???Shooting a cage fight

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Djones

Active member
I hope someone can help me with this....

I am going to be covering a MMA cage fight event next month and I am new to doing something like this....
(IT WILL NOT BE BROADCASTED LIVE)

WHAT I KNOW
-There needs to be at least 3 cameras capturing a fight at once....
-Usually they use big betacams and do live camera angle switching...

QUESTION
-Can i use smaller cameras for example an HVX200?
-Can you do live camera switching with an HVX200 or something similar?

any helpful imput would be GREATLY appreciated.

-Danny
 
If you are not broadcasting live then just film the fight from three angles and cut it up in post. You can connect three HVX's to a vision mixer and cut on the fly, but unless your broadcasting live theres no point.

You can use multicam in FCP to cut between the three shots in a live gallery type way in post anyway.


Just make sure, as with anything like this, atleast one camera has got a clean shot before moving. Nothing more annoying than all three cameras moving at once with nothing good to cut through.

Since this is a CAGE fight you might want to make use of the cage, and magic arm a wide lockoff camera to it. Dosnt need to be anything fancy, an HV20 will do, just so youve got a wide shot thats always there to cut to incase the footage is difficult to work with...
 
thanks for the advice i really appreciate it......there are 10 fights and the whole event lasts around 4 hours...wouldnt it be easier to use a mixer?? it seems like it would be a pain to sync all that footage...?
 
What I've seen people do in this kind of situation is do both. Cable all the cameras to a switcher, and feed the switcher output to a recorder; but also "roll tape" in camera. The way it was explained to me was that the camera recording was basically a backup, in case you switch to the wrong camera or just miss something live; the recorder fed by the switcher was getting all the audio, so the idea was that anything missed could just be inserted in post and everything would be good.

To answer your specific questions from the first thread... you can use pretty much any camera you want, theoretically, but you may find that those "big BetaCams" are more suited to this sort of thing than an HVX200, both because of the camera-mounted form factor and possibly, if the camera operators are moving around a lot, because they probably have a locking BNC connector for the video. (OTOH, the HVX definitely wins when it comes to weight. I had a Sony DXC-D30 with a BetaCam SP deck on my shoulder for about five minutes on one of those jobs I mentioned earlier... and then my shoulder fell off. :D ) And you can do live camera switching with just about any camera, but again, some cameras will be better suited to it than others. In particular, and you don't mention if you need to shoot this in HD or SD, but HD raises a whole different set of issues with regards to running cables, switching, and recording. (None of these are insurmountable, I'm guessing, because people do them, but I'm also guessing that the cost goes up by a substantial factor.)
 
I was planning on shooting it in Standard Definition...And the main reason I would rather use the HVX is because I have never used a betacam, and i know a few talented videographers who are farmiliar with the hvx and not so much Betacams...any recomendation on switchers and recorders? cables etc.?
 
Another vote here for doing it in post. I've shot some multicam stuff and I edit in Edius. The multicam edit on that is so simple, I love it. You literally just click on the camera you want to cut to, or you can use keyboard shortcuts. It inserts a little marker on the timeline for each cut - which means you can go back and tighten up the edits on a second pass - which is a luxury you don't have if you're doing it live.
 
Hey Djones, I shot a few MMA cage fights for this reality pilot I was working on. We shot very raw, no video mixers no nothing. Just 3 hvx, the operators and a sound guy on boom. We had one cam op posted high on a ladder covering the high angle (since the cage walls are high) and 2 cam ops walking around the cage getting the action. Then when the fight would end or begin, one cam op would be in there for the fighter presentations. Just a heads up, make sure you set up with plenty of time before the crowd arrives because we ran into a few snags when setting up when people had their reserved seating already (major headache). Just check this out prehand with your producer or director so everyone is happy with camera locations.
 
Looking back at my first post, what I neglected to say in there was that, in the live events where I've seen multi-camera shoots recorded through video mixer, the reason for it was that we were doing I-MAG in the room as well. If you're not doing that, then I don't see a need to screw around with a mixer and a single record deck when (as people have mentioned) it's apparently somewhat easy to edit all the cameras together in the end with modern technology. (My company has a bit of a problem with that whole "modern technology" bit; the jobs I've been involved with, we recorded to BetaCam SP, both in-camera and through the switcher, and then handed all the tapes to the client for editing. We probably could have done a pretty good job of editing on BetaCam, actually, but anything newer than that, fugaddeabouddit. :( )

OTOH, and I don't know how involved this sort of shoot gets, but let me ask this: as the "director" of this, you're going to want to have a "video village" showing what each camera is getting anyway, right? So, if you're already running cable out of each camera to a bunch of monitors, then what's a couple of hundred bucks to rent a video switcher and a record deck? Heck, if you can get a feed from the venue sound system to record the announcers (or just hire a couple of Marv Albert wannabees :) ), and get a DVCAM (or something else digital) deck, you've got an audio track to sync to. Just kind of throwing this out here, as all of that is pretty much beyond my ability, but from what I see it's gotta be possible, right?
 
...just wanted to add: doing live events with HVX type cameras and a vision mixer is not a good way of doing things. For a good live mix you need tally lights on the cameras so that the operator sees when he's on and when not. It's not bad to have a return view for the operator as well (that means he can see the program image on his display when he presses the return button).
You need an intercom system so the video mixer can communicate with everyone. The vision mixer needs to have preview monitors for each camera, plus a preview and program monitor.

Usually all these things are lacking when you are using cameras that were never intended for live studio use.
I can tell you from experience that the lack of a tally light and return view on the camera will spoil the fun for everyone.

The only way setting up an event like this with live camera mixing is to use a pre-configured set-up of small studio cameras, or a small eng truck. There is so much that can go wrong compared to just recording to tape in camera, you want to rule out every possible mistake in the first place.
 
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