Paintball videos compared to other sports

[barrel break]

I dont generally buy sports videos dues to a lack of money, but whenever i go into a store, or some other place, they've always got em playing. Be it a snowboarding store, kiteboarding, or paintball. Lately I've been looking at either cereal killerz or eurotour.

I've noticed that paintball video's are pretty subpar compared to others. I realize that the crews have nowhere near the experience of Mack dawg, or Standard films, but I think there is a lot of room for improvement. I mean, seriously, watch Optigrab, or Any of the TB series (hell, even the early ones), stadium, Amp, one of the grenade crews videos - Full metal edges, OR Technical difficulties (Greatest snowboarding video ever!). Then go watch 300 FPS, or some NPPL video.

They seem to lack a sense of balance, a balance between the playing, the lifestyle, the essence. Then there is the editing, and sheer genious of the filming in snowboarding videos, we need to attract some talent. Exampe no.1 is Optigrab by standard films for editing.

The ones that I see on the right track don't even make full movies, or charge! DC productions, those videos are freakin awesome.
T&O?



(Maybe I just havent seen enough full PB videos?)

[MadPSIence]

i find other sports videos show more highlights and big plays...

you seem to miss out on them in PB videos because everything just goes by in a blurr and blends together. it's almost boring to watch. I don't think I've seen a good pb vid yet, and I've watched a few.

[barrel break]

Have you downloaded the DC productions stuff? If not, look for em on the PBvids forum, great stuff, makes me feel like I'm at the tourney having fun.

[mandatory]

i agree technical difficulties is a must see. same with decade, welcome to hell, all the TWS videos (skating and snow), second hand smoke, all the landspeed/cky vids,....havent seen any paintbal videos but from whati have seen in the shops and on tv, they are boring as hell. They need a blimp style overhead view, as well as multiple cameras at multiple angles. I mean, everyones hiding from eachother. theres a filming problem right there.

[MrWallen]

also, all those vids are of extreme "trick-based" sports. paintball is a team based sport, so you have to shoot it completely differently than something like snowboarding or skateboarding.

[Phrontman]

Alright, I agree with you in that there's something lacking in the quality dept for these videos. But, you also have to remeber that Snowboarders, skaters etc get paid to be in videos. Pro boarders take weeks on end to go board famous places, huge backside runs, what have you, all for the video. If it sells well, the company makes money off it, and the boarder may get a royalty. depending on the contract. There is no such thing in paintball. The only vidoe that had anything close to quality was Push. Not sure who produced it, or even remeber the team it focused on, but It was legit, from what i recall. If a company like DYE, SP, AGD, Kingman, whoever, wants to pay a crew to follow a team(s) around and document their lifestlye, their practices, their power plays etc...then its going to cost them a pretty penny, and at that, they'd be taking a risk in that field. So, this is what you have to consider when judging a Pb film. Who is the crew getting paid by, are the teams getting paid, and finally, the video's action will probably mostly be shot in DV, not film(many snowboarding.skating vids are 16mm). DV is alot cheaper than film, but is also not as clean, warm, etc...So, while we complain about the poor quality of paintball vids...would you buy one that was quality, instead of buying paint, a hop up, or air for your gun? Would you be willing to lay down 20-40$ per dvd? If yes, then theres a market out there where someone could make a pretty penny. (also known as a "niche")

[Tyger]

< selfpromotion > http://www.webdogradio.us/video/roadtrip/ < /selfpromotion >

It's not a matter of "it can't be done", it's a matter of you need to put time, effort, and actually have a real lifestyle to film. Paintball borrows so much from other sports that it doesn't really have it's own identity at the high levels. You have people who act the way they think they should or they know they can, but you never see beyond the superficial front. That and you need a heavy respect for the randomness of life, and what it will throw at you.

A lot of paintball video people will spend hours disceting game footage, but they'll spend 5 minutes tossing in the part where the team has a meeting or dinner. It's the producer / editor / director, and not the sport, that's to blame.

Something else to consider, the talent. When a company makes a video, it's basically a catalog of thier products thrown over the shoulders of the athletes. The athletes are making money, the company makes money, and so on. A few of the high-end guys can do their own videos, but for the most part they sell an image in the videos. It's a concept of "Branding". "If you wanna be cool like these guys, you need to wear our clothing. That makes you cool." And people buy it. It's part of the contract that the talent will do "X" number of videos in a year with "Company B", and showcase what they do.

Oh, and BTW, there's plans afoot for another WDR video like that.

-Tyger

[ApexAZ]

web dog radio owns

Omg that reminds me. There's new tip clips up!

[barrel break]

DV is alot cheaper than film, but is also not as clean, warm, etc...So, while we complain about the poor quality of paintball vids...would you buy one that was quality, instead of buying paint, a hop up, or air for your gun? Would you be willing to lay down 20-40$ per dvd? If yes, then theres a market out there where someone could make a pretty penny. (also known as a "niche")

*Ahem* They already cost an average of $35.

Tyger- I enjoyed the roadtrip series as that was coming out, lots of fun. I don't beleive it has anything to do with how paintball is a team sport, etc. It can be done.

[Evil Bob]

We had a sweedish news team come and film us playing in 1984, they complained that it was really hard to follow the entire action that was taking place, so they did the best they could just following small groups but usually ended up focusing on a single person at a time. We were also in the thick of California's redwood forest, so that didn't make their job any easier.

The very same problem still exists today when trying to shoot paintball video and that there is no single focus in the game like there is in football or basketball, those sports have only one ball in the game that the cameras can easily follow. Paintball is very different in that each individual has their own focus, plays come down to the individual level so to cover it all as players are doing their own thing, they're not going after a single game ball like in football or basketball. To cover it all, you really need at least a camera per person, but to show the whole thing in perspective, you're back down to individual shots.

Golf has a similar problem, as you can't show everyone at the same time as they're all over the place, but it solution is alot easier as each player is only using a single game ball. When you're focused on the single entity, you can easily track their progress. Paintball's problem is that there is a ton of stuff in the air being exchanged between players, no single focus. This is probably a major reason why the folks shooting the show on WGN have pared the number of players per team down to 3, makes it alot easier to shoot and follow in both realtime and post production if you're working with a fewer number of cameras. I can only imagine the logistical nightmare of being handed 50+ rolls of film for a single game and being told to make some sense of it.

Even with a camera on everyone in the game, we're done to the problem of tracking the paint, paintballs are microscopic in the camera's eye which compounds the problem of using a wide angle shot as people wont be able to see what's happening other then players moving around on the field. Again, we're stuck zooming in and focusing on individuals.

What would really enhance both the shootability and the watchability of the game is if the balls were computer trackable like they do to the puck in hocky on TV, some sort of UV reflective paint would do it and computer enhancement so it shows only the stuff on a person and in the air moving else the field and bunkers would be covered with it. Players could have motion cap markers on them to deliniate their boundaries for detection, done right it could be done real time and not after the fact.

-Evil Bob

[mandatory]

i would like to see a game where there was a camera man for each player and you saw the game from start to finish from each players perspective, so you can fallow the individuals through the game and then put the game togather while you watch each verson of the same game. like a terinteno pulp fiction type thing.

[MrWallen]

i forget which video it was, but one i saw was formatted so that on the right side of the screen it had an overheard graphical presentation of the field, with the actual footage on the left. whenever the camera changed focus an animation would play on the left to look as if it was zooming in on the part of the field where the action was taking place.

it made following what was going on a lot easier.