Thread: Open letter to Voice Of Rally/Colin Clark

I couldn't agree more. The videos of ''RallyMad'' and ''Rallymedia'' -among others- make you feel that the official coverage is from a different boring rally. O.K. they have to show the banners of the sponsors, but it has gone too far. Also keep in mind that those people that you mentioned, usually do not even have the luxury of a tabard and in most cases have to play hide and seek with the marshals, in order to be in the right places and capture the action.

Amen! I've sent to Becs and Colin

I think the wrc.com is a different company than north one....could be wrong though.

Sometimes the video's on wrc.com work if you press the blue ? icon, sometimes not...

Stop paying for ESPN or whatever and pay us to do all the rallies instead
You are a bit more limited also when you use a tripod so that's one of the reasons why our footage look more violent if you like.

The camera in Mikko's car this year is good! It's small too I've seen and on the seat flap so not in the way for helmets to be put in the back.

Shouldn't this be sendt to Simon Long in North one?
simon.long@northonesport.com

Whilst most of that is nothing to do with Colin, I would simply ask that he stop calling the sport of rallying "rally".

Simon Long in 2010: "We believe that WRC is the sport for the digital age. WRC is data rich creating hundreds of hours of footage and acres of information including timings, GPS and results. A digital approach to WRC is key to how we satisfy our fans insatiable appetite for more coverage, more data and more facts."

Link for anyone interested: http://newsroom.wrc.com/content/WRC%...ook%202010.pdf

My point: Simon Long can talk the talk... but that's about it. An example of how they could care less about their 'digital approach' is their iPhone App. Open it up for it to greet you with 'Season 2010' on the screen. That's just lazy.

Originally Posted by Jake Stephens

Simon Long in 2010: "We believe that WRC is the sport for the digital age. WRC is data rich creating hundreds of hours of footage and acres of information including timings, GPS and results. A digital approach to WRC is key to how we satisfy our fans insatiable appetite for more coverage, more data and more facts."

Link for anyone interested: http://newsroom.wrc.com/content/WRC%...ook%202010.pdf

My point: Simon Long can talk the talk... but that's about it. An example of how they could care less about their 'digital approach' is their iPhone App. Open it up for it to greet you with 'Season 2010' on the screen. That's just lazy.

What a ****wit. Back in the 80's or 90's I never recall anyone saying "ooh I wish we had GPS data from the cars!" do you?

Seriously Simon, buy youself some late 90's WRC season reviews and learn a thing or ten about on stage camera placement and in car camera placement.....

Originally Posted by Daniel

Seriously Simon, buy youself some late 90's WRC season reviews and learn a thing or ten about on stage camera placement and in car camera placement.....

no need to do that...hire darkstar as advisor.

One thing I don't understand is the crying about incar camera angles. In 90s we didn't have same seats as today, we didn't have the same rollcage/interior designs, we didn't have the same cars. The "90s angle" is basically physically impossible to create in modern cars. I don't know what's so difficult in understanding that.

I'm happy for WRC onboards, the new angle (which is used with the new Recaro safety seats, e.g in Mikko's car; this one: http://juhake.kapsi.fi/motorsport/fi...gle_mexico.png ) is excellent in my opinion. But this angle is not possible in Citroens or in Jari-Matti's car simply because they don't use those new Recaro seats. Take a look at some photos of WRC cars taken from behind with the tail gate open. It's very narrow view through the seats. And that space is work area for the crews: they have their HANS', helmets, headsets, etc. behind the seats which they access through that small space. Crews are not there to provide fappable multimedia, they are there to compete. Take a look at Fiesta's or DS3's roll cage design and tell me where you'd put the incar camera.

I honestly like to see action from A-pillar or roof camera instead of watching the rear of carbon fibre seats.

Originally Posted by Juha_Koo

One thing I don't understand is the crying about incar camera angles. In 90s we didn't have same seats as today, we didn't have the same rollcage/interior designs, we didn't have the same cars. The "90s angle" is basically physically impossible to create in modern cars. I don't know what's so difficult in understanding that.

I'm happy for WRC onboards, the new angle (which is used with the new Recaro safety seats, e.g in Mikko's car; this one: http://juhake.kapsi.fi/motorsport/fi...gle_mexico.png ) is excellent in my opinion. But this angle is not possible in Citroens or in Jari-Matti's car simply because they don't use those new Recaro seats. Take a look at some photos of WRC cars taken from behind with the tail gate open. It's very narrow view through the seats. And that space is work area for the crews: they have their HANS', helmets, headsets, etc. behind the seats which they access through that small space. Crews are not there to provide fappable multimedia, they are there to compete. Take a look at Fiesta's or DS3's roll cage design and tell me where you'd put the incar camera.

I honestly like to see action from A-pillar or roof camera instead of watching the rear of carbon fibre seats.

That's a good view, BUT often the view seems a lot worse than that.

Well, as you can see i the clip from Kopecky (Bonver Vala) it is possible to set
the camera right in the modern rallycar. Also rallying is only here because of the viewers. Most of the time it does not feel like that

Some of the best "amatuer" footage I've seen of a rally recently was a video someone made of the acropolis rally, I'll try and find it...

Darkstar
Acropolis Rally 2011

Originally Posted by tfp

Darkstar
Acropolis Rally 2011

That the official coverage isn't using footage of this quality is pitiful....

Originally Posted by Lundgaard

Well, as you can see i the clip from Kopecky (Bonver Vala) it is possible to set
the camera right in the modern rallycar. Also rallying is only here because of the viewers. Most of the time it does not feel like that

In Fabia they store helmets, headsets, etc. in the codriver's legs compartment, so that angle is not available in Fiesta nor DS3... Look how the camera blocks crew's access to behind seats.

I would love to see new incar angles, but it's nearly impossible to produce them.

Maybe the position and mounting fixture could be a mandated item in the cars. Like the positioning and mounting of the WRC GPS Tracking System is required to placed in the same place. A similar proposal is in place for Touring Cars in Australia, enabling video footage to be used by the Stewards after an incident from the same angle and viewpoint in each car frontwards and rear facing, not just for TV purposes. With current lipstick cameras becoming smaller, it should not be a weight penalty or even restrict access too much into the rear of the cabin.

thank god its not just me the videos dont work for! i get so f**king frustrated by this... just put links to youtube if you cant get it right wrc.com!!!!

Originally Posted by Juha_Koo

In Fabia they store helmets, headsets, etc. in the codriver's legs compartment, so that angle is not available in Fiesta nor DS3... Look how the camera blocks crew's access to behind seats.

I would love to see new incar angles, but it's nearly impossible to produce them.

I don't see this is any problem if you just want it to happen. All that is needed is to design a generic camera unit, with a flip-down mount. Spring-loaded so it can just be pushed off position and not require much of a focus from the crew. Fix it to the inside roof so it fits all cars. Just a simple little plastic-thingy.

You would have to make a couple prototypes, but should not be very difficult for someone in mechanical design.

My honest reply to this thread would only be laughter.

But here's why:

First of the wrc.com site. That site has been f'ed up since 2002 or even earlier. Splits not working, site overload, site completely freezing, etc. It's nothing new. I'm pretty sure that I remember the very old WRC.com forum members referring to the site as Error.com. That site has been fully not functioning for years and I honestly don't know who or what would fix that.

Now the TV coverage. This month I've been analyzing different rally reviews (WRC 2001, 2005, 2011 and IRC 2011). As a programme I have to say that the current format is the best but the camerawork as mentioned in the first post is a bit disappointing. The best camerawork is from the reviews I watched is from 2001. What has changed over the 10 years? Frankly, not much but enough to change the looks of rallying on TV. First thing that you actually notice is the helicopter footage in 2001, which is stunning. But the onground cameras are actually the same pretty much. The difference is that they film even more from distance and in locations where the car is in shot for a longer time period. That looses the feeling of speed from the footage because there's nearly no footage from the inside of turns. This is a guess, but I think that about 90% of the shots are from the outside of corners. To improve the camerawork on WRC rally reviews is the easiest thing to do - different camera placement, more than a few similar angles from the same spot and better quality incar footage.

Some have mentioned that the reviews "should" be done by rally fans. If you want a semi-pro final result, then yes that's an option. Here's one big difference between rally fan footage and WRC TV crew ones - quality. Okey, the WRC clips are more boring and the speed factor is quite close to zero - check the older reviews and you'll notice that highspeed shots are used mostly only in highlight section of the programme. The quality actually comes from the equipment that's used. WRC crews use ENG (Electronic News Gathering) cameras, which are huge (e.g., Sony XDCAM HD EX3 is 250 x 210 x 400 mm [W x H x D]) and not so light (nearly 4kg). When you compare that to what most rally fans use, a simple camcorder, which usually is around 500g. Adding a teleconverter or wide angle lens adds about 300g's to the camera weight. You simply cannot do some shots that are doable with a camcorder with a prosumer high-end video camera. You may think that the difference in image quality isn't noticeable but it's really clear when you see the colors. The colorspace on consumer cameras is much worse than the prosumer ones have. Okey, DSLRs have nearly the same colors etc but with those things you've limited to a certain focal length and good zooming isn't possible. And of course they aren't video cameras. Long story short, pros should do the official reviews and fans may do their videos if they want. Just the pros need to up their game or they need to be replaced.

Just my two cents.