I made one of my rare sojourns into the living room this evening to eat my dinner to discover Dr Zoop was watching the football, which always strikes me as odd in a good way. I like it when people confound my preconceptions about them and seeing this gentle, thoughtful hippy get enthused about football does just that.
I don’t mind football as a spectator sport, in moderation, say once every couple of years when there’s some kind of international competition going on and you get to see some quite exciting acrobatics on the pitch, but the over-inflated hyperbole surrounding the game drives me batty, especially as having an opinion about it required you to be interminably stupid.
But, like I said, I don’t mind watching it so I settled down in the sofa for the rest of what turned out to be a very dull match. Finally a goal was scored and I was struck my the way the broadcaster put together the replay. Within seconds they had four camera angles edited into rapid sequence with slow-mo for the dramatic bits. It was the sort of thing you’d expect to take a good couple of hours in a professional studio but it was there on screen in moments.
I wonder how they do it? If it’s one guy then it’s an incredible show of skill, and if it’s a large team then it’s an incredible piece of management. Not to mention that they were sitting around twiddling their thumbs for 80 minutes and then had a few seconds notice before diving into action.
I’d really like to know the behind the scenes on this.
Nah, it just looks like that. Like if you look at your family tree as a long progress which will result in the triumph that is you. It’s all done via computer control, though I’m not absolutely sure of the mechanism. I know at least 20 cameras cover football matches of the size of Chelsea v Barcelona (I’m presuming this was the one in question). A few seconds is nothing.
As a football supporter you just get used to seeing four instant replays of everything, but of course you’re right… it is pretty amazing the way they get them on so quickly- and usually, flawlessly edited. I’ve got no idea on the mechanics either, but it must take some practice because you notice when a channel less expert in the genre is broadcasting the game the quality of the replays lets them down badly (yes I am talking about Channel 5 here).
And I don’t suppose you often watch highlights shows such as Match of the Day, Pete- but for me the technical expertise there is even more impressive… the programme makers manage to take a ninety minute game of football and edit it down to maybe fifteen- but in such a seamless way that the viewer feels they have watched the whole thing. There are some time-worn tricks involved for sure (eg the goalie kicks a long ball upfield, you see the players challenging for what looks to be the same ball arriving at its destination- in fact ten minutes may have elapsed…) but I think what is mostly being put to use here is a highly developed sensibility for the rhythyms of the game.
And I haven’t even started to talk about those video montages of the game’s highlights set to music that are aired immediately after the final whistle of Skysports Games- but I’d better stop now before the length of this comment exhausts your year’s worth of patience for talking about football in any guise at all. You know you’re going to have to save at least 10 minutes up for the World Cup, don’t you?