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Highlights from the NZIHL Grand Final 2010 between the Botany Swarm and West Auckland Admirals
On the disallowed goal, George Pilgrim reckons its for an offside, but I didn’t see any other swarm players in the offensive zone, and it looks like the linesman is calling too many men??
(Refs) Incidentally if this is the case isn’t that a dubious call, since the play was at the other end of the rink, so the swarm would hardly be affecting the play?
Also when wannamaker goes down there is no mention of the penalty at all, perhaps this is just due to the highlight cutting.
Getting the penalties right is just a matter of finding the ref, linesman on camera, or looking if you are commentating, or communication with the scorebox, as they are recording them.
Camera work was a lot better, you figured out, like most productions do eventually, its better to rely on your wide angle camera for pretty much the entire play and use the other cameras sparingly, in that sense it is more like covering soccer than rugby.
It really isn’t possible to follow the refs when the puck is more important.
We have 3 manned cameras, the NHL has a minimum of 8 and as many as 30 at any one game.
I wasn’t suggesting you have a camera follow the ref exclusively.
But when he blows his whistle, he is generally about to say something important.
Not always correct, but generally important.
Also he tends to go over in front of the score bench to repeat the signal, so its not to tricky to find him.
But to be fair I have never run cameras, so I don’t know how difficult it is. But I would imagine as soon as whistle blows, one of the three manned cameras could find the ref.
Also to be fair a too many men call is made by the linesman who calls it where he stands so wee bit harder to find.That withstanding if you had communication with the scorebox, then at least the commentator could get the call right, even if he guesses to start and then corrects himself if there is a delay. I think the first role of the commentator is to relay accurately what is going on in the game to the audience.
P.S. I don’t want this to read as trying to tear you down, more things I would have tried to do, and problems I have encountered before. To help for next time.
the key is to follow the play. During play, it focusses primarily on the puck for obvious reasons. Once the whistle blows, the focal point is either the ref or the subject of the whistle call (a fight etc). Often the ref will be in the frame of play when the penalty call is made (except for delayed penalties which gives camera ample time to find ref with an arm up in any case). Simply watch an NHL game and see how many cameras they use while the play is still going.
Everyone one here wants to have a better product and that’s the context of the comments I think. Not a mud slinging exercise. For the uneducated, hockey is a difficult sport to watch on tv (hence the dreaded Fox puck). If the camera work makes it even more difficult to watch, then we lose any new viewers. I personally found it very difficult to watch and would like to see some of the changes mentioned implemented. I understand your comments about the location being difficult to get proper angles but not seeing a shot or the subsequent save just can’t happen. Those things need to be sorted well and truly in advance.
I completely understand where the advice is coming from, it’s appreciated, but most of it we’re already aware of, or were aware of before we even shot the final.
Please understand that the NZIHL is not the NHL. The NHL has had a 16 camera mandatory minimum since 2005/06. We have 3. We cannot hope to recreate what they can achieve.
What seems simple to the viewer is in fact quite difficult in practice.
Every element you add costs thousands of dollars, a proper EVS replay system costs hundreds of thousands.
I have no doubt the coverage will improve with time if we can garner sponsorship, but much of that will come down to the skill of the operators as opposed to lack of planning.
The best thing any of us can do is circulate the links and sing the praises of hockey, because our coverage is much better than most other minor league footage we could find and we need a positive vibe going forward to get the sponsorship to move hockey forward in this country.
All feedback is in our production report.
Can I ask the obvious? If you knew of the problems, why weren’t they addressed? The physical structure of Botany is not going to change. If the the production team can’t find a solution for not seeing the corner of the ice or not being able to fit the shooter and goalie simultaneously into the same frame, even your most die-hard fan won’t watch.
Did you watch the entire game?
They were addressed. Many more than you can imagine. Feedback has been excellent from ice hockey and non-ice hockey fans alike.
We placed a camera in the corner of the rink to cover the blindspot.
It wasn’t possible to be back any further for the wide shot, perhaps you could write to Paradise Rinks about that?
Tracking a puck traveling at over 100kmph with each pass while maintaining framing, focus, exposure and colour balance in mixed lighting is quite a task.
The two centre ice cameras cover the same shot, a tight and a wide, there is only one cutaway camera.
There aren’t going to be any more cameras added unless the budget goes over half a million dollars. So please try to be realistic.
This is a question, not a criticism:
Why does the equipment costs hundreds of thousands of dollars? I can understand cameras being expensive, but I assumed the equipment to flip between cameras, relay signals etc. would be quite cheap. A simple switch which flicked between cameras and a laptop with live video editing software and an audio feed from the commentators going into it is all I thought you’d need (apart from the cameras and cables to get the feeds back to the computer).
I’d looked into this in the past for setting up live footage of our in-house games in Dunedin, and the only complication I had was the lack of sufficient video cameras and enough cable to get a video feed back to the processing computer.
If it’s simply a drop in quality due to some issue I don’t know of, would my method still be acceptable for a basic online feed of the game if we were to set something like that up in the future?
I would ideally like to have static web-cam style cameras dotted around the rink and feed the data back to the computer via WiFi, but last I checked that sort of thing was out of our budget, but it may not be now or in the near future perhaps. If semi-crap cameras were available for $100 a pop with built in WiFi functionality, we could have 4-5 of them setup permanently and all you would need to do to setup a live feed is to turn a computer on, beginning streaming to the web and flip between cameras when required and BOOM, you have live coverage of the games online
” title=”Smiley” /> If there was someone around who felt like commenting then you could have that laid in on top too, although I suspect that might be a bit painful to listen to unless there was someone good at doing it on hand at the time so I’d guess most games would be commentator-less."SlapshotProds":car7elsd wrote:Did you watch the entire game?They were addressed. Many more than you can imagine. Feedback has been excellent from ice hockey and non-ice hockey fans alike.
We placed a camera in the corner of the rink to cover the blindspot.
It wasn’t possible to be back any further for the wide shot, perhaps you could write to Paradise Rinks about that?
Tracking a puck traveling at over 100kmph with each pass while maintaining framing, focus, exposure and colour balance in mixed lighting is quite a task.
The two centre ice cameras cover the same shot, a tight and a wide, there is only one cutaway camera.
There aren’t going to be any more cameras added unless the budget goes over half a million dollars. So please try to be realistic.
[/quote:car7elsd]so how is getting you sponsorship going to make filming more effective? You still have restrictions like space regardless of camera’s. Botany is spacious compared to what you would get in Queenstown or Christchurch. Only Dunedin is easier with respect to space.
More cameras? Who asked for more camera’s. Watch a CBC broadcast or any network for that matter. 95% of the play by play is covered by one camera on a wide shot. They use other angles to supplement that view in certain circumstances but sparingly while play is on. Constant cutting away is ineffective and distracting.
Following the puck does take skill and practice. 100% in agreement. During the NZ winter games, the crew filmed each teams trainings beforehand in order to practice.
100km/h pass is pretty fast. I would have wagered nobody in NZ is capable of that.
"SlapshotProds":1iysx1hh wrote:Did you watch the entire game?They were addressed. Many more than you can imagine.
[/quote:1iysx1hh]I think that is an issue though, if you are addressing the problems during the game, many people are going to turn off in the 1st period, when it is developing.
And by the time you get to the third period, which was good coverage, you have less than half the audience that started.So in terms of looking for sponsors, the Third period footage is your selling point.
Also though to back you up, on the wide angle issue, I sympathise with your plight. Vpatrol you have to realise to get good wide angle you have to get a reasonable distance back. And most rinks in NZ don’t offer this space. So you have to come up with solutions like corner camera.
Just a query, did you think about elevating this man in the corner? It is quite an attractive shot, looking down on the corner, rather than eye level?
Even in Dunedin it is a balancing act, as if you get too far back, you get underneath the lights on the curling rink, which are hot and ruin the shot, but with a bit of adjustment we found a happy medium.
"Azzy77":2vp8jfcz wrote:"SlapshotProds":2vp8jfcz wrote:Did you watch the entire game?They were addressed. Many more than you can imagine.
[/quote:2vp8jfcz]Also though to back you up, on the wide angle issue, I sympathise with your plight. Vpatrol you have to realise to get good wide angle you have to get a reasonable distance back. And most rinks in NZ don’t offer this space. So you have to come up with solutions like corner camera.
[/quote:2vp8jfcz]
Yes I realise thank you. I also realise we don’t have 15000 seat stadiums with panaramic views. If you can’t come up with an easily viewable solution for NZ rinks, then this isn’t a commercially viable exercise and it won’t enjoy widespread appeal.
OK.
I Just watched the highlights package. And taking into account limitations. I would be very happy with the product that is produced.
I have spent some limited time behind the camera recording senior rugby for the Otago Rugby football union and even with a reduced speed to hockey it was very difficult to keep the action in frame while allowing a wide enough shot to give perspective/position of the play.
It is somthing i guess will get better with time for those behind the camera. Question. was it hockey players behind cameras or camera operators that specialize in sport capture.
I for one would be more than happy to see this level of Hockey broadcast so that i can get to see out of town games and get a good feel for the other teams playing in the NZIHL.
Going back a few yrs I remember seeing national softball broadcast. Now that was covered by only a handfull of cameras. again a minor sport by nz standards and yet they have been world champs. The hockey highlights quality compares evenly to me on the softball converage.
I feel the NZHIL product has improved, we all now need to work to get bums on seats. Once that is accomplished we will have stronger numbers to show sponsors/coporates/backers.
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