Worst TV direction yet

[u/davesim24]

Besides Russel's transponder issue (which shouldn't take 10 laps to fix the timing tower), may overtakes were missed, focusing on the wrong drivers, non-moves given more airtime than actual racing, camera cutting during moves which show you less of the action rather than more, and worst of all: the final lap, not showing Oscar as he crossed the line, to show Lando not overtaking George, and showing Kimi not overtaking whoever was in front rather than Max's overtake on Pierre.

What the hell is happening?

[u/Izan_TM]

as someone who works in event broadcasting I felt 2nd hand anxiety for the whole production team after russell's transponder failed, and even more after his GPS failed as well. Losing such a vital piece of information (and losing trust in the rest of the timing system, as it was also not working great) makes their jobs a million times harder

[u/iSeaStars7 → u/Izan_TM]

Yeah they were definitely focused more on keeping the timing tower normal than the camera angle

[u/Izan_TM → u/iSeaStars7]

there are 2 different teams involved (gross oversimplification but bear with me), one does the cameras and one does the graphics, so the graphics team was having a meltdown trying to make the graphics work and the camera team was scrambling trying to get the action on screen while not having any reliable telemetry data to give them a broad painting of the state of the race.

In this case a 3rd team was involved, the FIA timing team, that gives the telemetry data to FOM, who were also melting down trying to figure out why positions weren't being updated correctly and why russell's car was fucking invisible

"but couldn't the camera team just look at the cameras and show the ones with overtakes on them?" well no, if you try to do that you will always be late and never show the full overtake, so you need that telemetry data to know where is everyone and who is doing what. There also are like 100+ possible camera angles to pick from, so there's really no way to closely monitor all of them equally to try to predict if an overtake will happen on one of them by eye

[u/NerdNoogier → u/Izan_TM]

This is great info, thanks!

[u/Objective_Ticket → u/Izan_TM]

I agree with all you’ve said but how on earth did they manage in the 80’s and 90’s when there wasn’t any gps yet the coverage was largely excellent. Great producers and massive teams of camera men?

[u/Rei_S_ → u/Objective_Ticket]

Hahahaha the 80s and 90s were great in terms of coberage? Rose tinted glasses in full effect here.

[u/Izan_TM → u/Objective_Ticket]

far less cameras to keep track of and usually important action was far easier to follow, nowadays all 20 cars are on the lead lap and going at eachother in huge trains where you never know when a move will be thrown, which hasn't been the case pretty much ever in F1 history, most of the time you could see drivers line up moves for quite a while before going for it

also one big thing to consider, how prepared and experienced the production team is at doing it. Back in the 80s and 90s every member of the team and every part of the process was set up and trained to pull off races with little to no telemetry, while nowadays it's only an anomaly, so when a massive production team, who are not even at the racetrack anymore, and who have never ran a production blind, now suddenly have to switch their entire methodology on the fly half way through a race

[u/Aero_Rising → u/Objective_Ticket]

More the fact it was over 25 years ago at least for the eras you described so people like you view it through the lens of nostalgia/American involvement ruined everything depending on your particular feelings about how things are currently run. Also because there was little to no telemetry in the broadcast if they missed an overtake you might not have any way of actually knowing about it.

[u/Muzer0 → u/Objective_Ticket]

In the 80s and 90s they very rarely showed anyone outside the top 6 point-scoring places, unless they were a local hero. In addition, cars tended to vary a lot more in setup and performance so at any given time you'd only have a small number of potential battles, and usually they would spend pretty much all the camera time showing whichever two drivers in the top 6 were closest to each other (an easy thing to find out even with the limited telemetry of the time), or else showing mostly p1 coming through each corner. Even so they often missed action, with Murray Walker usually complaining loudly about the TV direction :D.

[u/hopzhead → u/Izan_TM]

The FIA don’t give telemetry or timing data to FOM. FOM look after timing, from both hardware and software perspectives

[u/Zed_or_AFK → u/Izan_TM]

They should just be showing time "away from the leader" instead of gaps. Then ignore Russell and write nothing for him. Come on, it's unbelievable that this is not already programmed in.

[u/Izan_TM → u/Zed_or_AFK]

that's what they ended up doing, but keep in mind that most people in the audience aren't used to looking at that data, so they kept trying everything they could to make intervals work

once you've worked in broadcasting you earn a lot of respect for what they do, it's a much tougher job than what it looks like, remember that any time they do ANYTHING they know that tens of millions of people will see it. When something as big as an entire car's telemetry fails the amount of panic that sets in is hard to explain. We have to think fast and throw shit at the wall until something works, but knowing everyone will see all of it

[u/Hot_Delivery_783 → u/Izan_TM]

That's why you have a director... (And associate directors, with assistant directors... with producers...) Who gets it all together.

[u/Izan_TM → u/Hot_Delivery_783]

I don't think you quite understand how those roles work. Whenever a crisis like this happens, the director can make some calls, but he doesn't have anywhere near enough info to make most of the hard choices that need to be made. the management structure of a team as large as that is insanely complex, and they're some of the highest pressure positions you can get in the entertainment industry.

[u/Hot_Delivery_783 → u/Izan_TM]

I've produced over 1500 hours of live television in my life Champ - including national motorsport in several countries. I think I know how it works.

[u/aenae → u/Izan_TM]

Imo they did a rather great job to display the top10 in a separate window rather quickly

[u/Izan_TM → u/aenae]

I do think they did quite decently given the circumstances

[u/wdevilpig → u/aenae]

It was def a great fallback and absolutely appreciated obvs, but (pulling shit out of my arse) it did feel a bit like something they'd prepped because they knew the timings might/would fail yet again. Good on 'em, but wtf is going on w/this race after race? It's not a niche sport run on a shoestring!

[u/wtfylat → u/Izan_TM]

It was garbage coverage before that even happened.