Which Is Better for Sports Production--More Cameras or More Ops?
I recently had a consult with a producer who streams baseball and football and was looking to expand. Probably add some softball, basketball, and more. He started with a common kit that one might use to enter into mobile streaming production, using an iPad-based app and using old phones as cameras. Over time, as he'd replace and upgrade his phone, his camera arsenal grew and got better as well. After a while, though, the limitations of the software (no replay, iOS issues) and the phone cameras (not much real zoom range, or easy to adjust angles during all day events) led him to investigate stepping up his game, so to speak.
I need to mention that this producer is what you typically find at the local level: a solo-preneur. He sets up everything, runs the stream, calls the game, and takes everything down. If a camera goes wonky during the game, well, he's just going to avoid using that camera. Because this one producer is doing everything, keeping things simple is critical, while also trying to deliver what audiences are asking for. This is something I experience every week in my self-hosted live shows on the StreamTek channel.
Adding replay, for sports, is a big issue, and this is available in several other solutions. The camera issues are always tricky. There's lots of sports on TV, with entire networks devoted to specific sports. In fact, the audience for sports is so big that several streaming-only companies decided to take money from producing original content and buy their way into big league sports. Audiences who love sports watch a lot of sports. But because there's so much production of sports at the broadcast level, audiences expect a lot too. This hurdle of audience expectations is quite high.
Typical broadcast-level sports productions are massive, with dozens of cameras and operators all over the place, and dozens more people working in and around the production trucks. So how does one, independent producer make their content more like "the big league" when there isn't a dozen people to help? One method is to just add more cameras. The main shot can have wide and close versions, from two cameras side by side. So it wasn't an operator that changed the shot, it was a second phone/camera, right next to the first one. Multiple cameras from a side view. It's up to the producer to zig and zag their way on the switcher to get the right shot at the right time.
The other option to solo producers is to leverage PTZ cameras. A good controller can have you moving between cameras and preset shots almost as fast you can switch them. In fact, back in the day, I even remember a camera control/switching system that used a handheld game controller to let a single person jump between moving three cameras, and switching them, on the same controller. Find someone proficient with this little kit and they were doing the work of 4 people and making it look easy. Even with today's separate controllers, a producer can be on a wide shot, and tell camera 2 to get the close shot, and then switch to it when they see it's ready.
PTZ cameras can deliver a variety of shots to the viewer, and more importantly, with a good zoom, they can deliver what a bunch of somewhat distant static shots cannot: connection to the players. This develops story. We feel for this person or that person. We see in their eyes whether they're going to try and steal a base, etc. We become emotionally involved. You see this a lot with broadcast productions, since they can have multiple cameras zoom in tight on a quarterback, and the director can pick from several great shots where you can literally see the quarterback sweat.
It's a bit harder for the solo producer to manage multiple PTZ cameras but today's tracking can help to deliver the shots. Sometimes getting close to an actual operated camera. But where PTZs still fall behind is anticipation. They can't know that the player on the right of the screen is going to break left, because they are against the sideline. It's hard even for human operators. This is why certain ops get known for their skills at getting great shots. Directors will always want them in the same spot. Their success comes both from skill, and a lot of experience anticipating the moves of the players. PTZ cameras can help provide a variety of views, but they're not going to replace a decade of sideline camera experience. Not yet anyway.
So, for now, more static cameras can provide more points of view, giving the solo producer more variety to deliver to the viewer. PTZ cameras can provide greater impact from less points of view. If you're a solo producer, how you want to play it, is up to you.
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