is ridiculous. The stats they put up are useless
And it’s clear the commentators have been given strict guidelines as to how they are to call the game by the broadcasters and it’s resulted in this cringey, canned, rehearsed videogame-like commentary.
Then there’s the lack of merit based hiring practices where nepotism and the desire to have an impressive lower third is preferred over actually having some on-screen talent who can actually string a few sentences together and contribute some insight.
Don’t even get me started on the biases of these tossers; how is it that Dermott ■■■■■■■ Brereton is one of the most fair commentators to Essendon in the media?! at least he is open with how much he hates us
You could count the number of commentators that actually deserve their job on one hand, and most of them are pushed to the nothing games. How does Howie get a primetime slot before Bennett or Papalia?
It’s beyond time that the AFL/C7 allows clubs to have their own commentary teams so that fans can listen to people commentate who actually know who what and who they are talking about
The coaches get access to great footage for reviewing games. After any really good play they could replay the whole passage from the overhead coaches footage. It would be awesome! Skip to around 1:15 on this vid for an example of what i mean.
(Yes we all agree that it would be better to have commentary that actually describes what is happening in the game… but lets complain about that in the commentary thread…)
But here’s the question: how do you do north/south coverage without getting confused about whose goals we are heading towards (especially after there’s a turnover)?
Yeah, too difficult for mine. They have that as an option in a lot of sports video games, and it’s a real PITA.
What I think would work is the normal, wide shot for most of the game, flicking to N/S when there’s a mark, free kick, kickout etc.
Closeups or ground level shots are completely pointless. Save them for replays.
Virtually all team sports are broadcast from a side on view; Soccer, hockey, all footballs, netball, basketball, racing sports, flyball. Although, I’ve always thought NFL should be broadcast from the QB’s perspective
The only sports I can think of are racket sports that are looking “down field”.
Agree with most of the article, would love to be see more of the ground. I don’t get to many games, but whenever I do, it’s very frustrating going back to the TV coverage where you can’t really see what’s going on for the most part.
They need more ‘sounds of the game’ from Heath Shaw types, where all we hear is hugging and puffing, a few comments a few claps, then back to the studio to so they can tell us how rare and insightful it is.
Roomba cam: can’t do it.
Shoulder cam: can’t do it.
Spider cam: can’t do it.
You’re talking about (excuse the hi-tech talk) some sort of extreme close up camera that shoots from 100 metres behind, gives a perspective of that point, and gives a very good view of 50 metres in front of that.
Good luck.
Perhaps we should be talking about getting an assistant coach from the last ten years in the commentary box.
At the moment we have Dermie explaining the intricacies of the game.
Think about that.
I’d love to see a north south broadcast, although given every other major sport is east west, I suspect it doesn’t work. There definitely needs to be a lot more of it integrated into the broadcast though.
I’ll take a guess that part of the issue is the people doing the live broadcasting are sitting in a room of 20 screens of limited size. What makes sense to look at on something the size of a pc screen doesn’t make sense on a typical tv.
Given all the players have GPS trackers, why can’t we at least have live dots on a map style tracking? Stick it in the corner of the screen.
I reckon there is a market for team specific commentators. Imagine being able to switch off the Ch7 commentators and listen to someone with intricate knoweldge of the team and, to some degree, the game plan. Indeed, we could listen to commentators who barrack the same way as us!
At least they would know the players name. It’s rubbish that every single game there is a wrong player name.
Maybe.
But David King is not a commentator, played his last game in 2004, and was an assistant coach in 2005.
The game has moved on a bit since then.
These are his most recent claims to fame.
On 19 February 2015, Australian media reported that King was being investigated by police about successful bets he made predicting the winner of the 2014 AFL Rising Star award. [3]
In January of 2019 King was fined for fleeing the scene of a car crash and drink driving in Melbourne in October 2018. King was driving his grey Nissan X-Trail at 12.10am on October 3 when he crashed into a stationary taxi at Southbank. Police later arrested King nearby at Crown casino, after which he blew a blood alcohol reading of 0.10 – twice the legal limit.