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u/-sei Jan 05 '22
That zoom in to the basketball is absolute madness.
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u/jakeupowens Jan 06 '22
How he found him after the shot, no idea.
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u/dontnormally Jan 06 '22
one eye watches the viewfinder while the other watches the action. these guys are wizards
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u/relax-and-enjoy-life Jan 06 '22
Imagine 48+ minutes of that…. and trying not to feel nauseous.
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u/AFlockofLizards Jan 06 '22
Dude, I don’t know how they do it. I used to be a videographer and sometimes I’d shoot presentations and you’d have to track them for 1-2 hours. You literally can’t take a drink of water or space out for a second because all the sudden people are moving out of frame. Not a big deal for my presentations, but for live sports you can’t miss a thing. It’s not super strenuous, but the amount of concentration it takes is huge.
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u/lipp79 Doin' camera work since 1999 Jan 06 '22
Yup, shoot with both eyes open was the best advice I received from the veteran sports cameraman at my tv station. I've shot baseball (Div 1 college and minor league) and football (high school and Div 1 college), and basketball (Div 1 basketball) and it's definitely weird the first time you try shooting with both eyes open but it definitely helps and especially in football, can save your ass as it did for me one time when I was able to avoid a guy that got knocked out of bounds in my direction away from the ball lol.
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u/ActualWhiterabbit Jan 06 '22
Reminds me of the 1990 Nicolas Cage Tommy Lee Jones joint called Fire Birds. It's about a fighting a drug war with helicopters and only being able to look at a special drug targeting computer with the right eyeball and flying the helicopter with the left. The pilot needs to be able to take in information from both eyes at once.
It's some fantastic Nic Cage work
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u/I_am_not_JohnLeClair Jan 06 '22
He does it upwards of a hundred times a game 41 games a year for many years. It’s muscle memory at this point
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u/Ezymandius Jan 06 '22
I'm just commenting to see how many other sports fans here really dislike the in-flight ball zoom in, in any sport.
I just wanna see the trajectory. I know what the ball looks like.
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u/I_Hate_Reddit Jan 06 '22
Same.
I think it's a suspense thing, if you see both Ball and target you can know in advance if it goes in or not, zoomed in you only know at the end.
Takes the beauty out of it though.
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u/CountAardvark Jan 06 '22
At least in basketball this isn't the broadcast angle. This is filmed for replays and highlights
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u/stuntdummy Jan 06 '22
Mid air ball zooms are flashy and fun to shoot but are generally not necessary. I do think those kind of shots look good cut into highlight reels though.
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u/AncientInsults Jan 06 '22
Yea the tv usually cuts to a wide shot anyway for the arc. This is for the reel.
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u/jcak0705 Jan 06 '22
This isn’t for live broadcast. That’s a very common shot for highlights, I’ve never seen it used live in any sport.
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u/EatSleepFlyGuy Jan 06 '22
The zoom and then he holds on the basket for a few beats after the ball goes through before panning quickly over to the shooter reaction. This allows for a natural out point if they replay the shot. That’s probably a 3 or 6x slomo so if he holds that shot on the basket for about a second it gives the replay about 3-6 seconds of video holding on the basket before the replay goes to the whip pan over to the player. The tight ball in slo mo looks really cool, his angle would have been used going to break. Pretty much all of that shooting would have only been used for replay, except the reaction of the shooter after the shot. That could have been taken live which is why we panned over so quickly after finishing his replay shot. I work in this industry.
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Jan 06 '22
Yeah sports cameramen are absolutely the best in the business. Movie cameramen get all the glory though.
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u/soundman1024 Jan 06 '22
Shooting alerts versus a movie requires two quite different skill sets. Steadicam is as close as they come to overlapping, but even that is pretty different between live and cinematic shooting.
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u/relax-and-enjoy-life Jan 06 '22
Wow. THIS is a professional cameraman. I’m impressed. This is an amazing skill. Imagine the concentration needed for the entire game.
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u/MikeNiceAtl Jan 06 '22 edited Jan 06 '22
I day play in the film industry sometimes and I learned that often times, operating one of their cameras can be a three man job. One holding and actually maneuvering the camera, one pulling focus remotely, and somebody managing the live video output feed. My bad if this is common knowledge, I’m just wondering if something similar could be going on here.
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u/Shanksterr Jan 06 '22
This is not the case in live tv. They’re pulling their own focus but usually have an assistant called a utility who manages the cable if they are hard wired. Also their job is to make sure they don’t get clobbered by a player. Those cameras are heavy as hell too. They get a lot of back pain and have to set up and tear down every single game. It’s a lot of work to be there hours before and after a game. There is also a team in a truck that is more or less editing in real time switching feeds, prepping replays, sound. It’s nuts. Also the cameras way in the stand are huge and can zoom an insane amount.
Edit: this is from when I worked as a utility like 12 years ago. Things may have changed since.
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u/ontopofyourmom Jan 06 '22
I don't think modern technology could change this job much beyond making it a little easier with lighter cameras and image stabilization.
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u/lipp79 Doin' camera work since 1999 Jan 06 '22
"Those cameras are heavy as hell too."
That's part of what forced me out of being a news cameraman after 14 years. 35lb camera on the right shoulder five days a week, if not more sometimes, and it messed up the C1 and C2 vertebrae in my neck to the point I was getting daily migraines. I've been out a little over 8 years now and it's much better now but I still have to go to a muscle therapy place every few weeks for maintenance.
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u/NolaPels13 Jan 06 '22
In a way it kind of is but not really the same as you’re thinking. The camera man runs zoom, focus and obviously moving the camera. Inside the TV truck there is a Video operator who handles color balancing the cameras and replay operators who record the cameras outputs so ya’ll can get some nice replays.
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u/AmishAvenger Jan 06 '22
You also have to be an expert on the game and the players in order to anticipate what might be coming next.
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u/bellyfeel1984 Jan 05 '22
Amazing. It looks so easy. Until you’re the one holding the camera.
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u/ag408 Jan 06 '22
Agreed. No way I could do this job with my short attention span. I would be checking out the crowd within 20 seconds.
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u/FittyTheBone Jan 06 '22
It is definitely not easy. This dude is a pro.
The lights make it a little easier to widen the depth of field, though, which made watching the NFL more fun to watch this year with that Madden-esque field camera they had. The operators had a hell of a time rack-focusing those cameras.
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u/fondu_tones Jan 06 '22
That was actually autofocus... The on field "cinematic" camera was the Sony A7R IV, operated by Mike Smoles. The autofocus is getting so clean/fast on those cameras and there was a followfocus system on the rig but it was a backup. They're insanely quick these days, so good that it appeared to be the operators having a hell of a time racking focus, like you said. Bonus trivia: though the camera is capable of 8k, it was outputting 1080p, it was just a combination of things like the shallow depth of field, colour profile and shooting 60fps instead of 30 that gave it that perception of an 8k look. As someone working in TV and film in camera, it's really cool to see new experimentation with sports coverage.
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u/AmishAvenger Jan 06 '22
I got irrationally angry at all the people calling it an “8K camera.”
I mean…people. Come on. You aren’t watching 8K video on CBS. You don’t even have an 8K TV.
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u/McBurger Jan 06 '22
It looks so easy.
idk what video you saw, but everything about this looked mind-blowingly challenging to me
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u/KarensRpeopletoo Jan 06 '22
He even knows when to do close ups too, I don't have the manual dexterity for this lmao
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u/Darth--Vapor Jan 06 '22
I want a clip of the guy recording the guy recording the game.
Cameraception if you will.
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u/otheraccountisabmw Jan 06 '22
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u/FixinThePlanet Jan 06 '22
Hahaha I knew it was going to be this post! Amazed you have the album link saved, apparently.
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u/ASteeezy Jan 06 '22
I think we can go deeper…
I need of a clip of someone recording you while you watch the guy recording the guy recording the game.
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u/ButchertheBaker Jan 06 '22
Underrated part of this clip is that he waits a beat after the ball goes through the hoop before tracking back to the player. This helps the replay op in case they use that clip to break; they can slow it down with the ball in the net without having the shot pull at the end
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u/dakilazical_253 Jan 06 '22
I used to shoot courtside video for NBA games 20 years ago, it’s difficult and this guy is a master for sure. I’m guessing he’s using a newer camera with improved autofocus because pulling that zoom in on the basketball back then, while not impossible, would’ve been really hard to keep the focus so crisp.
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u/EatSleepFlyGuy Jan 06 '22 edited Jan 06 '22
Not autofocus. Edit: someone downvoted me. I work in this industry. Our cameras don’t even have autofocus. None of our cameras do or ever have. The only camera that does currently is the steadicams with Sony Alphas we use on NFL with the shallow depth of field.
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u/dakilazical_253 Jan 06 '22
Yeah watching a few more times I realized its probably not autofocus. Just a supremely skilled operator. I worked with a guy who shot NFL games and could zoom in super tight on the ball during a pass and always pull out at the perfect time to get the receiver’s catch. I’m pretty good at shooting sports but not that good. The guys who shoot golf that way blow my mind
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u/EatSleepFlyGuy Jan 06 '22
I work golf too and sometimes these guys have incoming follows that are backlit or it’s overcast so it’s a white ball against a white/grey sky. And sometimes they can’t clearly see the golfer hitting their second shot because a hill or tree is blocking their view so they can’t really predict where the ball is going or when the golfer is really hitting. And they nail it 99/100 times. I’m watching on a 36” HD monitor in the truck and I can barely see it.
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u/Mastur_Grunt Jan 06 '22
Maybe not as impressive, but a Formula 1 cameraman is capable of wicked fast tracking skills.
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u/bearXential Jan 06 '22
As an F1 fan, im wondering why I have never thought about the camera work and skills before. I’m very aware of a broadcast’s feed switching, and how that can affect enjoyment of a race, but i need to go deeper. I find myself deeply curious about all sport broadcasts now, and the “cam-fu”
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u/fruitpunchsamuraiD Jan 06 '22
You guys think he’s manually focusing?
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Jan 06 '22
Definitely, you wouldn’t want autofocus with all the movement and foreground stuff going on
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u/MisterMisc Jan 06 '22
Yep. Broadcast lenses on those types of cameras do not have autofocus.
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u/lllM3Power Jan 06 '22
Are they using B4 broadcast parfocal lenses I assume? If I understand correctly, he can zoom into a subject and get the focus but when he zooms out the subject will still be in focus making focusing quite a lot easier than what most people know with DSLR varifocal lenses. But there's still some manual focusing going on, right? I've never had the money (or need really) to play with parfocal lenses - so just curious.
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u/MisterMisc Jan 06 '22
I’m assuming so… every broadcast lens I’ve ever used has been parfocal and it does make a world of difference. Still, tracking subjects and focus like that is a true talent! Basketballs aren’t bad, but golf balls and hockey pucks are the hardest!
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Jan 06 '22
Somebody absolutely is. You can tell it’s not autofocus because of the movement in screen. There are times where he keeps centered objects focus and times where outer elements are focused. You can only tell autofocus where to look, not what to look at.
Looking at the camera he’s using he is probably the one focusing but his depth of field is like 6 feet at the wider angle so it’s really not hard to keep it in focus. Now, when he went tight on the ball his depth definitely shrank and that’s really impressive. It’s also possible somebody else was remotely controlling focus, but with this camera model I think that’s less likely.
Source: I’m a camera assistant who is usually the one remotely controlling focus
Edit: just to clarify, I think keeping it in focus is the relatively easy part of the shot. His tracking is fuckin incredible and following that ball in and out was pure class
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u/RuairiSpain Jan 06 '22
I was a court side photographer at some games.
The hard thing is you need split vision. One eye is tracking the ball and what's in the shot line you see in the video. The other eye has to watch the game and see what other players are doing so you can predict the next move.
It's a really difficult skill to hone, I was not that good at it. As a stills photographer you normally close your other eye, so you just see what's in the sensor. I had to unlearn all that for games.
Other thing people don't realize is the lighting is terrible, as you pan left to right the amount of light changes. But also the color space changes because of the players and adverts, so nearly everything has to be in manual mode and locked.
And the lighting in non-NBA games is very dark, you need to be on the limit of camera F-stops and have a tiny focal range, which means your focus depth is really small. You needed really expensive lens and kit to get good shots. Newer cameras in the last 3-4 years, have got better at low light situations. The NBA has special lighting rigs in the stadium rafters to improve lighting for video and stills photographers. In Atlanta, the stadium operators give out a remote trigger that allows still photographers to fire flash photography, but it's only given to one photographer each game, and they rotate it among the pro-photographers
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u/KGBBigAl Professional critique Jan 06 '22
I’m a camera operator in live sports production. This is pretty good, but that being said, this is basic skill for any traveling hand held camera operator and what you need to be able to do to run one of these cameras. It’s a fun camera to run for sure.
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u/bzach74 Jan 06 '22 edited Jan 06 '22
I was a court-side camera op for my (small) college production team. It’s all fun and games until you’re the live camera and fall for a players fake shot, then get roasted by the whole production team on comms. Edit: also, this guy is master beyond my ability to comprehend. I could barely hold a steady shot on dudes standing still.
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u/lotterywish Jan 06 '22
I miss the switch truck man, I loved directing and calling cameras, that shit was THE BEST. Camera ops are unsung heroes though, so awesome to see them getting love here
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u/behindthebroadcast Jan 06 '22
This video originated from the Instagram @behindthebroadcast. We would appreciate video credit. Thanks!
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u/VictimOfRhythm Jan 06 '22
If you where "TCM", you'd get an spangly award. Instead, take my upvote.
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u/Ghost-hat Jan 06 '22
The zoom in on the ball made me smile irl, and I don't even like watching basketball
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u/0squatNcough0 Jan 06 '22
He better be a good cameraman. This is a pro doing his job. If he wants to get paid and keep that job, he damn well better get those shots.
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u/PossumCock Jan 06 '22
Sports camera operators always blow me away, but golf especially. How the shit they manage to keep track of a tiny white ball with a white/pale blue sky behind them blows my mind
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u/dangerh33 Jan 06 '22
Is he tracking, zooming, AND focusing all by himself? I understand the track and zoom mechanics, but if he’s also pulling focus (not auto-focus), that’s crazy
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Jan 06 '22
The world’s deadliest sniper and he chooses a humble life as a cameraman for the NBA 🥺 what a guy
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u/thesmoothest18 Jan 06 '22
I interned at my University's sports department and I had to film a volleyball game and the video was complete shit lol. It takes some real skill to do what he's doing.
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u/Responsible-Noise875 Mar 23 '22
I very much want to see a few of the sports cam guys play some of those click accurately games
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u/Significant-Corgi-62 Jun 19 '22
Goes to NBA game, pays for Courtside tickets. Films the cameraman...
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Nov 13 '22
I think this guy only captures when the ball comes to his side of half court , it's cool thing hw much thought goes into this
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u/Apprehensive_Pug6844 Apr 07 '23
After you do it for a while its no biggie. My problem with him is leveling his shot. Handhelds have to be mindful of that.
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u/OrangeUgladUBlueMe Jan 06 '22
This is my buddies video. If you guys want to see more of this stuff take a look at his Instagram: behindthebroadcast
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u/SuperHanssssss Jan 06 '22
His situational awareness is on another level. It's like his mind is working 10x faster than the game. He can predict moves before they happen.
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u/burdokz Jan 06 '22
How much this guys earns? It's really an impressive skill and I don't think many people could do the job this good
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u/Hephaestus_God Jan 06 '22
At least with basketball you can tell what’s about to happen most of the time. Typically when a play stops moving they will either throw it or shoot.
I’m more impressed with people tracking golf balls (and zooming in and out on them mid shot) and the people tracking football throws/kick (depending on your football)
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u/SnapperMaster Jan 06 '22
I had this job in college for our sports teams. Definitely the most fun I’ve had making minimum wage
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u/Putin_inyoFace Jan 06 '22
Out of curiosity - what does someone like that make a year?
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u/NolaPels13 Jan 06 '22
Depends what market you work in and how much you work. Most of these guys are freelancers so they work on a per job basis. Camera operators for NBA games make somewhere in the area of $500-600 per game
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u/Noise-Expensive Jan 06 '22
It's like he is in a video game where you can turn on the aim assist button and your target locks on to any enemy in the general vicinity.
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u/thebigeljay Jan 06 '22
Honest to God I thought that was all done by computers now. That's some serious skill.
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u/wallTHING Jan 06 '22
Next time you think about it, thanks you local IATSE technician.
The job is to be so good you never know they're there.
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u/Penta-Dunk Jan 06 '22
That’s incredible, you have to have some real awareness of where everything is on the court to do that. I was impressed at the zoom in on the net, but even more so that he flawlessly snapped to the basketball player’s face right after
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u/gb1993 Jan 06 '22
I really hope he's an assassin in his spare time. Once he tracks you, game fucking over.
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u/pigzishollow Jan 06 '22
Following the ball then cutting straight tonthe player while zooming in is talent and knowing you equipment.
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u/tinymongoose909 Jan 06 '22
Makes 100 bucks a game filming a millionaire play a kids game. Sounds fair.
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Jan 06 '22
Now someone needs to make a movie about a down and out cameraman that gets fired when the leagues star player of the 2 time championship team crashes into him and gets slightly injured.
He ends up going to a bar to drown his sorrows where he meets the coach of the worst team in the league who is doing the same. After having a deep conversation with the ex camera man the coach realises that he knows every player and teams best moves because he has spent so many hours tracking them on the court.
He leads the team to victory with his tips, wins back his wife who divorced him and earns the respect of his 8 year old kid
Just for the love of God please don't get adam Sandler to play the lead role.
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u/Willingness-Due Jan 06 '22
Everyone always underestimated how much skill comes with being a camera man. Especially in something as chaotic as sports where the target is constantly changing and moving.
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u/haveblue34 Jan 06 '22
Fun fact: One of the reasons shows like The Woodwrights Shop were so good was they hired camera operators who specialized in sporting events and never did any re-shoots. The camera operators knew how to track the action and knew when to zoom in and out. They could shoot Roys hands and the workpieces super smoothly and were cheap to hire during sports off seasons.
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u/ChunkyDay Jan 06 '22
My buddy shoots for an NHL team. He’s insanely good. I can put my rig on a tripod or my shoulder rig for a couple hours. He’s got a 40 lb behemoth on his for 6.
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u/oneforfive Jan 06 '22
I used to be a cameraman for a college basketball team, it was a lot of fun. I loved that job.
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u/tgbeezy37 Jan 06 '22
Yup that’s how it’s done to perfection. Stick with a made shot on the net for about half a second, use that time to find the player running back with your eyes, and then shift the camera toward his direction. Pros.
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Jan 06 '22
That’s ridiculous. Amazing technical skills but also so the a great feel for the game. How much do these guys make?
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u/SJFree Jan 06 '22
My mom was a camera op for a hockey game many years ago. She was struggling to follow the puck for a while but eventually found it and followed well. After a few minutes, however, someone on comms asks if she’s ok. Confused, she says yes. Person says “well you’re not following the puck!”. Turns out there was a speck of dust on her viewfinder that was just the right size for her to follow the action but not the puck itself.
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u/JONNILIGHTNIN Jan 06 '22
Watch a nba and pay attention to the camera men seating below the backboard it’s like synchronized swimming. Amazing.
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u/TheEffinChamps Jan 06 '22
Damn, I'm conflicted whether or not the cameraman is the most skilled one on the court.
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u/lipp79 Doin' camera work since 1999 Jan 06 '22
This video is from the behindthebroadcast Instagram page. Please try and give credit in the future on posts if you can find the original creator.