Nick, I think XBall is better because you have natural breaks in the action every 30-90 seconds instead of every 240. It makes the match more digestable. I also disagree that every point is the same; the beauty of XBall is teams need to respond to the way each other are playing and that happens over the course of a match. 7-man doesn't give a chance for adjustment, and thus also doesn't give a chance to comment about any adjustments. Case in point with the NPPL show, breakouts are generally distilled down to "good" or "bad". Would be nice if they talked about - and showed - how teams broke out and what players got shot going through what lanes, and more importantly, how the team changes it the next point?
Good Xball coaches will have a set of plays and change them based on what the opposing team is doing. That's definitely not "the same every point".
I'm not going to say 5 is the right number of players though. It might be 6 or 7. Or it might be 5 now and 7 later after the sport is more established.
Shamu:
80% of the cameras need to NOT be on booms/platforms. You do want a camera up high over the 50 and over each end of the field, but you also need at least as many, if not more, cameras on the ground in the hands of cameramen. These cameras they stick 15 feet off the ground on the endlines arn't high enough to let you see player position and arn't low enough to let you see any action - same with that boom cam they like to put in the corners or over the snake. These guys think paintball is like other sports, where they can be lateral to the direction of motion and catch opponents in the same frame, and it's not. Opponents are often 50+ feet away from each other, you have to be behind players to put both advesaries in the same frame, and even on close bunker moves you really want to be seeing the player coming (or going), not just see the run-by.
The setup they had in Miami, which was close to the setup they had for filming the NXL, was one camera WAAAAAAY up off the back right corner of the field (that's the angle where they do all the displays with the crosshairs on all the players, the 'blimp shot' basically), one behind and offset each of the starting stations, boom cameras in two corners, and a boom camera on the 50 above the snake.
The only camera there that is mildly useful is the boom camera. In other sports, the 'blimp shot' camera is used to show how a play develops - this works in football because the camera can zoom in to the line of scrimmage or for soccer or basketball the immediate area of the ball, but is useless for paintball because the action is EVERYWHERE, so you can't zoom in really, you ahve to show the whole field. But when you do that on standard definition television, the players are so small that you can't see them (which was covered up with those crosshair graphics).
The fixed endline cams are great for filming shots on goal, basket attempts, or fieldgoal attempts, but again, useless for paintball, as none of those happen. Same deal with the corner cams - you get most of your hot action in basketball, soccer and football close to the endline. Paintball is the exact opposite - most of your hot action happens at the middle of the field.
What you CAN film from the endline is where the players are shooting (or who is shooting at them), both because you're using the same perspective as the player, and because when you're close to the direction of paintball flight, it's a lot easier for the cameras to pick up the paintballs.
But in order to make that work, you ahve to actually be behind the player and at the player's level. When you put your cameras on fixed platforms 15 feet in the air in one spot behind the endline or stuck in the corners, they can't get where they need to be, behind the players.
Another problem with 7-man (as it's currently played) is the field is shaped wrong. 150x125 is better than 180x100, too hard to get a left-to-right view of the whole field when it's nearly twice as long as it is wide. (Yes, I realize every other sport has fields in those dimensions but every other sport confines most of the CURRENT action to only a small portion of the length, which is not true for paintball.)
Anyway, Missy's "extremely wise" TV executives havn't figured out yet that it's a mistake to set up your film crew for a paintball match like you would for football/basketball/soccer.
Again, all I'm saying is at some point in trying to accomodate TV TV takes over and Paintball becomes form fit to TV's requirements. You say it's not an issue, I say it's a slippery slope particularly when the peeps making the decisions desperately want Paintball to be on TV. And, no, it's not a condemnation as I understand the impulse completely but wanted or not there is some responsiblity in all this for what becomes of top level tourney paintball with those driving the push to TV. (And I'm certainly not leaving the 'other guys' out of the equation.)
