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.
