Scattered (aka LA X)

I almost posted today. (thoughts on the future growth of professional lacrosse and the challenges the sport faces in attracting a national audience (especially a television audience)(which are very similar, I feel, to the challenges soccer faces here in the US))

But, I felt the post deserved more research, and possibly an editor, or at least a rewrite. And so I scrapped it.

I just thought you all should know.

(the field is too big! one camera shot can't encompass routine plays without zooming out to God perspective (ie, everyone looks like ants!) and losing the ball)

(hockey is the nearest successful comparison, it works because the rink is much smaller than a lacrosse field, limiting the distance a camera needs to pan/zoom to keep up, and the black puck (mostly) stays on the white ice surface, a contrast that makes following its high-speed trajectory much easier for the viewer)

(football also takes place on a huge field, but most of the action is restricted to a stripe of field about ten yards wide (that's less than 1/10 of the whole field the camera needs to focus on. the exceptions are (a) long passes and run plays that break for big yards (easy to solve with one camera on the QB, and one wide shot for the ball-in-the-air; and a RB is nowhere near as fast as a lacrosse ball in flight (AND he is always at ground level!) and (b) kickoff/field goal/punt return plays which can all be covered with one camera at the end of the field)

(I'm getting a lot of clarity here...enough that I now realize I'm going to need a scatter plot in three dimensions to make this abundantly clear... stay tuned)

-t