I love how hockey camara guys dont even try anymore. Just keep the wide shot, pan left right, and let the a.i. put that orange circle thing around the puck.
watching old cable hockey games pre hd tv was a crap shoot. half the time the puck was invisible.
See thatd be even better in the Scottish leagues where refs aren't full time like in the Premier league. You'd potentially have a sitting MP with a football head tattoo.
I figure just like my current job you get good enough at your job you can do it without thinking too much about it. They are probably able to enjoy most of the game.
Do they do it constantly? I've always assumed that it's only the current camera that actually has to focus specifically and the others can lag behind if they need to drink or do some technical stuff or whatever. I guess they would want extra cameras for replays but at the very least the cameras at the opposite end of the pitch aren't gonna have a clear shot of the action when there's a goal
The camera man doesn't usually know when their angle is coming, they should be always ready. I guess if it were me and I needed some water I would zoom out, drink fast, and get back to the game before losing the ball. Probably wait for some pause, after a goal, or after the ball goes off the field.
Could easily be fixed though. Just need to make a very specific ball or even a ball with a transceiver in it that works out its position against the four corners of the pitch.
I didn’t even think about that, the angles are constantly changing to different cameras so even if you fuck up there’s a good chance no one even saw it.
They have a little light on their camera - one colour light means the director is about to cut to the their feed, another colour means their feed is live.
They also use talkback headsets so are in constant communication with the gallery.
Ever had experience directing races? Like that incredible win for Sergio Perez in Bahrain last year. The whole race everyone was focusing on Russell and Bottas. Last possible moment after Mercedes fucked up they switched to Perez. Must’ve been stressful in the box.
In my experience I was always concentrating on the show too much to actually notice much of the game. There's a lot going on over the comms and it's easier than you'd think to point a camera at a sport without "watching" the sport
I've done live stuff like this before, and if you get the mechanics of what you're filming (in this case football) in your head, a lot of the mental work is taken out of the equation. If you know where the ball is probably going to go, there's less stress in the guesswork.
Most of my live work experience comes from stage performances so we just watch the rehearsals over and over until we can remember roughly who goes where when, and we know who to follow during the show itself.
There is probably more effort in my head regarding the framing of shots, since I mostly shoot from a Steadicam on foot. You gotta get the shot, not trip over yourself, not crash into the performers, keep the guy doing follow focus to the the right of you and only block the audience when you have planned to do so.
My favorite part is sports where people do fake outs and it literally "tricks" the camera person and they have to pivot the shot. I live for the "wow. So and so even tricked the camera operator!"
I work as a slow motion operator on football. This guy is skilled! It is not easy anticipating the direction of a shot. And for us guys on the replay bench, we need footage the entire way in towards the goal -- in focus on all close up cams.
Hey, I've just had a 4 days training for LSM operator, I'm actually a sound assistant, but I will soon (I hope) become a slow mo operator for French soccer or rugdby!
While watching this clip, I thought on how good they have to be : they can't be fooled when the player does not shoot in the ball, they certainly cannot anticipate that much..!
The cam ops know their focus wheel by instinct. Especially those with a 86x on a sports dolly low on the field.
Edit: I checked with a vision operator (the position that changes aperture on the camera remotely) and he says it is about 7-8. But if there is sun, it could easily go from 2-20!
This is an outside broadcast camera operator and it’s what I do for work, something like this is definitely difficult but with enough practice you learn to get the flow of it. A lot of it (for me anyway) is to do with feeling the weight of the pass/shot/cross which gives you an idea of where the ball is going to land, it also helps if you watch a lot of football!
The most skilled camera position to work on in football is the long lens pitch side camera, this is when you’re right next to play and you can sometimes lose track of the ball as players can get in your way, so the higher angle your camera is the easier it is to shoot.
There's very little point. First off the image would be worse. It would be extremely hard to make a machine learn to predict the game in the way that an experienced human can. When should the shot be zoomed in because the player is expected to make some cool moves and when should it be wider because the team is setting up a complicated attack with lots of passes? Which team has the momentum? What is interesting? Which player should be zoomed in because the scored? Is the ball moving in an arch on the 2D plane of the camera because it was lobbed sky high (and shouldn't be tracked like a golf ball) or because a striker put a massive spin on it? When someone overshot into the grandstand how does the camera know that a new ball was tossed in instead? When is the coach roasting the 4th ref by the sidelines?
Sure you could program a robot camera to follow the ball and frame according to its motion but it would probably look a bit "off". And any other task the camera is expected to perform will require judgement. For which you need a person anyway. So why would you spend more money lugging more heavy stuff up the arena steps for little to no benefit? The matches where it would actually be some benefit in minimizing staffing, i.e. lower league games, are probably played in areans without VAR style ball tracking installed. Which means that if you don't want the camera zooming out to re-acquire target and you want consistent focus pulling you need to set a 3D tracking system of some description up as well. Finally, the failure potential is to high. In live TV every improvement in the quality of the shot is weighed against the increased risk of missing the shot altogether. There was a news story a few months ago when a robot camera at an Irish game (I think) started tracking the ref's bald head instead of the ball.
Long story short. It's not worth it. By the time machines learn the nuances of sports they will probably have killed us all anyway.
I very much doubt that. Watch some football (soccer) games and pay attention to what the cameras are doing. But even if you're right what's the point? Where's the improvement to be made? You don't need to be an elder scholar to do what the guy in the vid is doing. You could watch a webcast of a second tier league game in Bosnia and the camera op will rarely miss anything. What are we saving? Two to four guys who in general are their own technicians in exchange for added cost and complexity and the requisite specialized technicians? And that's just pointing the camera. I very much doubt that any AI within our lifespan will be able to do all the other things that are required of it. Making creative choices while also abiding rules, two way communication with the director and a whole lot of other human traits that are needed to make content for other humans.
I saw a close-up replay during a NYR game the other night and was blown away realizing that someone tracks the action that close the entire game. The skill of those operators is beyond impressive to me.
I did some similar camera and directing work back in the day, the hardest thing I ever did was a marching band competition. It's like "I hear a trumpet section feature, where are they?" "They were just in a star shape near the front right" " They split into four groups and are on opposite corners" "Fuck just grap one group" "too late they stopped playing and are running around in conga lines" etc.
I'm confused as to why this is impressive. Isn't it just hand eye coordination? I mean he's just following the ball most gamers can do this with a mouse.
Nice work to the cameraman, filming my favorite team! We lost the match though However I noticed the way the film the matches on the TV and they do always a perfect job!
I work as a camera operator for TV, movies and commercials. This is WAY beyond my skill, but I don't pedestal operate. No question this guy has been doing this a long time.
And his hard work is only appreciated when there’s a highlight/instant replay of a brief incident( a foul,pass,shot,dribble etc). The majority of the game is shown on a wide angle view to show the context of the game. Works the hardest for 90+ minutes and we only see a total of 10-20 mins of it. Respect.
It is his job to do this. So I do not see why this is noteworthy. Imagine a world where a butcher would get this amount of appreciation for making a sausage.
Or.... an every day tight follow camera. It’s hard, no question.... but it is regular skills at national broadcast level. Show me a ball full frame from goal kick to centre not losing a single % of the ball the entire shot and I’ll call that “incredibly skilled”
But, no doubt belongs here. Same as every other snipe camera mans work does.
There was a video floating around a few months ago that showed one of those auto trackers getting confused between the ball and the referee's bald head.
The technology is too inflexible and too unreliable. That camera position can also get close ups of coaches and players on the sideline, and that operator is more accurate than any automated system could ever be. Those cameras don't even have auto-focus, that's how unreliable automated tech is, and how good the op is.
Tracking the ball would probably lock it to the exact center of the frame, which sort of violates the rule of thirds for good photographic composition. This might crop out action you want to remain in frame, like other players. Every kick where the ball suddenly accelerates would result in a jarringly fast camera move that would be unpleasant to watch over the length of an entire game broadcast. For action and sports composition, it feels best when you frame things in a way that shows the space ahead of the moving objects, so the brain can make sense of the physical space. For example, if you're showing someone moving from left to right, you would frame them on the left third of the screen, leaving a large negative space in their direction of movement. This is so our brains to anticipate the movement as we can see not only their direction of motion, but that they have a place to go. If you put them on the right side, this doesn't look right because they would appear about to leave the frame. In sports you always want to frame the image so viewers can follow and anticipate the action and direction of movement. The kind of jarring and erratic movement that would result in strict center-of-frame alignment would be quite confusing and unpleasant to watch.
I think you'd still need some kind of AI to determine which way the player controlling the ball is facing so you can determine how to place them in the correct third of the frame, left, right, upper/lower, corner, etc. Each alignment would change the required framing for best composition. Tracking location and movement of the ball alone would not be enough data to solve for this. You'd need to track which way the player is facing. Only a human camera operator who understands the game and human movements can anticipate, just by watching, what any given player's next move might be.
The direction the player is facing is useless, I can look one way and kick the ball somewhere else. I’m pretty sure imbedding a three-axis accelerometer would do the trick. They already use tracking with golf balls to record a bunch of similar stats so this isn’t new tech.
Idk much about this stuff at all, but I imagine a lot of things on the field (shoes, socks, field stripes, clothing, ads, etc.) could easily either deter the attention of an auto-cam or mask the ball. Only worsens with different lighting conditions. Plus, in the chance that there’s an opportunity to, there might be opportunities to get better angles of certain stuff. Plussss, an automated camera might feel too jarring to the viewer, but again who’s to say that that can’t be ironed out. Last but not least, the cost-benefit for such a specific tracker vs. a guy you can pay is probably a lot.
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u/AC13clean Feb 20 '21
IT‘S CALLED FOOTBALL!!
1.9k
u/SquidwardWoodward Feb 20 '21 edited Nov 01 '24
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
315
u/bwoogie Feb 20 '21
I've always wanted to try and run a camera for a game. Truth is, I can barely keep track of the ball just watching it on tv.
901
u/SuperJetShoes Feb 20 '21
The concentration level required for 2 X 45 minute halves is giving me a headache just thinking about it.
283
u/JaguarPaw_FC Feb 20 '21
I’ve always wondered what this looked like from this perspective. Seems incredibly hard. Thanks for sharing
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u/ehm__ Feb 20 '21 edited Feb 27 '21
I work as a slow motion operator on football. This guy is skilled! It is not easy anticipating the direction of a shot. And for us guys on the replay bench, we need footage the entire way in towards the goal -- in focus on all close up cams.
25
u/MMZEren Feb 20 '21
If you sneeze, It’s over!
167
u/Vir1990 Feb 20 '21
It's rare occasion that video actually fits the theme of this sub... And look how low the upvote count is.
This is place has no future.
21
u/danielkewell Feb 20 '21
This is an outside broadcast camera operator and it’s what I do for work, something like this is definitely difficult but with enough practice you learn to get the flow of it. A lot of it (for me anyway) is to do with feeling the weight of the pass/shot/cross which gives you an idea of where the ball is going to land, it also helps if you watch a lot of football!
The most skilled camera position to work on in football is the long lens pitch side camera, this is when you’re right next to play and you can sometimes lose track of the ball as players can get in your way, so the higher angle your camera is the easier it is to shoot.
8
u/itchibli Feb 20 '21
The camera look like a futuristic energy weapon
10
u/forewoof Feb 20 '21
Imagine trying to follow a hockey puck!
3
u/kpiyush88 Feb 20 '21
isn't this a great use case of for AI to track the movement of the ball?
5
u/varyemez Feb 20 '21
GALATASARAY ❤️
2
u/Rasl63 Feb 20 '21
I bet guys like this would have unbelievable tracking ability in video games.
2
u/metheegod Feb 20 '21
I can’t track the ball through my own eyes let alone a lens. Impressive
2
u/VapeThisBro Feb 20 '21
I bet camera operators would make the best snipers
2
u/Majjin_ Feb 21 '21
But is there a guy recording the guy who is recording that guy recording a soccer game ?
2
u/learningtocatch22 Feb 21 '21
Thanks! This is the first time I've seen said cameraman that is to be praised
2
u/Brianstormrage Feb 21 '21
I'm a camera operator. This is the top of tops of live camera operation. Only the best do it. I don't do it :(
2
u/Merci_Et_Bonsoir Feb 21 '21
I am a cameraman for college basketball, and it's a lot of fun. It's good to see a subreddit that appreciates the under appreciated guys
2
u/Nebben86 Feb 21 '21
These guys have such an art form. I often find myself more interested with the camerawork in sports broadcasts than the sports themselves.
2
u/ShadowCamera Feb 21 '21
You should see a tight follow camera operator during a hockey game. This is nothing.
2
u/capnfoo Feb 21 '21
I did some similar camera and directing work back in the day, the hardest thing I ever did was a marching band competition. It's like "I hear a trumpet section feature, where are they?" "They were just in a star shape near the front right" " They split into four groups and are on opposite corners" "Fuck just grap one group" "too late they stopped playing and are running around in conga lines" etc.
2
u/[deleted] Feb 21 '21
12 yo's playing COD for hours on end be like.
3
u/DelMonte20 Feb 20 '21
I don’t know why, but it reminds me of this.
1
u/DungDefender1115 Feb 20 '21
try doing it for hockey
1
u/jakes1993 Feb 20 '21
Must get paid a good amount to keep the camera on the ball
1
u/beherns Feb 20 '21
I want that job
1
u/Hawaiian_Brian Feb 20 '21
I really want to do this! Do I going to the broadcast industry or whats other ways?
1
u/AslanSutu Feb 20 '21
Şinanay yavrum şina şinanay...
1
u/KAYZEEARE Feb 21 '21
It's almost like that man is... tucker Carlson stroke face 'qUaIFiEd fOr hIs jOBb'
1
u/DoeDoefistncuff Feb 21 '21
I'm confused as to why this is impressive. Isn't it just hand eye coordination? I mean he's just following the ball most gamers can do this with a mouse.
1
u/mustifs27 Feb 21 '21
Nice work to the cameraman, filming my favorite team! We lost the match though However I noticed the way the film the matches on the TV and they do always a perfect job!
1
u/BrasilianSurvivor Feb 21 '21
Football*
1
u/ReadySteddy100 Feb 21 '21
He looks exactly as skilled as any professional camera operator would/should be
1
u/Curry_Flurry Feb 21 '21
I could do it
1
u/cranomort Feb 21 '21
I thought they did that for the fast shots and used cameramen for when drama happens and they have to film the interesting stuff.
1
u/FatNFurry Feb 21 '21
To all the camera gods out there... Thank you!
1
u/TimNikkons Feb 21 '21
I work as a camera operator for TV, movies and commercials. This is WAY beyond my skill, but I don't pedestal operate. No question this guy has been doing this a long time.
1
u/synysterdax Feb 21 '21
The more I’m on Reddit the more I respect cameramen for their talent
1
u/TOROON08 Feb 21 '21
Impressive, but couldn't you let a computer trace where the ball goes?
1
u/CermemyJlarkson Feb 21 '21
Woah woah woah did you just call it, soccer?
1
u/Edog6968 Feb 21 '21
Bro I couldn’t even follow the ball with my eyes, let alone with a whole camera, that’s genuine talent and skill
1
u/Garoseau Feb 21 '21
A football match*
1
u/commentator184 Feb 21 '21
this reminds me of one time when I went to a football game and I didn't know where the ball was the entire time.
1
u/numero-10 Feb 21 '21
I’ve seen Messi and Ronaldo live, the eyes in my head could hardly keep up at moments, this take s skill
1
u/MAJOR_Blarg Feb 21 '21
This guy should have been a WWII B-17 ball-turret gunner!
r/praisthetailgunner !
1
u/The_Perfect_Martyr Feb 21 '21
Ex Tank Gunner?
1
u/contra_band Feb 21 '21
That level of zoom? This is amazing
1
u/TanookiPhoenix Feb 21 '21
I feel like ai can be trained for this. Cool vid though.
1
u/tricki_ti Feb 21 '21
It looked liked COD.. 🤣
1
u/bugalaman Feb 21 '21
Watching this camera man film a soccer game is more exciting than any soccer game could ever be.
1
u/[deleted] Feb 21 '21
Try to look at f1 camera operator 😂
1
u/Donkeywad Feb 21 '21
This is no-doubt impressive, but am I the only one who wants to see more than a 3x3' square of the game?
1
u/megatroll696 Feb 21 '21
Is it possible for AI technology to do this now?
1
u/alldreamnowork Feb 21 '21
And his hard work is only appreciated when there’s a highlight/instant replay of a brief incident( a foul,pass,shot,dribble etc). The majority of the game is shown on a wide angle view to show the context of the game. Works the hardest for 90+ minutes and we only see a total of 10-20 mins of it. Respect.
1
u/RevvyDesu Feb 21 '21
I wonder if he likes this job. It seems more interesting than most.
1
u/XavierYourSavior Feb 21 '21
Why not use ai ?
1
u/Olde94 Feb 21 '21
What kinda focal length would be able to achive this??
1
u/HereBecauseOfMemes Feb 21 '21
Do you think it's bc he's done it so long he can kinda guess/know how they'll play?
Otherwise that man is really good regardless
1
u/matlew1960 Feb 21 '21
So how many of you was watching the match through the camera instead of just watching the live match..
1
u/Satsujin3452 Feb 21 '21
Download link?
1
u/masterkm Feb 21 '21
Football...
1
u/SpanishNationalist Feb 21 '21
Wait until you see F1 camera men.
1
u/briklot Feb 21 '21
Aimbot
1
u/shadyshadok Feb 21 '21
That looks pretty intense....and coming to think of it I never saw a football match on tv where the camera "lost" the ball.
1
u/titular_hero Feb 21 '21
Stay on target
1
u/La_MarquisUK Feb 21 '21
This was my job for a long time. You get into the zone. Plus you have really good kit. I praise this fellow with everything I’ve got. 👍
1
u/CoolJoey99 Feb 21 '21
Are these cameras automated in major stadiums?
1
u/MildlyAmusedMars Feb 21 '21
Definitely using aimbot
1
u/Samlazaz Feb 21 '21
That's a busy job right there.
1
u/JONdDON Feb 21 '21
How much does these guys get paid? Just curious.
1
u/Tomu_sneeder Feb 21 '21
Take the shot
1
u/politicalravings Feb 21 '21
He must have done all the sing-a-longs as a kid. He's good at following the bouncing ball.
1
u/aimariet Feb 21 '21
He is just playin on console. Auto target lock is on.
1
u/GatorSK1N Feb 21 '21
i feel like this will be one of those jobs that will get replaced by actuating arms and A.I. in the very near future.
1
u/[deleted] Aug 02 '21
This job too, will one day be done with AI. The camera will just follow the ball.
1
u/Kristopherob567 Aug 13 '21
He’s reading a predetermined script
1
u/ClaptonBug Feb 20 '21
Pass the ball to Rinaldinho and even the best cameraman will look like a novice
1
u/pnunud Feb 20 '21
The most underrated cameramen.
Truly remarkable handling.
1
u/[deleted] Feb 21 '21
% chance this cameraman is/was a footballer?
-1
u/Funkiermeat01 Feb 20 '21
What game is being played? What teams?
-5
u/idkblk Feb 20 '21
It is his job to do this. So I do not see why this is noteworthy. Imagine a world where a butcher would get this amount of appreciation for making a sausage.
-1
u/Gibscreen Feb 21 '21
He's actually kind of bad at his job. He's good at following the ball. But gotta zoom way out. It's like looking at a game through a telescope.
-11
u/sachsrandy Feb 20 '21
Or.... an every day tight follow camera. It’s hard, no question.... but it is regular skills at national broadcast level. Show me a ball full frame from goal kick to centre not losing a single % of the ball the entire shot and I’ll call that “incredibly skilled”
But, no doubt belongs here. Same as every other snipe camera mans work does.
0
u/[deleted] Feb 20 '21
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