Techniques for filming a football match

Time, Location and Travel:

A request came in to SBFVM to film a charity football match taking place in xxxxx for the particapants. My immediate comment is that xxxxx is a long way! and its a working day too.

Financial:

I would also guess that DVD sales would be no more than 30 maximum and they would have to be £10 each. That would mean maximum income for the charity of £300 less petrol expenses tapes and DVD production.

Live Mix:

Looking at it as a live event and an on site mix, there is no way we can do a live mix as the cable lengths will be too long. The club is not the BBC!
We don't have digital transmitters to link the cameras either as they are very expensive as they generate COFDM (the same robust but complex transmission system as freeview) but at a broadcast quality high data rate with only a 1 frame processing delay. This means you can take them into buildings or under metalwork and you see no disturbance in the end result, that's why they are expensive. They are used on Formula 1 now.

We could do it with 2.4GHz link transmitters (the ones you would use to send Sky TV to another room, but they are very low power and might suffer WIFI interference from computer networks (although they have 4 channels to try to avoid that). They are however £90.00 a set (Receiver and Transmitter). As they are an FM video signal they do suffer from non direct path disturbance between the two ends, like FM radio in the carTo use those each camera set up would need a mains supply.

So lets say that a live mix is out, and look at it from a videoing standpoint.

Just videoing it

The view from the bottom row of seating or standing around the edge is fairly useless for video cameras, they need to be higher up otherwise its difficult to follow the play tactics. Sometimes its useful having a camera on the line or by the goals. At minimum it

needs two high up cameras with good lenses (times12-15) and free flowing camera mounts (not jerky). One could be on close ups the other on medium shots.

Operators need to be practiced in following the action, and cameras must be placed not to 'cross the line' so the action always goes in the same direction. Someone needs to be allocated to sound recording (could be a camera locked off with a boom c). So I would suggest its tapes all round. 4 cameras and one for sound.

So the question would be are there two high up vantage points available? There appears to be only two possibilities the roof of the covered stands or from the open air raked stand on one side of the pitch. I suggest the raked stand looks to be a decent view. It then needs all the cameras to film in the same format, and as most people have now got flat panel TV's I would suggest it's filmed in widescreen.

Post production

The match will of course last 90 minutes so that's 4 cameras 81/2 tapes, and a multicam edit. My software does up to 8 cameras and you just click on the image you like on the split screen and it does the edit for you.

Review - what it would take to do it

Its no light undertaking. It would involve 5 people and two cars plus at least 2 days editing. A total of 12 person days or 96 person hours input. It ispan class="style1">s likely that/span> each tape would be watched just once. This would mean that for every 1 hour of a person's entertainment our members would have put in 2 hours of hard work. Hardly a good expenditure of time!

General Comment:

None of the above jobs are easy to do and require a lot of effort for very small return, as the groups of people making these requests often have little spare cash. Importantly such videoing is frequently organised very much as an afterthought with little appreciation of the work involved.

Each project has to have a producer to ensure its done properly, not forgetting the risk assessment for each job.
 
 
 
 
 

by Mike Sanders