Our first set of Highlights and our Latest

Here above is the first set of highlights we have produced.

The second video is the latest highlights we have on the channel.

Here we can easily see the development of the videos we have produced. The first video that you will see is of the very first set of highlights we produced. The quality is poor as it is on the handycam’s that the club produces. If you click on the clip and watch it on the youtube website, you click on a link just under the viewing window saying ‘watch in high quality’ it does improve the quality.

Unfortunately we cannot put our latest highlights up. We had it up for a day and it made over 600 hits, but Sky Sports complained because they were there filming along side us, and as they had the license over that game, anything we put up that was over 2 minutes, they said we have to take down until Friday 12^th, because this is when there footage is being shown. So unfortunately I cannot show you this footage, but it had the sounds of the ice rink as well as the music, the music was more for background, and we made the atmospheric noises of the rink, as this is what the fans wanted, to see if they liked it more with those noises or without.

If you on the website after Friday 12^th December, you will can watch the newest video, and this weekends new edition will be up by Sunday morning.

http://uk.youtube.com/user/CovBlazeTV

That’s the link for the channel.

How my artefact can Influence my FMP

This artefact has influenced my ideas for my final major project in a big way. We have so much at our disposal with the Coventry blaze. They have won many awards and competitions, and they have won the league many times. If you say a date that the Blaze won the league to a fan, there collective memory of that year will be the Blaze winning that event. We can work with this and create a documentary on the history of the Blaze.

We are in close contact with Blaze’s photographer, and he has many photographs from past events that the blaze has won. He has been there photographer for many years, I believe since they started. He has thousands of pictures. If we can get access to these photographs, we could create a moving piece using the dates of the events, and photographs. It could create emotions from the audience, about the Blaze’s past, it could stir up memories from there imaginary museum that I talked about, and using the images of photography that we can access, it could be something quite powerful.

The piece could have very slow edits, making it more powerful. There could be a voice over explaining the games, or what event was what. Or we could see if we could get any archive of the commentary from the games that the BBC reporter Jeff Foster has. He has been with doing the Blaze now for 8 years; he may have some audio recording we could use. We could capture some of the commentary with images, converging different media forms together to create something that could stir up many emotions from the fans. We could use graphics as well, changing around the photographs so they are not standard, so they look creative, using photoshop. This is a skill I would like to expand, so doing something which could mean I could expand my skills on photoshop which would be good.

Using collective memory could mean we could bring together a lot of archive footage that the club has, and make something that will make the audience remember what the club and team used to be like, remembering old players and old kits. This could be something that is nice for the fans that have been with the club for a long time. These sorts of videos could be nice to be put on the end of season DVD as extra bonus features; I don’t think this would work very well on YouTube. Something like that would be good for a DVD, as it is something that the fans will buy and appreciate more. Plus if we are using the clubs old footage I am sure they would rather it be put on a DVD instead of the on the channel.

I like how in my artefact the audio works so well with it. If I was to produce a video with the same feel to it, the audio will need to be in similar style to this, if I wanted the piece to be slow and stir up emotions within the audience. It would be targeted at the fans, as someone who is not a fan of the Blaze will not appreciate the sentiment of the video nor the memories that it conjures up.

Match of the Day

http://www.blinkx.com/video/sky-sports-fanzone-07-12-2008-everton-2-3-aston-villa/WH3_5_LebYdbvGL09C5Q5Q

The above clip is from the Aston Villa vs. Everton game.

Match of the day is a very well established football highlights show. It is created by the BBC, and is shown on a Saturday night after the days games have been played. Its one of the BBC’s longest running shows; it has been in production since 1964.

This show is being constantly developed, in the 2007/08 season; new opening titles were introduced, along with a new studio. Even shows that are successes, and has been in production for a long time still update themselves. It is very important to keep updating the show, as people may become bored with the same opening graphics and titles. It keeps it fresh and new.

I really like how at the beginning of the games, the commentators talk about who is playing in the days game, which players, and then a graphic comes up with which players are playing where on the pitch. This is very informative, and to a football fan this is very important. We want to know who is playing, and who isn’t and why. This is something that we could incorporate into the ice hockey opening titles, having who is playing and where. These I think can be done if we decide to get a commentator in. the BBC commentators are very good, and have a lot of information about each player, which is needed to keep it interesting and informative for the viewer.

The shows graphics throughout are extremely informative of clear. They have been a massive influence for us, as we wanted ours to appear professional. We did not want the highlights to look like students had put them together. We did not want an amateur look, so we thought we should look at the Match of the Day; see how they do it, as the recipe they have created seems to be good. There highlights usually last for about 15 minutes. The reason why we cannot make ours this long is because people who are viewing something on the internet, especially on youtube do not want something to be that long. Youtube viewers do not want to watch something that is to long. We asked a group of 20 people, from a range of ages, how long we should make our highlights, they all said around 5 minutes. When I go onto youtube, if anything is over that I don’t watch it. It takes longer to buffer and load, and people on youtube generally are on there to watch short clips.

I do think that the commentators on Match of the Day make it easier to watch the highlights, even if I have seen the game that day I still watch match of the day. It is a great show to watch, it is very entertaining with the presenters and guests that they have on to discuss the days games. I think we could use this idea of having guests, we could have players who were not playing, maybe because of an injury for example, doing after game thoughts of the game they have just watched, get a players perspective of how the game looked, without actually playing. The presenters look like they are having a good time, and a laugh when they are talking about the games, this creates a relaxed atmosphere and makes it fun and entertaining for the audience to watch. If it seems more casual, it will make the audience feel more involved, as they can relate to it easier. If the show was very serious, it would be harder for the audience to sit there and watch, as it could get quite tedious, if there is an element of humour, it adds to the shows appeal.

The edit of the highlights is very smooth; you cannot tell you are watching highlights sometimes, which I really like. As our highlights are short, we put our logo in between cuts, because this is the smoothest way for us, and I think it works well. I think what makes it very good is how the audio has been done. The audio never seems like it is cut up, because in essence that’s what highlights are, selecting the best bits of the game. The audio of the commentators and the atmospheric sounds all flow and seem like it has not been cut up at all. I think what helps us not realise this is that we the audience are following the game, not the audio as much, so we may not notice it happen. But even so, it is very good. For us to do this, this maybe an issue as the live commentary of the game is done over loud speakers at the arena, and only half this is relevant, or we cut up a shot and it suddenly has the live commentary coming in at the end, it makes it difficult for us.

There is no wonder why this show is so big and popular. It reports on the days games with highlights from games that had only finished hours before the show started. This shows how quick there turn around is, this is why we aim to have the games up by the next morning. Unfortunately as we don’t steam live and cant edit on the spot, it means it takes from around when the game finishes, which is 10pm till around 5 – 6am to get them up, it means doing a very long shift through the night but it is defiantly worth it.

Influences and Power

The interview I have created has influenced my thinking for next terms final major project. I like how there is clips of the game over the interview. We have not done this yet for the channel, and I think it can work quite well. This defiantly something we are thinking about doing. It takes longer in the editing process, as the interview only takes a short amount of time to edit at the moment, but it could result in more interesting viewing. The very simple Paul Thompson Head Coach graphic that comes up, we use in all of our interviews, even at this point. It was a very simple design I did, and it works so we still use it. Interviews have always been quite important to us, as they are used on Sky Sports all the time, and it appears to be what the fans want.

Fans are interested in the response of a game from there coach. This relates to power extremely well. He is a powerful man; he has power from his stance and status within the ice hockey community. If he has an opinion on something, people are going to listen and more than likely agree with him and use it when they talk about the game. This means we can influence people with our interviews; people’s perceptions of the game can change if they hear someone in a position of power. This can relate to Michel Foucault’s master and slave relationship theory when looking at power. The fans will listen to what the master has to say, and take it as the truth. After all, control and knowledge equals power. He has knowledge of this sport, and looking at what the theorist Noam Chomsky believes, this means power. Paul Thompson certainly knows he has influence over people, and I believe he uses this to his advantage. If he is angry at something and believes in something, other people will too and support him. This is because if his knowledge of the sport and the ice hockey industry.

Sky Sports

Sky Sports sometimes cover the Ice Hockey games, which can be very awkward for us. Sky Sports use a company called TeleVideo who come in and film the games. Unfortunately they have lot equipment, and take over our areas. When this first happened to us we panicked, as we had not planned for this. When they first came to a game, we were still in our pre development stages, so this game did not get put up because we were still developing. But we made sure we had back up plans. Where we have our cameras, there is enough space for 3. When it is just us, we have 2 set up. When Sky comes, they have 2 up there, and they are very large cameras, which leaves us space for the one camera, which is the clubs which makes the DVD’s. So we have to move our main camera somewhere else. Luckily we have an access all area pass, so we can go where we like. We found an area which is ok, we do not have a clear view of the entire rink, but it is the best in the situation that we were in.

It is fantastic working along side Sky, because we can see how they approach the hockey. We can see how they set up the camera positions and what angles they use. They have 4 cameras, 2 up in the main filming area, one that gets a wide shot of the rink, with some Zooming, a camera that does purely close ups, a camera behind the goal, quite high which gets a shot of the rink from bottom to top, and cameras that are near how our camera 2 is set up, to get the shots of the goals going in. It is the same set up as us, but where they have a close up camera, we use our main camera for close ups. It is interesting to watch though, because in front of where they film and where our clubs camera is, is the commentators, and they have two screens in front of them which is where the love vision mixing final cut is shown, so we can see how they mix together the shots and what the final game looks like, as they do it all live from a Lorry outside the rink. Watching this helps give us ideas of how ours should look, as Sky Sports is along with Setanta the leading sports channels on TV, so how they produce there sporting shows must work, as they are not leading in it for nothing. We are pleased to see though that how they edit there games is how we try to do ours. Sky Sports has been a major influence on our work, having the scoreboards and having camera 2 where it is. They use a lot of replays, which we try to do, because they do work very. Plus the puck is so small, it is very easy to miss what happened, with replays it helps the viewer understand what has just happened. Sky can use replays from many different angles, which I wish we could but it cannot be done, as we do not have the equipment or man power to achieve this. However, one game we may try a different camera set up, try and experiment to see if there is at all a better set up than what we have, where we can get different angles for replays.

The commentators that do the sky sports commentating are very good; this is what we want for our highlights, having a commentator. For us though as we make highlights, doing the commentating after the game would be better, so we can edit it easier, and we can control how long the commentating lasts for. After the game, Sky Sports do interviews. They set up a interview area next to the rink, which was very interesting to watch. They had a desk area with a big HD TV; this is the area where they will talk about the game. Many of the ways they carry out filming the game is not impossible for us to do, because we do not have access to the equipment that they have, nor do we have the man power.

We have got many ideas though from working with the channel, and what we produce must be good and work within there channel because they have used our footage before when talking about Ice Hockey on Sky Sports Extra. Unfortunately we did not know about them using our footage till after it was shown, but Sky have contacted us asking for our footage of games, and they have used our footage off the clubs camera on a couple of instances. This makes us feel extremely happy, as we put a lot of effort into making our highlights and footage looking professional and to the highest standard we possibly can, and it pays off when Sky Sports want our footage to be shown on there channels. We have contacted the owner of the Blaze and told him to let us know next time they use our footage, so we can view it and see how it looks. We were quite angry that we were not informed, if we could have captured this happening, by taking photos of the TV or anything, or the email from Sky asking for our footage, we could have it for this blog, but unfortunately we don’t, but next time we will.

Doing this ice hockey project really has been an incredible experience, how many people on our course can say they have filmed along side Sky Sports, and who have then used there footage on Sky Sports News and Extra when talking about the Coventry Blaze. Working with Sky we have developed our skills, in camera techniques, editing and thinking on the spot. For example not having our usual camera space, so we had to think what we can do to get over this problem, in a very limited time so we can get set up ready for the games face off. The Rink is not that big, so we are very limited with space, which adds to our development as we had to imagine what the camera angles would be like from different areas within the rink. We have a client, who we produce work for, which gets around 1500 views a week. This is a project that I am very proud to be apart of.

http://www.skysports.com/icehockey

Our Set Up for the Production of CovBlazeTV

Here you can see how we set up the cameras, how we set up our laptops and edit the footage straight after the game (which takes from 10pm till 5am to complete), and the different camera’s we work on, and the different roles in the production.

We buy with the money we get paid snacks to help us get through the night. We use 3 computers to edit on, we have 3 camera operators and one person time coding the main camera. The TV and DVD players are the clubs, that’s what we get paid to do. There handycam records straight onto 4 DVD’s, which go to the referee, the club, the coach and the away coach. The club then use this footage to create more DVD’s of the game which then gets sold in the hockey shop in Coventry.

Bolzano Ice Hockey Tour

The club has been very happy with how we have been progressing and the work we have been doing. They talked about over the summer us going to Italy with them to film a tournament, but we never took it that seriously because it seemed to good to be true. But one week before the trip was planned to leave, they invited us to go with them, for free. Unfortunately Ollie could not go because his passport had run out, but the rest of us said defiantly yes. What an opportunity, to go away with a professional sports team as there camera crew. We were told we would be travelling with the fans on a coach, going through France, Germany, Austria and then into Italy. Bolzano is where it is based, which is in the Italian Alps on the border with Austria.

Our first port of call was sorting out equipment for the trip. We thought about what kit we needed; as there is only 3 of us we needed to be careful with what we could carry, and what we could man. We decided on one Z1, 2 tripods, Boom, Boom pole, Headphones and XLR cable. We decided that this would be ok because we could use the clubs handycam’s as well. They are smaller and lighter. This meant though that we would need to get hold of the editing software for these cameras, the software we needed was Sony Vegas. After lots of hunting, we found it and got familiar with it for the trip. We went to Loan shop and asked whether it could be possible to get the kit we require in such a short amount of time. As we did not find out about the trip till late, we could not get the kit sorted till late. The loan shop said they will need to talk to someone else in the University about insurance, and that we may have to pay to get insurance excess down. This we were told by other members of staff was a load of rubbish. Kevin in the loan shop told us this, after being quite funny with us about wanting kit. However it all came back ok, and of course we did not have to pay anything. That was a relief; we were worrying about what we would do. We decided that if we could not get the kit we would use the clubs cameras for everything and borrow tripods of friends.

When we arrived to the coach, we strapped all the kit in but had a handycam on us at all time, to capture some of the footage of the fans. We were going to be using all this footage to create a DVD for the club, about the tour and we wanted to get a lot of the fans in, as many of the fans were going on this trip and if they know they are on the DVD, they will buy it. It also gave us a chance to talk to the fans about the channel, if there are any improvements they think we could do, or if anything needed changing. The only thing that came up was that it would be nice perhaps to try using some of the natural sounds of the rink as well as music. Other than that the general consensus was that the ones that have watched the channel really like it, and don’t think any changes are needed. To begin with it was hard to get the fans talking to us, but we started to talk to them without the camera, get to know them, have a laugh and just enjoy the trip. They were then telling us they wanted to do interviews with them and we should get the camera out to film this and that, it was very good. Our confidence has got a lot better after this trip, as we had never met the fans before, and going on a 23 hour coach journey with 40 of them meant we had a lot of time to get to know them. The average age of the fans must have been around 50, which was right for our demographics on youtube.

The next day after we arrived was the first game; we got a taxi in the morning over to the players and club staff hotel. Once we arrived there we got given our press passes, which was fantastic. It had our names on and our roles. The players all said hello to us, and the club staff are always very supportive. We asked Paul Thompson, the head coach if we could have an interview before the tournament began. We decided to have it outside, as we were in the alps it would be a great location to have an interview. We had to wait around at the teams hotel a lot, as the players had naps after morning training, and then at 2pm we would all leave together, and go on the players coach to the ice rink. On this coach after the first day, we managed to get our confidence built up and asked if we could do some interviews on it before the game. Paul Thompson said all along if we need anything from the players, he can sort it out for us. When we first arrived at the rink, it was massive in comparison to Planet Ice here in Coventry. We got told we had our own press booth, next to the BBC’s. This was an amazing experience, we were next door to the BBC audio commentary box, and the other side of us was Bolzano TV. The problem we had was we were going to be filming for our highlights and for the DVD on our Z1, and then like normal we would film on the clubs camera so they can make DVD’s of the games as soon as we get back to England, and then we decided to use the Clubs other camera for our camera 2. However the booth was small, it could not fit both cameras in. which meant we decided to go handheld with the clubs camera. We sat down in some seats in front of our press booth, and filmed it handheld, which when we got back we got told the quality was very good and Sky Sports had used some of our footage on Sky Sports News, which were shocked at because we thought it would not be that good as it was handheld, but the owner of the club was extremely happy with the quality. The booth had electrical sockets in and a desk, which was perfect for us. We set up our cameras, we had camera two down the front of the seating area, set up as the same as home, at the end where the blaze would shooting towards. If we could not get the camera in that position, there was a table beside the rink for photographers. For 2 games we had to go there, which was extremely dangerous. I was above the glass of the rink, which meant if someone got slammed into the side of the rink where I was, I could get hit or the camera could get hit by the players stick, or a puck could come flying at me. It was certainly the most scared I have been doing camera work, and it didn’t help that the Blaze photographer who I was stood next too kept telling me people had died from doing what we were doing, just what I needed to hear. Luckily I didn’t get injured; however a stick did come within 6 inches of my face, which was rather scary.

After each game we would go with the BBC reporter, Jeff Foster, to a press conference between the 2 coaches of the teams. We would film this conference, which was very interesting. We had never filmed a press conference before, so we learn a lot about this. The first time we did it we had the camera in a bad position, we didn’t know how much power had in this situation, we later found out we had a lot. So we rearranged a few seats and got the camera in a perfect area and got the audio sorted perfect. It took sometime to get the audio ok, because we had no idea it was going to be a conference, we thought it was simply like a normal interview, we were not expecting it to be like how it was, so we learnt a lot the firs time, and after the second game we improved a lot and got complimented on our professionalism, making the other journalists, photographers and camera crews look amateur. We then did the normal interview with Jeff Foster and Paul Thompson after the press conference. Doing these press conferences really made us develop with working to a tight time scale, and under pressure from onlookers and peers.

When we would get back to the hotel after each game, we would capture what we have filmed; we brought with us my laptop, the company external hard drive, Ian’s laptop and my external hard drive. We used my laptop to capture the Z1’s footage, and we used Ian’s laptop to capture and convert the handycam’s footage. We discovered something with capturing and converting the handycam’s footage. Uploading the footage onto Sony Vegas was easy, however converting the files to AVI so we could edit on Premier Pro with the footage, the converting process would take around 9 hours. We decided that during period breaks we would erase from the cameras hard drive any bits of footage that was rubbish or not going to be used, to speed up this process. We were using the handycam as camera 2, so we were only recording when the puck came to the end we were filming. So many of the times we were filming stuff that we wouldn’t use. This helped a lot, and we decided to convert it while we were asleep, as we were not editing out there as there was not enough time to do this. Doing it this way worked very well. It meant we didn’t have to worry when we got home to do the capturing; it was ready f or us to edit. We had to warn the club that the highlights and DVD would not be made straight away because of University deadlines. They understood this, but I do believe that they are going to start asking to see what we have, but this is the problem when clubs higher students to do work, University comes first, so they have to understand this, which I believe they do. We have told them what we are going to do with the DVD, what ideas we have had.

The 3^rd and final game of the tournament, there was a very controversial goal disallowed. We were mentioned on Coventry Radio Stations and on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire’s live stream from the game. We were mentioned because the goal was disallowed, but everyone thought it went in. going through our footage and the photographer’s photos, we discovered that it was in a fact a goal. On the local Coventry radio stations, we were mentioned as “The Coventry Blaze Head Coach and the clubs TV crew have gone through the footage and discovered it was a goal”, or something similar to that effect. This made us feel very professional, and made us think how many people on our course can say that has happened to them. Other than the obvious experiences we have got from this trip, Sky sports have used our footage and we were mentioned on the radio, fantastic publicity.

I have learnt so much from this trip. We have filmed in different locations; this meant we had to adjust our normal camera settings for different lighting, different locations for the camera positions. We were working alongside other TV crews, so we got to see how they set up and what equipment they were using. The overall experience that this has brought has meant we have been doing documentary making, sports broadcasting, press conferences, interviewing in exotic locations, our footage has been used to decide if goals have actually gone in if they have been disallowed, creating controversy and the team loosing out on progressing to the next stage (blaze lost that game, meaning they came 2^nd in the tournament, they lost that game by that goal not being allowed, it was 1 – 0 to Bolzano).

The reason for us going was to capture the games, make the highlights and also make a DVD of the tour. The club from our footage on there camera have made DVD’s of the games, but we are going to make a tour DVD. We have already had ideas on how we want it to look. We went on this trip with the tour operator Harry Shaw. We did a deal with the coach drivers of the trip, everyone had to pay transfer costs to get to the ice rink and back for the games. We got them for free, and we got free drinks as well on the coach. Plus the coach would drop the fans off and then come back especially for us. So in return for this we have decided to get a map of the trip, where we started in Coventry and how we got to Bolzano, using a Harry Shaw coach on the map, showing us the route. We filmed a little bit at each stop off we did in each country, so it could look quite nice. We have got a mixture of footage that we are not going to put on the channel, so if you want to see it you will have to buy the DVD. The DVD will include longer highlights of the games, with extra footage, exclusive player interviews before and after games, footage of the fans and bonus footage of funny things that happened that we captured, from the players and from the fans. For example when we stopped off in Germany, the toilets in the services were very strange. You would flush it and a robotic arm would come out, and swivel the toilet seat 360 degrees and clean it. It was very strange and amused the fans very much. So we filmed this, this would be a bonus feature on the DVD.