NFL vs everything else

[rocky1138]

so a short question which will most likely get a lot of long answers, nonetheless...

why is it that local sports guys care so much about being able to shoot their own NFL coverage, but are fine w/ using network feeds for NBA, MLB, NHL, Nascar, etc. ?

[NEWSSHOOTER3]

People do local sports? Why? No, no, I'm kidding... kinda... :rolleyes:

Now... in other news, that actually has an effect on people's lives... I have NO idea why that is? Or, more importantly, if that's really a valid question because I have shot nearly all of those things for the sports monkeys...

[jdaunt]

I think there's a couple answers to this. First and foremost, Overtime. A lot of the time the people shooting these games are M-F workers who get to come in and get overtime to shoot them.

Also, the sports guys like to have clean feeds of things and, depending on who's shooting, their own video. They also like to be able to focus on certain players sometimes, if someone local is on the other team or they have plans to do a story with someone specific at some point during the season.

And I think just because until recently we've always been able to, and people HATE change.

The NBA we can shoot during the regular season, our station does once in awhile, usually when Charlie Bell or MoPete come to the Palace, but sometimes for other big games too. The others I don't think we've ever tried.

[Clutch City]

Overtime is the least of the reason why I prefer to shoot NFL highlights. I work weekends, as do most sports shooters so it's really only a couple of extra hours for that Sunday. The travel is nice, I guess some think of that as a perk, but often times things can get stressful on Sundays depending on editing situations, feed times, flights home, etc, so the trips aren't all gravy.

As mentioned above we like to have the low angle footage because it is clean and free of the endless graphics the networks shove down our throats. People who don't like sports or don't work in a sports department don't seem to understand this.

Yes, we DO use network feeds for our primary highlights. But we prefer to use our stuff for the many sidebar stories and features we do. The networks aren't going to isolate shots very often on players that aren't stars or aren't catching, throwing or running with the ball. We have an offensive lineman who comes in our studio every week. Do you think the networks are going to focus on him blocking for us? The only time you'll see a good shot of him by the networks is when he gets called for holding.

It is the same for the NBA. We shoot those games when nothing else is going on at night just so we can have clean video of isolated shots of certain players. We'll use the highlights we shoot to cover soundbites or feature stories down the road.

And contrary to popular belief, we CAN and DO shoot MLB games for isos off an on when we want to. Obviously baseball for highlights sake can't be shot well with just one camera, so we'll go down next to the still photogs and shoot a few innings every now and then isolating on the pitcher and other position players. We've used shots like that a lot when players are traded or whatever.