Big props for Brooks Hansons putting on the Michigan Ekiden today. I think this could be a great long term event.
The LRC recap pointed out how the broadcast wasn't ideal because there was very little footage of the race. Live footage in mobile events isn't easy.
They had a cool drone overheard at the start/finish, but the rain wiped out the other cameras they were going to have apparently. Sounds like those cameras would have been stationary. So most of the time you saw just the announcers announcing and no one running.
I commend Brooks Hansons for putting on this event and for streaming it. One of the side effects of COVID is a lot of meets have decided to stream things themselves and generally I've been impressed with the quality.
Streaming a road-race however is a completely different level of difficult as to do it right you're going to need mobile cameras I think. Correct me if I 'm wrong.
Even if there had been like 5 stationary cameras on the course, how much would we have seen? Not that much right? Some might argue an Ekiden race like this where after leg 1, one runner was out front running by themselves isn't that interesting to watch anyway.
However with a little crowd-sourcing I bet we can come up with tips to make broadcasts like this even better. Are there any cheap and effective ways to have mobile cameras of a road race? Obviously without spending a ton of money you're not going to get a TV like marathon major broadcast, but een those broadcasts with all the budgets in the world make mistakes all the time with not catching the major break, etc. I'd trust the Hanson brothers to cover the race better than a TV crew .
I think a lot of us would rather see a non-perfect solution to let us see 90% of the action rather than stationary cameras that only let us see glimpses. The drone coverage today gave me hope you all would know of some inexpensive ways to do a pretty good mobile broadcast.
Let's hear any idea you've got. What about just using an iphone and some sort of gimbal? The guy in the video below is just holding his hand out the window and it looks decent to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6H7EkcUEuU
Just as big a concern are ways to make sure you have a high speed cell connection.
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If you've got tips for track meets as well might as well include them too.