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 3rd 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 2nd 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.
