An interesting experiment

My day job is in television, and I do a bit of freelance work running camera for ESPN and Fox Sports. I often get funny looks when I respond to the question "How was the game?" with "I don't know; I didn't really see it." I now have a way for people to understand how uninteresting the view sometimes is.

TBS airs a game in prime time each Saturday night. On Dish Network, 5 cameras are fed live to the satellite with no editing, or graphics to get in the way: all you have is that camera and whatever the audio mix the main game is receiving. You can hear what is going on, but you only see whatever that camera is shooting. Trust me, it's much less interesting than you think. IN the case of TBS, Saturday's game between Texas and Okie State featured 5 camera feeds: two at field level, one on the goal post, one higher from a corner, and the end zone shot.

If you bounce around the feeds, you discover one constant: one or both coaches is on one camera or another almost every single moment of the game. The director only takes about one sixth of the potential coach shots he could take. You only have to watch a close-up of a receiver blocking a defensive back on a running play two or three times before the charm of "watching the camera you want" wears off. I would like to line up six monitors, put the "Game" in one and these other 5 options in the others and use it as a class for the casual fan. To have the headset traffic from the truck going out would be even better.

That would be true entertainment.

Peterclone