Rambling thoughts on the new olympic final format

[peterz]

Is it really true that ISSF video has improved? I tried to watch a lot of the coverage of the Korea World Cup and gave up because it was utterly boring. The production values were lower than a high school show.

Shooting takes too long to cover much more than the last two shots of a final live. OK, live with it; it's a fact. Now envision a major network like NBC in the US trying to give good coverage. Several cameras mounted above and to the side or in front, filming expressions on faces, close up. Get a closeup of the trigger squeeze on, say, AP. Show just how subtle a movement it is. Anybody who ever tried a shooting gallery will understand.

With the air disciplines it's hard to see even when a shooter fires in ISSF TV; all you see is the gun lowered. Blah. But you could use long lenses on triggers, even on muzzles. Take those high speed cameras that Top Shot uses to show bullets in flight, and use that "live".

The firearm events do have a bit more happening what with a little muzzle flash, so maybe they'll get more coverage.

If the focus is on the electronic scoring monitor, let it be there and let the audience see the shot show up (and maybe get creative and show the group being created as one shot overlays another), not just individual shot holes. Doesn't matter if the shooters aren't allowed to see that; it's all done in the production trailer.

But don't judge the potential for shooting as sports video until somebody who understands sports programming has had a go at it. Of course there will be "up close & personal interviews" and shots of the physical training and maybe even of the manufacture and testing of a new gun, tips on how it's held and how a shooter adjusts a stock or grip. All interspersed with pictures of the firing line as the match develops.

Oh, I just realized, you don't even have to change the format of the finals much at all. Just tape and produce all the rest before hand, get the timing right, and schedule the cut to live TV with shot 9 of 10 and follow through live for those shots (yes, you would continue with live close ups of faces, holds and so on.

I was embarrassed for the presenter on the ISSF stuff I watched every time the almost-static cam panned up at the audience and focused in on a BigWig and she had to say how thrilled she was that the ISSF president and vice president "and their wives" had showed up for the competition. Totally dull TV. I do realize that the ISSF doesn't have the money to go in for all of this, but not even to try to get past a single camera at the end of the line showing a group of foreshortened shooters gives the wrong impression.

Enough of my rant about what could be done for London if only somebody wants to try. I never knew that you could do as much to make shooting interesting until I watched Top Gun, being prepared to watch paint dry, and being caught as much by the shooting as by the psychological games.

[Spencer]

...Enough of my rant about what could be done for London if only somebody wants to try...

Olympics TV is by the broadcast team, not by the ISSF

[peterz]

Olympics TV is by the broadcast team, not by the ISSF

Well, of course. But somebody needs to think a little about what broadcast TV could do. The ISSF may have done so, but you wouldn't know it to see what they put out.

I've dealt with the media on a lot of things; they frequently have to be led to a good story and told how to retell it. For better or worse, that's part of the ISSF's job along with the IOC.

[jacques b gros]

Richard wrote

"Well you're sort of right but lets look at something like golf which is extremely popular on tv, play is slow, repetitive, takes place on a hugh golf course, plays out over 4 days. It has a lot to do with marketing, TV makes golf interesting they spend multi millions of dollars so that viewers can watch the event, from the flight of the ball to the reactions of the player."

You got it right: needs a lot of money to show shooting decently on TV, and still you won't have the ball flying, bouncing on the green and missing the hole by half an inch...

And there is nothing wrong with ISSF trying to improve the TV transmissions, I think it improved a lot but there is a lot of ground to cover!

I complain is when they start printing rule changes in January that take effect in the next day. The printed version of the rules became useless, at least the Portuguese version I made for the Brazilian NGO. Maybe we should use I-pads or something like that, online with ISSF. They change it, we see in real time...

[john bickar]

While I don't really give a darn about what rapid fire does

I'm hoping this new finals format is just the last nail in the coffin of rapid

Come now, this isn't really the way you feel about rapid fire, Eric. I know it. You know it. Rapid fire knows it.

What's rapid fire ever done to you? Why do you want to kill it, huh?

Rapid fire wants to give you a big ol' hug.

[Hemmers]

I personally can't see a shooter holding back to just make the finals, for starters what score is just enough to make the finals. The top of the world cup rankings is pretty similar (top twenty) depending on who shows up to the event, I really don't see the top changing much.

Basically you're now shooting two matches now a 60 shot match and then the top 8 get to shoot a 10 shot match. The best shooters is still going to win it's not like they are changing it into a judging sport

I don't think anyone is suggesting someone would hold back in qualification. But the point is that as you say, by levelling the qualification scores, you're effectively breaking it into 2 matches. The problem with that is that I can shoot a ton. Dead easy. I did it several times over the winter. The finallists will have got to where they are by having a 99+ average over the match (for prone anyway).

What I can't do is reliably string 6 tons together consecutively, or indeed 7 if you count the final.
Someone shouldn't be able to win just because they get a late wind and shoot a decent string. It needs to be a good string on the end of a series of great strings.

Well you're sort of right but lets look at something like golf which is extremely popular on tv, play is slow, repetitive, takes place on a hugh golf course, plays out over 4 days. It has a lot to do with marketing, TV makes golf interesting they spend multi millions of dollars so that viewers can watch the event, from the flight of the ball to the reactions of the player.

What have we get in shooting usually, if it's on TV you get to see the back of a shooter.

I do have to say ISSF TV has made leaps and bounds in their coverage since when they first started video coverage.

I think enthusiasm and a Woodsian fist-pump would be quite difficult from the prone position. Plus it's a different rhythm. You fire a shot and immediately start the cycle for the next shot, unlike Golf where you take a shot and then wait for those around you to play their shots, then walk or drive down the course to your balls. There's time for celebration.


However, I wonder if something like HawkEye used in Tennis and other ball-games could be adapted to add a visual analysis element to it.
Prohibitively expensive I suspect as bullets travel much faster than balls and you'd be into the realms of radar rather than optical systems.
However, you could use a simpler system that simply animates a trajectory from the barrel to the fall of shot (as indicated by the scoring computers), which would provide a similar visual experience.

I gather there was a system proposed with cameras forward of the firing line so you could get a split-screen of their face and the target. I think the rule about blinder dimensions is precisely so the face is visible to such a system (although wasn't there an ongoing lawsuit over the ISSF not paying someone for the IP on that system or something? All sounded very messy and then went quiet).

Fundamentally though, rifle and pistol will struggle just by the nature of what they are. There is more scope with clays and biathlon thanks to the moving nature and immediate visible feedback form the target systems.

[Sparks]

What are the alternative ideas to make the sport even remotely interesting to spectators?

I've said it before and I'll say it again - we need to go high-tech here. Forget blinder rules and presenting shooters and all that malarky, it doesn't fix the central problem, which is that the audience in every other TV sport can see the sport as it happens - you can watch the ball in golf, you can see the swing, you can spot an error as it happens. Same in football, boxing, everything. But shooting is too fast and too subtle for that so all the audience sees is someone standing still and then there's a quiet pop and they put down the gun.

However, if you strap a noptel/rika/scatt to the barrel (and with the new wireless models, that's even easier) and put the trace up on the screen as well as the electronic target display that we see up there now, you show the audience what was really going on. That, some novel camera angles, and a commentator who actually knows one end of the rifle from the other, and you have an approach that is at least worth trying before you go changing the rules on kit for everyone...

[jacques b gros]

[quote=

However, if you strap a noptel/rika/scatt to the barrel (and with the new wireless models, that's even easier) and put the trace up on the screen as well as the electronic target display that we see up there now, you show the audience what was really going on. That, some novel camera angles, and a commentator who actually knows one end of the rifle from the other, and you have an approach that is at least worth trying before you go changing the rules on kit for everyone...[/quote]

Now, this is new!

I'm sure there is a way to do it without any attachments to the gun. Lasers, infrared, some way to follow and display the same info from one of the top corners of the shooting position.

Would cost a bunch if it becomes a marriage with ISSF, with a single supplier. Better use it in the Olympics only.

[Sparks]

Would cost a bunch if it becomes a marriage with ISSF, with a single supplier. Better use it in the Olympics only.

9 firing points outfitted with Rika/Noptel/Scatt (8+hospital bay) is between €10,000 and €20,000 (say $15,000-$30,000).
That's less than the cost of the electronic targets for those lanes.

But more to the point, it's a miniscule fraction of the cost of replacing all the existing kit out there if you change the clothing rules.

And it looks at the TV problem directly, which so far as I can tell, none of the other measures ISSF have tried do.

[jacques b gros]

9 firing points outfitted with Rika/Noptel/Scatt (8+hospital bay) is between €10,000 and €20,000 (say $15,000-$30,000).
That's less than the cost of the electronic targets for those lanes.

But more to the point, it's a miniscule fraction of the cost of replacing all the existing kit out there if you change the clothing rules.

And it looks at the TV problem directly, which so far as I can tell, none of the other measures ISSF have tried do.

That's true. the problem is that the scoring system is ridiculously expensive, should not be used as a parameter. For something with the cost of development in the past. they should cut the price in 3 and rake in the increased volume. There would be no support, however. If they don't have real English speaking technicians for the present volume, imagine increasing it.

Anyway, your idea is the best so far. Just let's use something simple and cheap. The world is full of motion detection systems that can be adapted for this use. And something that is not attached to the gun.

[Eric U]

John,

No, I'm not hoping for the demise of rapid fire. Just this stupid finals format.

You can't strap anything (Scatt, Rika, Noptel) to the barrel for a live shoot...it changes the way the rifle shoots. It would possibly negate the 10's of thousands of dollars spent on matching ammunition to gun. The ISSF did in fact want this incorporated after 2008, but thankfully that was shot down. Attaching something to the stock wouldn't bother me, but the added weight would certainly change the balance and weight of pistols.

Eric U

[Sparks]

No offense Eric, but if the choice is to make life awkward for the top twenty to thirty shooters in the world or all the shooters in the world, subsidised/sponsered or not...
...well, it's a pretty easy choice.
Assuming it works. And you'd hope someone would at least test any idea like this before making it part of the rules...


...not that they did so for blinders, rules on walking or any of the other silly stuff we've seen of late :(

[Hemmers]

Would cost a bunch if it becomes a marriage with ISSF, with a single supplier. Better use it in the Olympics only.

9 firing points outfitted with Rika/Noptel/Scatt (8+hospital bay) is between €10,000 and €20,000 (say $15,000-$30,000).
That's less than the cost of the electronic targets for those lanes.

But more to the point, it's a miniscule fraction of the cost of replacing all the existing kit out there if you change the clothing rules.

And it looks at the TV problem directly, which so far as I can tell, none of the other measures ISSF have tried do.

What happens when the SCATT trace disagrees with the signalled score from the target? I see appeals and arguments over which system is right and who actually won.


In seriousness though, some sort of integrated system that could provide a trace in addition to a score/plot from the target system would be great (although yeah, it'll need to be on the stock not the barrel). I don't know if adding a cardio element to give a pulse trace would be imposing too much on the finalists, but it would certainly add another element to the analysis.

I have to agree on the bit about the presentation of athletes. That's what the stats are for (appropriate visual effects are even available in iMovie for heavens sakes). I think I did see them in use in the Changwon 3P final, but the point is we don't need the presentation of finalists as well. Visuals plus commentary is more than adequate.

The commentator can cover that without the athletes having to down tools, turn around, etc which IMO disrupts the pace and stretches out what is quite a long event anyway.

I think the Changwon 3P final was listed at just over 30minutes on YouTube. Averaging the coverage at 3 minutes per shot is possibly one of the single biggest turnoffs. It's far too slow and no broadcaster will dedicate that much time to a single final (unless someone from a small country has made it into the final and it's their only credible finalist / medalist such that there is substantial interest from their nation's broadcaster).

[Sparks]

What happens when the SCATT trace disagrees with the signalled score from the target? I see appeals and arguments over which system is right and who actually won.

I see drama.
Well, annoying melodrama actually, but if you watch any Reality TV, you know that that's their bread and butter - even when it's a reality shooting tv show (seriously, there's an order of magnitude more bitchiness on Top Shot than there is actual shooting...).

'course the "the target is always right, the trace is just for the punters" rule wouldn't be hard to implement :D

In seriousness though, some sort of integrated system that could provide a trace in addition to a score/plot from the target system would be great (although yeah, it'll need to be on the stock not the barrel). I don't know if adding a cardio element to give a pulse trace would be imposing too much on the finalists, but it would certainly add another element to the analysis.

Well, the competitors already have to pee in a cup and let WADA know where they are at all times during the year, so a heart monitor strap should be precious little compared to that. How you'd get the trigger pressure sensor wired up I'm not sure.
But all these are engineering points, not unsurmountable problems....

I think the Changwon 3P final was listed at just over 30minutes on YouTube. Averaging the coverage at 3 minutes per shot is possibly one of the single biggest turnoffs. It's far too slow and no broadcaster will dedicate that much time to a single final (unless someone from a small country has made it into the final and it's their only credible finalist / medalist such that there is substantial interest from their nation's broadcaster).

Not to mention, we've never really developed an infographical way of showing the progress of finalists through a finals showing who overtook whom and when.
Without that, it's all just a table of numbers really. And you don't get the sense of how far someone is ahead of someone just from the finals results.
There's a fair bit of work for Tufte in there :D

[Hemmers]

Not to mention, we've never really developed an infographical way of showing the progress of finalists through a finals showing who overtook whom and when.
Without that, it's all just a table of numbers really. And you don't get the sense of how far someone is ahead of someone just from the finals results.
There's a fair bit of work for Tufte in there :D

That exists - I remember at the British Open one year they'd got a projector rigged up and the system had the finalists with their scores, and swapped their positions when people overtook each other (graphically moving them up and down the list, not just changing a number labelled "Position" as I've seen with functional but obviously less pretty excel sheets).

Looked a bit basic - no gucchi graphics - it was fairly straightforward to follow, which is the most important thing. For Suis, the back-end is certainly already there. Just needs a shiny front-end to display the data with nice transparancies and stuff like you see for the soccer and rugby.

[mhkhung]

Kinect guys! No attachment!

[Sparks]

Not to mention, we've never really developed an infographical way of showing the progress of finalists through a finals showing who overtook whom and when.
Without that, it's all just a table of numbers really. And you don't get the sense of how far someone is ahead of someone just from the finals results.
There's a fair bit of work for Tufte in there :D

That exists - I remember at the British Open one year they'd got a projector rigged up and the system had the finalists with their scores, and swapped their positions when people overtook each other (graphically moving them up and down the list, not just changing a number labelled "Position" as I've seen with functional but obviously less pretty excel sheets).

Looked a bit basic - no gucchi graphics - it was fairly straightforward to follow, which is the most important thing. For Suis, the back-end is certainly already there. Just needs a shiny front-end to display the data with nice transparancies and stuff like you see for the soccer and rugby.

That's not quite what I meant though - that shows you someone taking over as they take over, but if you want something that summarises the finals shot-by-shot, showing who took over when, we don't really have any standard way of doing that at the moment.

[Sparks]

Kinect guys! No attachment!

Nice idea, don't think it has the resolution.

[Colin]

For a start just get someone who knows what the hell is going on and can pronounce the shooters names and which country the come from.
The person doing the commentary at the moment seems to know zero about shooting so how they came to be doing it I don't know.The 3p final in Korea was made a whole lot better when Jonathan Hammond was talking, at least he knew what was going on

[Tim S]

For a start just get someone who knows what the hell is going on and can pronounce the shooters names and which country the come from.
The person doing the commentary at the moment seems to know zero about shooting so how they came to be doing it I don't know.The 3p final in Korea was made a whole lot better when Jonathan Hammond was talking, at least he knew what was going on

Quite true, it's often annoyed me when the presenter, Hilary Russell (?), announces Rajmond Debevec of Sylvania, rather than Slovenia. Yuri Sukhorukov is a frequent stumbling block.

Tim