Ultivillage Videos

I'm trying to live up to a bargain I made the Florida women's coach of posting more. I hope I am not boring people.

I just got 2 more videos from Ultivillage: 2008 UPA Championships and 2008 WFDF Championships. My first reaction was disappointment in the UPA video. They trimmed down to 1 DVD rather than 2, and it seems to be at the expense of content. There was no menu structure for pool play, and you didn't get a chance to see more of the games (even if only highlights). I'll comment them for going back to an elevated camera instead of the ground level cameras that have been used for the past few finals. They even used sideline cameras, which offer some great views of spacing and depth that end zone cameras can't give. Unfortunately the editing left a bit to e desired. The first half of the men's game the sideline cameras were almost always zoomed in on the thrower so close you couldn't even see the dump well. The second half was better, but they we to the end zone camera which was typically more zoomed out. The other problem I had was that the play felt stunted. We didn't see many pulls, and they disc would just magically appear on the field without any idea of what happened before. The commentary provided was good commentary, but it also felt stunted as there was no down time (between points and turnovers) for the commentators to add any color or discussion.

Contrast this with the excellent job in filming and editing for the WFDF video. The pool play and most finals were the same style Ultivillage has employed for the past few years, giving us a few extended plays during a game, but jumping from point to point. The finals (at least the men's) were excellent. There were three commentators (Match and 2 guys from blockstack.tv) that did an excellent job. The video was from an angle and elevated, with multiple cameras so they could bounce around as needed. But best of all we saw pretty much the whole game. The benefit of that, from a coaching standard, is huge. I can sit down the the kids and we can actually see what a team is doing on the field, we can discuss strategy and since there is relative down time between each point we can discuss before we have to start watching again. I would love to spend time this coming Tuesday (Tape Tuesdays) talking about Ironside's implementation of straight stack, but I can't see it on the videos. Or how Fury staged their incredible comeback, but the commentary doesn't add anything more than play by play. Instead we will be watching, and listening to the 2008 WFDF finals and talk about how team USA started calling fouls when they were down.

Hopefully Ultivillage (who I love for making these videos) will cover more events like WFDF and give us more stuff to talk about. I can watch highlights online, I buy the DVDs because I want to watch a full game and see as many of the games from a tournament as possible. I sent Rob an email to see if there was any way that I could get the full film from last years UPA finals . . . we'll see if that gets me anywhere.