This week’s Broadcast magazine has a double-page spread on something very close to my heart – those fancy camera techniques that are used in sport.
Since Broadcast’s website is totally subscription only, here are their top ten:
1. Virtual Spectator – Basically all the graphics tricks used in coverage of the WRC. It all involves GPS, computer graphics and minicams.
2. Crash Recording – For use in yachting. The cameras are recording to memory all the time. Then if something exciting happens, a crewmember hits a button and everything that has just happened is committed to a more permament storage.
3. Super Slow-Mo – As used superbly by C4 in the cricket. Sky have their own version too. 2000 frames a second.
4. Hawkeye – First cricket, now tennis. Where next for the ball-tracking technology?
5. Skycam – A camera mounted high on a pair of wires. You do get some very involving views. The French Open employ one as well as the Beeb for the FA Cup Final.
6. Epsis – The tricks now widely employed in football and many other sports for projecting graphics onto the pitch while the players walk all over them.
7. Streaming – Er. This is more a delivery mechanism isn’t it? Move along please.
8. High Definition – Another delivery mechanism. Sky are looking to be first in the UK with this. But we’ll all need new TVs.
9. Post Cam – The BBC used it during the Six Nations. Strap a remote controlled camera around the foot of a rugby post just above the padding. You get close-up views without getting in the way. Limited potential in other sports though.
10. I-Ball – Still in development, but basically seems to involve putting 12 cameras inside a ball (say a football), transmitting the images back and combining them to produce a single image “ball’s eye” view, with computers doing the hard work since balls spin a lot etc.
Fancy Sports Camerawork
Tags:
Comments
3 responses to “Fancy Sports Camerawork”
Thanks for the dope Adam! I’ve been wondering how they get logos to appear on the centre of football pitches without painting the grass. Now I know – it’s Epsis!
However, I don’t see any mention of Matrix-style ‘Bullet Time’ effects – or am I missing something? I only ask because I was watching a Brazilian football match on Bravo just before Euro 2004 (to get me into the football spirit) and some of the replays featured this kind of technique, where time seems to stand still as the camera moves…
You need to look at this entry! http://www.adambowie.com/weblog/archive/000772.html
The only times I’ve seen it used were in the Champions League Final this year, and in the Superbowl a couple of years ago. It is pretty impressive, although I’m guessing it costs an awful lot to put in place (dozens of cameras around the roof of the stadium) for not much benefit – aside from looking very smart.
There’s also a very Hawk-eye type technique that I’ve seen used in Baseball that they use to determine whether the ball was pitched in the right area around the batter.
There’s two competing systems in this arena at the moment – Epsis and Cybersport. Colin, you probably saw Cybersport, which has something close to what you described – it can replace the real players with computer-generated players, which can then be zoomed around. I recently saw Cybersport demoed – apparently it wasn’t the latest version, but to get this set up needed quite a bit of human intervention. Apparently the producers don’t see the point of it for all but the most complex of situations as it’s such a faff to get working.