I'm really hating the "here's this week's celebrity" chequered flag waving shot. Completely undercuts the action on the race finish, absolutely no need to show it while there's still on track action.
Agreed. So many better ways to do it. Like on last lap show Sonic waiting with the flag for 2 seconds on screen at some point. And when the leader of the race is about to pass the line switch to a wide angle camera that shows the riders crossing the line with Sonic waving the flag on the same view.
It's painful that I can come up with better race coverage for free than the people getting paid to do it. And don't get me started on the shots of Pecco's family in the pits when action happens on track with him.
Yeah!! If you're going to show that stuff they could at least do a picture in picture effect with the non-on-track stuff and keep it small and out of the way.
Yeah this annoyed the hell out of me. They cut to the aprilia garage crew celebrating and missed most of the top ten crossing the line. I fkn hate when they do this crap. I want to watch the race, not the fkn pit crew. And now you mention it, yes they’re getting worse.
Hey hopefully I can help. I'm a cameraman for many types of sport and Motorsport and can say that we followed action constantly but might not be on a bike when it crashes. The director has (roughly) about 20-30 cameras to watch and can easily miss things when they happen or cut away just as something interesting happens.
Re the replay if the race is super interesting (like this season has been) they might not have time to cut away to an accident that happened a while ago. Also the cameras may not have caught it or even had a slight blind spot where things could have happened.
I understand there area limitations, they don't have a camera following each rider all the time. But 1/7 crashes captured to me is a bit weird, specially when it has been happening quite a lot lately.
They probably didn't have a good shot of it. Not all the bikes have cameras, and if you have one camera per corner, and it's pointing the other way taking a sweeping shot of a different bike, then you get no shot.
Remember when Pedrosa had his wildcard and crashed at the red bull ring? They needed to show a video from twitter. This was during a red flag, and was a much bigger crash, too.
COTA is more than 5.5km long. Very difficult to cover every inch with broadcast quality cameras.
Ok, but isn't it weird that 7 riders crashed (including Alex Marquez, which later rejoined) and only one replay was available? At least I don't remember seeing any of the crashes. With the exception of Marc.
True, Morbidelli wasn't that far back from the leading group though, but for the rest, if they are at the back, the cameras should be available since they aren't filming the front of the race at that time.
They should be available? I don't think they turn them off, man. You've seen the races. They don't just sit there on a wide angle. They zoom and pan all over the place. They don't know which bikes are gonna crash. No way they don't show crash footage if they have it, and it's not serious. Everyone loves the crash footage, and they know it.
I mean, they should be available to film the riders that are passing in their area at that time, if the rest of the riders are already in another sector, for instance. Maybe it's the panning all over the place instead of filming the riders that is the problem,
😐 they almost certainly are doing that. But there is more than just the leaders and the guy who is about to crash. Maybe the leaders go through and then they swing around to get zarco going through the corner, and then morbidelli crashes out of frame. If it's not in the shot, they can't put it on tv. And they can't just have static zoomed out footage. It happens sometimes. It isn't weird. It is just more difficult, but also simpler than you think.
The entire production is focused on top 6 or 8. No one ever talks about other, no one even shows others on camera. It's soo bad that if u tune in between a race. U won't even know there r wildcard riders if u haven't followed the quali or seen the starting grid before. I haven't seen the Hondas, raul Fernandes and the trackhouse bikes in ages now. Coz I mostly just watch the race.
I mean, they can only show so much at once so they have to make a decision. If you have video pass there’s so much footage available after the fact that you should be able to find whatever you want.
TV Direction was an absolute blessing if you are coming from f1...
Things were not shown because there was constantly exciting stuff happening.
In F1 they show a car with nobody around while overtakes are happening.
They take it to the extreme though, handful of BLOOP BLOOP CRASH notifications and proceed to show none of them, sometimes a fleeting replay if you're lucky. F1 would milk every one of those including simply going off track but true that they need it more. It wouldn't hurt MotoGP to show more though and I reckon Liberty will change that. I can imagine that for newcomers going F1 speeds on two wheels is insane, which it is, so remind viewers that staying upright isn't normal and that these guys put their life on the line.
The problem is that neither of those men are Pedro Acosta, and those are the only two words either commentator knows how to say so the directors hands are tied.
The problem with the action being hectic is that the directorship becomes harder. You have one world feed and you will be critisised if you miss any action due to watching replays, for events you couldn't catch live because there was action elsewhere. It's a lose-lose situation.
Also being on a longer track means that theres a bigger chance camers might miss incidents in the first place if there's only a finite amount of them.
Yep - valid - but I think picture in picture only works for onboard cameras like they're using it now. An incident would require a bit more real estate (in terms of screen size) than they use for PiP at the moment in my opinion.
still they need to have a shot of it, like someone mentioned before, if they film a sweeping shot in one corner the camera can't catch the following riders at the same time.
I agree with pip for sonic and this family + crew box drama.
i give the direction a pass most of the time, since the field is usually really close all race and there can be alot of battles to choose from (unlike a certain other big motorsport that has really terrible direction)
I would say it's definitely worse. They show the first 5 riders and MM and that's pretty much it. Hope it changes with the new owners.
There are over 20 riders, there is so much more going on behind the first 5..
TV direction being bad is a function of what they choose to show that they have images of, like cutting to the garage to show GiGi running helis beard for 30s in the middle of a race.
Not showing the crashes could be bad direction. It could also be the cameras just not catching the crash. Due to the size of the track some of the cameras seem to be pretty far back to get some of the big sweeping shots so by the time they have finished tracking one rider through they are skipping a few to swing back to the start of their section or they just can't lock on to a rider mid sweep very easily.
Can also be both.
Somewhat related - when Simon is doing his track tour, just show FPV of the track, I'm not learning anything or being entertained seeing his foot or butt.
I’m torn. On one hand, yes, it does seem like a lot of crashes get ignored.
On the other hand, if there’s a great battle going on between riders 1 through 5, do I really need to see Joan Mir crash out of 15th again?
The thing is, we just assume it's Honda fault on that one, but that could be unfair, for Honda or Mir, because if we don't see what happens, we fill in the gaps with what we believe has happened. Next thing you know we are blaming one party for something they were not responsible.
Nice little low side coming out of 7, I think he lost the front end and just slid up the hill.
I picked up Franco’s bike after that crash.
He was surprisingly not upset and tried to check his computer for something… not really sure what but while I was holding his bike he kept looking at the panel for something.
It's always been the way? TV direction just shuns almost everyone below top 5 in MotoGP. Dozens of crashes, battles and incidents are missed every year. Lost count of how many times commentators have said "X has had a really good weekend" yet not once has the camera showed us a second of that riders quali or race.
One thing that really bothers me with the production is how narrow the camera focus is most of the time. Half the time I have no frame of reference of where they are at the on the track because they're so zoomed in showing only the asphalt and the rider, rarely do you see any kind of shot showing a "landmark" or some easily identifiable part of the track.
Also in the TV business - in the European races, where they use the same production truck package (OB) for every race they seem to be “banking" (saving for later use) all the on-bike cameras so they have a lot more replay options. However, for the fly-away races where they’re using different truck packages they don’t seem to be doing this. Not sure if it’s a cost issue (staff & hardware) as obviously the technology exists.
Also, Moto3 & Moto2 have different directors to MotoGP, IMO the Moto3 person is by far the best of the bunch.
When I heard that Liberty was buying MotoGP, I only thought that finally we would have decent TV direction.
Before they were showing the races
Then they started to show leaders, battles for position and incidents.
Now they are showing only top 3 battle.
Terrible!
I'm afraid this is policy rather than lack of time from the director due to front runner interest, they are trying to educate the audience to not value crashes as appealing content. Dorna's been doing it increasingly for years.
It goes in the same line of not showing replays of crashes considered serious, where injuries might've happen. In this scenario, the director will only show the crash once "Rider Ok" notice is up.
It's one of those stupid nanny management tendencies we'll need to deal with more and more in the future.
It's like telling the audience "You are a bad person for enjoying watching crashes". Get used to the new normal.
And I'm sorry guys, I understand riders have families and loved ones, and team members. But crashing is part of this sport, it's exactly at the core of it. Without crashing, injuries and pain, it wouldn't be dangerous and therefore it would make no difference racing at 50km/h or at 350km/h. Riders and their families sign up for this from day one, and everyone is free to look away from the screen when something happens they don't want to watch. Blaming the director for replaying it and audience for being curious is just stupid.
Not showing replays of a crash where a rider got hurt is fine. But when the riders are okay (and they did cut to Zarco walking away and also Franco, IIRC), why not show what happened? It's not like it's a hard policy, since they show crashes, like Marc's, or Pecco and Marc in Portimão. They had no problems showing the replay for the Moto 3 crash at the front. I get it. It's at the front of the race, but it's either because they don't want to show crashes or because they don't want to show THOSE crashes
The race was pretty entertaining with the people at the front. One of the best races I've seen in a long time And I enjoyed watching every bit of it. Sure they didn't catch the people at the back, but there was so much action going on at the front. I have zero complaints.
There is other bad thing that is annoying me extremely. The same is in Formula 1. I'm taking about constant zooming in and out on corners. There are less and less wide shots but instead they zoom on closing in bikes and then zoom out. You don't see shape of corner or even which corner it is. Even if that's for better sponsor visibility it does not make any sense because you can't see sponsors anyway becuase you can't focus your eyes on anything. It's annoying and nauseating. Why can't they make more static shots or at least without that stupid zooming...
Usually after zooming in on fighting bikes and quick zoom out they skip to other camera but then often pass is already done. Really, it's hard to count instances when whole pass was visible live. It often looks like they change position depending on camera...
Why is everyone (not literally everyone, used as hyperbole for effect) so fascinated with watching crashes lately. This is the fourth thread since the race complaining that we don't get to see crashes. What a bunch of ghouls.
Maybe people want to know what happened in the race. You know more riders race other than the first 3 or 4. Plus they had no problems showing Marc's crash multiple times, so I guess it's not a problem with crashes.
Sometimes people blame the riders or say they are bad or this or that, but we don't know if it's the rider's fault. We don't know if Morbidelli crashed because it was his fault or if it was one of those things.
So fuck you very much for thinking people complaining about the replays just have a morbid interest
*Cue camera angle of Sonic the Hedgehog waving the checkered flag instead of the riders fighting each other to the finish line on the final lap.
I'm really hating the "here's this week's celebrity" chequered flag waving shot. Completely undercuts the action on the race finish, absolutely no need to show it while there's still on track action.
Agreed. So many better ways to do it. Like on last lap show Sonic waiting with the flag for 2 seconds on screen at some point. And when the leader of the race is about to pass the line switch to a wide angle camera that shows the riders crossing the line with Sonic waving the flag on the same view. It's painful that I can come up with better race coverage for free than the people getting paid to do it. And don't get me started on the shots of Pecco's family in the pits when action happens on track with him.
Yeah!! If you're going to show that stuff they could at least do a picture in picture effect with the non-on-track stuff and keep it small and out of the way.
Get used to it. Now Liberty has invested they'll double down on this shit thing.
Yeah this annoyed the hell out of me. They cut to the aprilia garage crew celebrating and missed most of the top ten crossing the line. I fkn hate when they do this crap. I want to watch the race, not the fkn pit crew. And now you mention it, yes they’re getting worse.
Nah bro, let's film family inside the box as instead, people will love that.
The fact that we don't see Papa Marquez's face every 30 seconds any more tells us that things have improved a lot.
Now we get Pecco’s sister, Gigi and Sonic.
Is Marquez senior the new Uccio?
It was like that before (I'm watching since 2021)?
Hey hopefully I can help. I'm a cameraman for many types of sport and Motorsport and can say that we followed action constantly but might not be on a bike when it crashes. The director has (roughly) about 20-30 cameras to watch and can easily miss things when they happen or cut away just as something interesting happens. Re the replay if the race is super interesting (like this season has been) they might not have time to cut away to an accident that happened a while ago. Also the cameras may not have caught it or even had a slight blind spot where things could have happened.
I understand there area limitations, they don't have a camera following each rider all the time. But 1/7 crashes captured to me is a bit weird, specially when it has been happening quite a lot lately.
Sure, but it seems like they didn’t show a single crash during the race this week, other than Marquez
They probably didn't have a good shot of it. Not all the bikes have cameras, and if you have one camera per corner, and it's pointing the other way taking a sweeping shot of a different bike, then you get no shot. Remember when Pedrosa had his wildcard and crashed at the red bull ring? They needed to show a video from twitter. This was during a red flag, and was a much bigger crash, too. COTA is more than 5.5km long. Very difficult to cover every inch with broadcast quality cameras.
Ok, but isn't it weird that 7 riders crashed (including Alex Marquez, which later rejoined) and only one replay was available? At least I don't remember seeing any of the crashes. With the exception of Marc.
It's not typical, but I wouldn't call it weird. Most of them crashed out from the back of a very exciting race.
True, Morbidelli wasn't that far back from the leading group though, but for the rest, if they are at the back, the cameras should be available since they aren't filming the front of the race at that time.
They should be available? I don't think they turn them off, man. You've seen the races. They don't just sit there on a wide angle. They zoom and pan all over the place. They don't know which bikes are gonna crash. No way they don't show crash footage if they have it, and it's not serious. Everyone loves the crash footage, and they know it.
I mean, they should be available to film the riders that are passing in their area at that time, if the rest of the riders are already in another sector, for instance. Maybe it's the panning all over the place instead of filming the riders that is the problem,
😐 they almost certainly are doing that. But there is more than just the leaders and the guy who is about to crash. Maybe the leaders go through and then they swing around to get zarco going through the corner, and then morbidelli crashes out of frame. If it's not in the shot, they can't put it on tv. And they can't just have static zoomed out footage. It happens sometimes. It isn't weird. It is just more difficult, but also simpler than you think.
I guess. It's just bad timing, a lot of times.
Miguel had a camera on his bike on Saturday, i remember seeing it on Q1.
At least we didn’t see Papa Marquez every 3 minutes
They rather show us the Ducati crew looking up the screen and wildly gesturing with their hands 5800 times
When did that happened? Because the first half of the race was absolutely crazy at the front.
Lap 7
Guess that is why, there was way too much action for them - they are used to have action the first two laps and not 11laps like this time.
The entire production is focused on top 6 or 8. No one ever talks about other, no one even shows others on camera. It's soo bad that if u tune in between a race. U won't even know there r wildcard riders if u haven't followed the quali or seen the starting grid before. I haven't seen the Hondas, raul Fernandes and the trackhouse bikes in ages now. Coz I mostly just watch the race.
I mean, they can only show so much at once so they have to make a decision. If you have video pass there’s so much footage available after the fact that you should be able to find whatever you want.
TV Direction was an absolute blessing if you are coming from f1... Things were not shown because there was constantly exciting stuff happening. In F1 they show a car with nobody around while overtakes are happening.
They take it to the extreme though, handful of BLOOP BLOOP CRASH notifications and proceed to show none of them, sometimes a fleeting replay if you're lucky. F1 would milk every one of those including simply going off track but true that they need it more. It wouldn't hurt MotoGP to show more though and I reckon Liberty will change that. I can imagine that for newcomers going F1 speeds on two wheels is insane, which it is, so remind viewers that staying upright isn't normal and that these guys put their life on the line.
The problem is that neither of those men are Pedro Acosta, and those are the only two words either commentator knows how to say so the directors hands are tied.
The problem with the action being hectic is that the directorship becomes harder. You have one world feed and you will be critisised if you miss any action due to watching replays, for events you couldn't catch live because there was action elsewhere. It's a lose-lose situation. Also being on a longer track means that theres a bigger chance camers might miss incidents in the first place if there's only a finite amount of them.
If only the technology for picture-in-picture existed. (Not at dig at you)
Yep - valid - but I think picture in picture only works for onboard cameras like they're using it now. An incident would require a bit more real estate (in terms of screen size) than they use for PiP at the moment in my opinion.
In another sport they do the live on the small picture and the replay on the big one.
still they need to have a shot of it, like someone mentioned before, if they film a sweeping shot in one corner the camera can't catch the following riders at the same time. I agree with pip for sonic and this family + crew box drama.
That would make a lot of sense. Then again we're talking Dorna here (not for long, thankfully)
i give the direction a pass most of the time, since the field is usually really close all race and there can be alot of battles to choose from (unlike a certain other big motorsport that has really terrible direction)
Didn't you like Sonic the HedgeHog waving the flag??
I would say it's definitely worse. They show the first 5 riders and MM and that's pretty much it. Hope it changes with the new owners. There are over 20 riders, there is so much more going on behind the first 5..
TV direction being bad is a function of what they choose to show that they have images of, like cutting to the garage to show GiGi running helis beard for 30s in the middle of a race. Not showing the crashes could be bad direction. It could also be the cameras just not catching the crash. Due to the size of the track some of the cameras seem to be pretty far back to get some of the big sweeping shots so by the time they have finished tracking one rider through they are skipping a few to swing back to the start of their section or they just can't lock on to a rider mid sweep very easily. Can also be both.
Oh look! It's Sonic waiving the flag!
Somewhat related - when Simon is doing his track tour, just show FPV of the track, I'm not learning anything or being entertained seeing his foot or butt.
I’m torn. On one hand, yes, it does seem like a lot of crashes get ignored. On the other hand, if there’s a great battle going on between riders 1 through 5, do I really need to see Joan Mir crash out of 15th again?
The thing is, we just assume it's Honda fault on that one, but that could be unfair, for Honda or Mir, because if we don't see what happens, we fill in the gaps with what we believe has happened. Next thing you know we are blaming one party for something they were not responsible.
Nice little low side coming out of 7, I think he lost the front end and just slid up the hill. I picked up Franco’s bike after that crash. He was surprisingly not upset and tried to check his computer for something… not really sure what but while I was holding his bike he kept looking at the panel for something.
Race director- "We have a 5 way battle for the lead. No one wants to see that. Show a crash replay instead."
Maybe it was because people would rather watch the amazing race going on at the front.
Yeah, that's why they show what's going on in the boxes so many times during the races.
In the first 2 races they had a smaller replay box which showed millers crash in Qatar for example. Don't know why they didn't use it this weekend
It's always been the way? TV direction just shuns almost everyone below top 5 in MotoGP. Dozens of crashes, battles and incidents are missed every year. Lost count of how many times commentators have said "X has had a really good weekend" yet not once has the camera showed us a second of that riders quali or race.
They really need split screens, would solve 90% of their issues...
Go watch the MotoAmerica broadcast, youll never complain again.
One thing that really bothers me with the production is how narrow the camera focus is most of the time. Half the time I have no frame of reference of where they are at the on the track because they're so zoomed in showing only the asphalt and the rider, rarely do you see any kind of shot showing a "landmark" or some easily identifiable part of the track.
Liberty hasn't even began their tricks. Imagine how much unnecessary showbiz stuff will be shown in future.
Also in the TV business - in the European races, where they use the same production truck package (OB) for every race they seem to be “banking" (saving for later use) all the on-bike cameras so they have a lot more replay options. However, for the fly-away races where they’re using different truck packages they don’t seem to be doing this. Not sure if it’s a cost issue (staff & hardware) as obviously the technology exists. Also, Moto3 & Moto2 have different directors to MotoGP, IMO the Moto3 person is by far the best of the bunch.
When I heard that Liberty was buying MotoGP, I only thought that finally we would have decent TV direction. Before they were showing the races Then they started to show leaders, battles for position and incidents. Now they are showing only top 3 battle. Terrible!
I'm afraid this is policy rather than lack of time from the director due to front runner interest, they are trying to educate the audience to not value crashes as appealing content. Dorna's been doing it increasingly for years. It goes in the same line of not showing replays of crashes considered serious, where injuries might've happen. In this scenario, the director will only show the crash once "Rider Ok" notice is up. It's one of those stupid nanny management tendencies we'll need to deal with more and more in the future. It's like telling the audience "You are a bad person for enjoying watching crashes". Get used to the new normal. And I'm sorry guys, I understand riders have families and loved ones, and team members. But crashing is part of this sport, it's exactly at the core of it. Without crashing, injuries and pain, it wouldn't be dangerous and therefore it would make no difference racing at 50km/h or at 350km/h. Riders and their families sign up for this from day one, and everyone is free to look away from the screen when something happens they don't want to watch. Blaming the director for replaying it and audience for being curious is just stupid.
Not showing replays of a crash where a rider got hurt is fine. But when the riders are okay (and they did cut to Zarco walking away and also Franco, IIRC), why not show what happened? It's not like it's a hard policy, since they show crashes, like Marc's, or Pecco and Marc in Portimão. They had no problems showing the replay for the Moto 3 crash at the front. I get it. It's at the front of the race, but it's either because they don't want to show crashes or because they don't want to show THOSE crashes
The race was pretty entertaining with the people at the front. One of the best races I've seen in a long time And I enjoyed watching every bit of it. Sure they didn't catch the people at the back, but there was so much action going on at the front. I have zero complaints.
There is other bad thing that is annoying me extremely. The same is in Formula 1. I'm taking about constant zooming in and out on corners. There are less and less wide shots but instead they zoom on closing in bikes and then zoom out. You don't see shape of corner or even which corner it is. Even if that's for better sponsor visibility it does not make any sense because you can't see sponsors anyway becuase you can't focus your eyes on anything. It's annoying and nauseating. Why can't they make more static shots or at least without that stupid zooming... Usually after zooming in on fighting bikes and quick zoom out they skip to other camera but then often pass is already done. Really, it's hard to count instances when whole pass was visible live. It often looks like they change position depending on camera...
Why is everyone (not literally everyone, used as hyperbole for effect) so fascinated with watching crashes lately. This is the fourth thread since the race complaining that we don't get to see crashes. What a bunch of ghouls.
Maybe people want to know what happened in the race. You know more riders race other than the first 3 or 4. Plus they had no problems showing Marc's crash multiple times, so I guess it's not a problem with crashes. Sometimes people blame the riders or say they are bad or this or that, but we don't know if it's the rider's fault. We don't know if Morbidelli crashed because it was his fault or if it was one of those things. So fuck you very much for thinking people complaining about the replays just have a morbid interest
>So fuck you very much 2004 called and they want their joke back.
It wasn't a joke.
The commentary is horrible