12/05/2004
FEATURE BY GUEST AUTHORS
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After "A Disappointing Start" to the season, couch-bound Formula 1 fans have been treated much better the last 2 races. The San Marino Grand Prix was produced by Italian television; pictures from Imola were beautiful, and race coverage was very good. Formula One Management produced the Bahrain Grand Prix. That broadcast was much improved over their Pacific swing, which yielded telecasts befitting the terrible on track 'show'.
After ripping them for their brutal performance during the first 2 races, I must be fair to FOM. At Bahrain, the coverage was good, and they had very few technical problems, considering the facility had only just been completed, and they were in the middle of a desert. Sand is never a good mixer with live television, and FOM came away smelling like Wardd. My impressions overall were favorable. Some things stuck out; the use of a drop down box, although it was only used to show in-car footage to go along with a helicopter shot, much more coverage of also-rans, from Christian Klein to Nick Heidfeld, and a better attempt at story telling throughout the race.
It's difficult to make a bad race look good, but easy enough to make a good race look bad on television. Unfortunately for FOM, their three races were definitely in the stinker category, and they were unable on several levels to make them look good. For Imola, we had Jenson Button and Honda usurping Ferrari for pole, so the perception would automatically be better for Imola because of the interesting story lines.
The Italian broadcast team took the bait and Imola was a treat. There was a good mix of camera angles, with a nice low angle camera shooting all the way across the Tamburello complex, and a terrific high angle crane shot from directly overhead pit out. It appeared that the director let the camera operators do their job and get creative. Occasionally the cameras would widen out as cars were going away, giving us a quick glimpse of the atmosphere at Imola.
I was mildly disappointed at coverage of the start. The red lights for the start sequence were barely visible to TV viewers. It's no secret which direction the sun will be shining at the time the race starts. Coverage of the Lap 1 mayhem was good but could have been a bit better. There was very nice work by the camera operator who had the position at the end of Tamburello. As the lead pack was weaving through the chicanes in his frame, he widened out to show David Coulthard shooting straight off the track through the gravel trap.
As Michael Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya went wheel to wheel into Tosa, the camera did not pan with them. I'm sure the camera operator's instructions were "No matter what happens stay with the pack until the all the cars are through." That's good direction, but it needs a director who will cut to his next camera quick enough to not miss any of the action between cars going side by side. When he did cut to the camera located down in Piratella, the camera had Montoya running out of frame; he wasn't wide enough to show the 2 main protagonists of arguably the biggest and certainly most controversial incident of the race. Then, to compound the problem, the director cut away too early from Montoya running his teammate onto the grass. That being said, the replays of the start came quick, and offered differing views, including the helicopter shot of Coulthard running into the back of Jarno Trulli, and a brief in-car of Schumacher and Montoya touching.
My only other complaint about San Marino was again a dreadful lack of coverage of the also-rans. There are only 18 cars on track. There should be sufficient time to give a quick pan of the camera to the back-markers. The percentage of laps completed so far this year would give plenty of time to show a Minardi. As a matter of fact, during the first three races, it would have been easier to show a Yeti on track than Kimi Raikkonen.
At Imola we did get to see Gianmaria Bruni, an Italian driving for an Italian team. We saw him pull into the pits and clap his hands to befuddled mechanics. Maybe Minardi has an alarm clock in their pits that's activated by The Clapper. (Clap on, ** **, Clap off ** **, The Clapper). We also did see Giorgio Pantano, another Italian. His was the quick replay of a yellow car spinning off track with no graphic to denote which driver it was. A few laps later we did see another quick splash of yellow being lapped, and were told that was Nick Heidfeld. Mark Webber's race was so woeful that he was nowhere to be found on screen. The Sauber team could also have mailed in the result for all the exposure they got from Italian TV. Zsolt Baumgartner? Yeah, right.
However, the director wasn't afraid to cut away from the lead, even when Schumacher the elder was on his inevitable hunt of Jenson Button in the opening laps of the race. He was also content to let Schumacher (M) run away off camera to concentrate on the Lap 12 three-way battle between Schumacher (R), Barrichello, and Fernando Alonso.
The producer had a good handle on what was going on around the track. The best example was during the pit stop position battle between Rubens Barrichello and Ralf Schumacher. Knowing they would be pitting together, he had the director cut to them as they entered pit lane. He cut from a mid-angle as they entered pit lane to a high angle as they entered their pit stalls to the Rubens in-car to the hand held in Ralf's pit. As they exited simultaneously, he cut to the crane shot at pit out. This showed Takuma Sato entering pit road almost blocking Rubens in his pit. As soon as the drama played out live, he rolled a replay from the helicopter. That sequence of cuts and replays showed motorsports coverage the way it's supposed to be.
One positive development from FOM is the elimination of the left hand running order graphic showing only 3 letters to denote the drivers. Not only was the placement of that particular graphic bad, but the abbreviations were annoying and confusing. They didn't give any info whatsoever. Back is the traditional 4 by 4 lower third graphic, giving the name of the driver. It's what we've come to expect, it works, and most importantly it doesn't need changing. This is one area where I probably should have praised FOM earlier. Their graphics package is very simple. Granted, every rights holder is going to add his own graphics package for commercial bumps, but FOM keeps it simple.
So, hats off to Italian TV for their coverage of the San Marino Grand Prix and also a good comeback for Formula One Management for their handling of Bahrain.
For the U.S. F1 audience, there was rejoicing in the months leading up to the Australian GP when it was revealed that commentator Bob Varsha would be returning to the F1 booth. Varsha had spent the last few years covering CART for SPEED. He was the long time voice of Formula 1 for ESPN back in the early days when the network had Formula 1 live on Sunday mornings and followed it up with NASCAR, before the series turned into an exercise in marketing and a license to print money (NASCAR, not Formula1, that is.)
Varsha has a true passion for the sport, the type of passion that's needed to be an F1 fan in the U.S. Up until the advent of the internet, F1 news was difficult to come by. You'd have to hunt high and low, and would usually only come up with the final order buried somewhere in the results section of the sports page. Now, with live timing and 180 websites parroting every team's press releases, anyone can pretend to be a broadcaster. Varsha, however is extremely intelligent, very knowledgeable, and understands the uniqueness of Formula 1.
Varsha had several gems during the San Marino GP. My favorite was during the replay of Ralf beating Rubens out of the pits. When the in-car from Rubens showed Ralf in front, Varsha quipped, "The winking taillight is almost like an insult as you pull out with the (other) guy ahead." He also made reference to the houses and villas directly abutting the track, speculating as to the cost for the weekend. Shortly after he talked about a particular villa inside of Rivazza, the world feed took a helicopter shot showing the entire turn including the villa.
The return of Varsha to the SPEED booth gives them their strongest broadcast team yet. Varsha gets along well with color analyst David Hobbs, and more importantly understands his off beat comments and plays off them, something that was lacking with former SPEED race caller Rick Debruhl. Hobbs can be a little offbeat (he is, after all, an ex driver), and some of his comments go over most heads. He can be very funny such as a couple years ago when Fernando Alonso was gaining prominence. He mused that Alonso needed a nickname and came up with "Fred" which has stuck somewhat with U.S. fans.
Steve Matchett, the former Benetton mechanic who rose to fame as much due to his near immolation at Hockenheim in 1994 as his authoring of several books, rounds out the booth triumvirate. Matchett is still very well connected with current F1 team personnel, and hasn't lost any of his technical knowledge. He watches and times how much fuel is being put in the cars, knows the flow rates of the delivery system and quickly calculates how many laps until the next stop. Usually he is right on the money, taking into consideration the unknown starting fuel loads of the cars, and what strategy the team is on.
SPEED also uses the services of Peter Windsor during the weekend. Windsor tapes some pit interviews and gives his analysis for the pre race show. It's a bonus for SPEED to be able to say, "And now let's go to the winner's press conference with our own Peter Windsor." It's too bad SPEED isn't allowed to cut in Windsor live during race broadcasts.
The broadcast team does their call of the race from the SPEED studios in Charlotte, N.C. While it's logistically possible to send the team around the world, SPEED is ultimately owned by Fox, and Formula 1 is certainly not a money maker for the network. They would send a full broadcast team to the moon if NASCAR raced there, but probably won't send the 20 odd crew it would take for a live Canadian broadcast. Sending the crew to Malaysia may not be feasible, and sending them to Monaco would be exorbitant, but sending them to Silverstone or Monza or Brazil would lend an added sense of authenticity to the broadcasts.
So, for now we're at the mercy of Bernie and his production team at FOM, the various world feed broadcasters, and in the U.S. the NASCAR driven folks at FOX and SPEED. It could be worse, it could be pay-per-view.
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