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Great Work

Entry 833, on 2008-08-15 at 22:12:49 (Rating 1, News)

For various reasons I have been watching some sport on TV recently. The main reason is the Olympic Games, of course, but I am also currently staying in a motel which has the Sky sport channel which has some interesting stuff on it. So what am I going to comment on? The skill of the competitors? The drama of sport? Or what? Actually its the brilliant technical camera work of the teams recording these sports.

The best example was the Olympic kayak slalom competition. This is a sport I had never seen before, but it is really entertaining to watch and the camera work was just superb. They must have been using high speed cameras because the slow motion was crystal clear and very smooth and really showed the skills of the kayakers. The British commentary team was also good which is a nice change form some of the inane commentary I have heard elsewhere.

I was watching the pole vault earlier today and the camera angles were well chosen to demonstrate the skills in this sport too. And the underwater shots in the swimming are also effective. Whatever else you say about the Games, I think the technical brilliance of the camera work has made it more interesting for me.

Another sport which I thought translated well to TV was air racing which I watched on Sky Sport earlier today. This involves small aerobatic aircraft flying a tight course through large "gates" at high speed and amazing G forces. During the half Cuban maneuver, where they reverse direction, the pilots can pull more than 11 G forces! The material filmed from inside the cockpit was incredible.

So call me a techno-geek if you wish, but I like to watch for the great work from the people who provide the technical support for big events. Sometimes their contributions are just as impressive as the stars that other people see there.

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