Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Taking a Different Perspective on Dehli's Commonwealth Games Coverage

The Boy and I sat down to watch some of the Dehli Commonwealth Games last night. At first I thought that the producer's coverage of the gymnastics was quite amateurish as the camera kept swapping between athletes and even the commentators were lost as focus was not maintained on any athlete or apparatus. Then I thought at the Olympics coverage where they definitely focus on particular athletes or Australian performances. Then I kinda got to thinking that perhaps the producer is a sports lover and wants to see everything that is going on. "Hey, there's some Malaysian dude doing the vaulting horse. Let's watch that for a second." Or, "Wow, look at the Indian doing his high bar work. That's worth a look." And, "Some Pommie just smacked his face on the pommel horse. Let's see that again." Maybe the viewer wins out with a producer like that. Can't understand why we went to the view of the whole stadium so often though.

Who is the most important person at the pool? The swimmers? No. The starting marshall? No. The pool attendant? Absolutely. Just before the men's 4x100m freestyle relay there was a heap of muck in the pool. Not sure if it was flowers or bird droppings. Did the producer cut to a commercial break to save face? No way. We saw everything. They held up the race whilst the pool attendant cleaned the pool. When about to start again he came back with an extended pole to have another go. He didn't look to embarrassed. Job well done I think.

Good to see that the Games are nowhere near as elitist as the Olympics.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You must see it all down to the nitty gritty ha ha! Gil