Our weekend series with the Washington Nationals was a typical series for a baseball TV production team. The wonderful aspect of covering sports for television is that no two games are the same. Each and every day I go to “work” the game is different. I learn something new every day I do a baseball game. Each day of “work” is a different learning experience.
Because televising baseball is the most challenging of any sport, it is exciting to go to the ballpark to televise a game.
The three Nationals/Cardinals games this weekend were a perfect example of the nature of television baseball.
Game one featured something that I have rarely seen in my 27 years in the business. Our play by play announcer predicted that the batter would or should have success against the opposing pitcher. No sooner were the words out of his mouth and the hitter smacked a home run. I have been involved in telecasts where an announcer’s “prediction” comes true and it is always a great moment in the telecast when that occurs. However, in this instance, this rare moment was highlighted even more when our Producer used the sound-on-tape of this prediction as a roll-out to break. It was only the first inning of our telecast and it proved to be the best, most memorable moment of the show. Not even the exciting ninth inning of this tightly fought baseball game came close to the high value the first inning roll-out gave to our show.
Game two was also a well pitched game. There was a good flow to our telecast and some revealing shots from our home camera crew provided our show with a different look than the shots from game one. I wanted to experiment with the shots that were used in this telecast, so I instructed the camera operators to “use their lens” to provide a much tighter look to the show. While there were some “interesting” replays from the shots, I found that the use of tight shots throughout the telecast really took away from this type of shot late in the game. Because I was shooting tighter throughout the telecast, when a suspenseful moment came late in the game, the shot was not nearly as effective as I had hoped.
The final game of the series with the Nationals was the best pitched game of the series. This type of game allows the telecast the luxury of a nice flow where things seem to fall in place. The whole TV production crew is in sync. The camera shots are “there”, replays are cued with precision, audio is capturing the “sounds of the ballpark” at appropriate times, and the graphics are accentuating the moment.
This telecast is the type of show that all TV sports production teams enjoy and look forward to.
This series featured three different games and three different telecasts. Each game was different and each telecast was a learning experience.
Tomorrow is our first dual of the season.
What will I learn tomorrow?
Because televising baseball is the most challenging of any sport, it is exciting to go to the ballpark to televise a game.
The three Nationals/Cardinals games this weekend were a perfect example of the nature of television baseball.
Game one featured something that I have rarely seen in my 27 years in the business. Our play by play announcer predicted that the batter would or should have success against the opposing pitcher. No sooner were the words out of his mouth and the hitter smacked a home run. I have been involved in telecasts where an announcer’s “prediction” comes true and it is always a great moment in the telecast when that occurs. However, in this instance, this rare moment was highlighted even more when our Producer used the sound-on-tape of this prediction as a roll-out to break. It was only the first inning of our telecast and it proved to be the best, most memorable moment of the show. Not even the exciting ninth inning of this tightly fought baseball game came close to the high value the first inning roll-out gave to our show.
Game two was also a well pitched game. There was a good flow to our telecast and some revealing shots from our home camera crew provided our show with a different look than the shots from game one. I wanted to experiment with the shots that were used in this telecast, so I instructed the camera operators to “use their lens” to provide a much tighter look to the show. While there were some “interesting” replays from the shots, I found that the use of tight shots throughout the telecast really took away from this type of shot late in the game. Because I was shooting tighter throughout the telecast, when a suspenseful moment came late in the game, the shot was not nearly as effective as I had hoped.
The final game of the series with the Nationals was the best pitched game of the series. This type of game allows the telecast the luxury of a nice flow where things seem to fall in place. The whole TV production crew is in sync. The camera shots are “there”, replays are cued with precision, audio is capturing the “sounds of the ballpark” at appropriate times, and the graphics are accentuating the moment.
This telecast is the type of show that all TV sports production teams enjoy and look forward to.
This series featured three different games and three different telecasts. Each game was different and each telecast was a learning experience.
Tomorrow is our first dual of the season.
What will I learn tomorrow?
posted by Cutting The Game at 7:43 PM
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